Andrea Donahoe

TCH 274
Dr. Husband
Literacy Assessment and Analysis Project

For my literacy assessments, I selected the reading interest inventory,

retelling, fluency, and phonemic awareness assessments. Since the students
in my kindergarten clinical classroom are often in large group setting, I was
struggling with getting to know the four students in my small literacy group
personally. Thus I decided to begin my assessments using the reading
interest inventory assessment to connect with them on a more individual
level. My small group consists of two boys and two girls. These four students
are in the same group during the classrooms Daily 5 rotation. Using the
reading interest inventory assessment, which consists of ten yes, no,
sometimes questions and six open-ended questions, I learned about what
aspects of reading these four students like and dislike. I discovered that
while all four like to read, none of them like to read aloud. The students also
all like being read to. Which is not surprising to me as my cooperating
teacher does a fantastic job reading aloud. I gained an insight as to what
these students feel is their strength while reading and learned what reading
strategy taught throughout the year stuck with them. Three students felt
that they are good at reading or sounding out the words while reading and
one felt that looking at pictures was her strong point. One student shared
that Harry Potter was his favorite book, which seems advanced for
kindergarten! When I questioned him, he said it was a picture book, not the

big books with lots of pages! It was interesting to note that two students
shared that they feel it is difficult to read in a noisy environment. This is
information I can use when planning where I will teach my literacy lesson. I
did not count the reading interest inventory assessment as one of the three
required assessments. I simply wanted to better know and understand my
small group of students.
The second assessment I used was the phonemic Awareness Assessment.
Here I assessed the students understating that separate sounds make up
words. This assessment practice assesses students ability to recognize a
phoneme change in giving a rhyming word, ability to give a word that
rhymes, isolate individual phonemes and state the auditory position of said
phonemes, and be aware of phoneme patterns in words. My kindergarten
classroom uses a phonemic awareness curricula created by Dr. Heggerty and
she implements it regularly. However it is in a large group setting and while
observing it, I noticed that as a whole the students are good at repeating
words and chopping words up, but several students seem to simply go
through the motions and say little or nothing. I was very interested to see
how my small group would do in an individual setting. My small group was
rather divided on phonemic awareness skills. One student was very weak in
her onset and rime ability, only getting one out of eight correct. This did not
upset or frustrate her. She would simply shrug and say I dont know. The
other three students were strong in this area, getting all eight correct. It is
interesting to note that the student that struggled on onset and rime was

able to correctly identify seven out of eight words in the phoneme blending
area. Perhaps this student simply needed a warming up period! Two students
were weak in the rhyme supply area and were only able to correctly give
three or four words that rhyme with the two given words. An area in which all
four students were strong in was the phoneme blending area. The class as a
group typically does this skill during morning circle time and thus the
students are very familiar with sliding sounds together to make words. The
weakest area for two students was the phoneme segmentation section,
where the student is asked to identify the first, second, and third sound. They
either gave the incorrect response or did not respond at all for more than half
of the eight questions. After the assessment I asked each student what was
their favorite part, and all said that they liked sliding tiles part the best
(what as a class they call phoneme blending). I enjoyed seeing each
individual students phonemic ability during the assessment. I feel this gives
a much clearer picture of each students strengths and weaknesses than one
gets simply assessing the students as a large group.
The third assessment method I used on my small group was the fluency
rubric. Here I had each student read me one of their I can sight word
books. Since the students are still sounding out each word, their fluency
scores were not high. They read with correct volume and expression for the
most part. They simply had to stop and work out each individual phoneme
often and this caused their phrasing, smoothness, and pace scores to be low.
Since as a group the students phonemic awareness skills are good, I made

the assumption that perhaps they are weak in their sight word ability.
Perhaps the students dislike for reading aloud also played a part in their low
scores in this assessment. I struggled with this assessment, feeling uncertain
if I was implementing it correctly or giving the correct score.
Lastly I assessed my small groups retelling skills. I read each student
individually the story, Marvin Gets Mad. A short book about a goat named
Marvin who wants an apple, does not get it, and loses his temper. As a result,
he causes a crack in the group and falls into a hole. Fortunately Marvins
friend Molly rescues him and offers him an apple. Only now Marvin wants a
pear! The students were asked to retell the beginning of the story, the
middle of the story, and the end of the story. All four students were weak in
this skill. They all gave short, two or three word responses and for the most
part were unable to retell major events in the story. Retelling for
comprehension is definitely a needs area for my small group.
After implanting these four assessments with my small group I feel that I
have a better understanding of each individual student interests and their
strengths and weaknesses. I am planning on targeting comprehension, i.e.
retelling, for my literacy lesson plan. This is the one area that all four
students were weak in and would benefit from more instruction and hands on
learning opportunity for this skill.