Megan Woodford

Early Literacy Assessment

Fall 2016
Section4

The student that was chosen for an early literacy assessment was chosen because he
was a student that was struggling a little more than the others in literacy classwork. The
case student, Jake, is young for a first grader; his birthday is in September so he turned 6
after the school year had already started. The child has a nuclear family, with both parents
working and an older brother attending fourth grade at the same school. Dad is a car dealer
and mom is a nurse. The family is new to the school and there is not much further
knowledge on the situation, however the parents do communicate with the cooperating
teacher and are involved in the students school community. Having a nuclear family can
benefit the student in a few ways. A nuclear family presents strength and stability, which
can give the child a role model to look up to, as well as good morals, love, and support.
Another way the students can benefit from this kind of family is from the consistency of the
relationship in the home as well as that stability being consistent which can lead to a higher
chance of success. Jake is a very smiley and energetic boy who tends to do whatever the
other boys are doing, even if it means trouble. He has recently become a bit more reserved
when a call home was made but schoolwork remains the same, below average, as it was
before. Jake tries his best, but sometimes can get distracted easily and it is hard to focus
again. Overall, this student has great potential with the right education.
An early literacy assessment is used as a guiding tool for instruction and to help the
student and teacher make goals to aid progress. The information that is received from the
assessment is to help figure out the students need for skills, understanding, and knowledge.
There are many ways to assess letter knowledge, phonemic awareness, fluency,
comprehension, etc., but the assessments that the student completed were spelling, letter
production, letter-sound production, preprimer word list, reading the story Sam, and a
retelling assessment.
The first assessment was spelling. The student was asked to spell 10 words total and
was scored on the correct initial consonant, final consonant, short vowel, blends and
digraphs, long vowel, and overall spelling of the word. This all came to a total score of 40
points and out of those 40, Jake got 22 which turns out to be an accuracy of 55%. The next
assessment done was letter production and it was one of the easiest for Jake to complete,
but the hardest for him to stay focused on. Overall, the student wrote each letter accurately
(some backwards), except the letter j. Reading sight word lists was the next task and this
led to which story he would read following. Starting at preprimer, the lists go up in difficulty
from primer, to first, then second. If the student got 15 words in the first list, he would then
move on to the next list, and then the next, and so on. Jake got 14 out of the 20 words right
on the primer list getting at 70% and qualifying him to read the story Sam and do the
letter/sound production. Jake struggled through the story Sam getting a 70% accuracy for
the story. Lastly, the student completed the letter-sound production task, which he was
successful at, only missing the production of ch saying the sound of k. He got a total of
25 out of 26.
These assessments support the data of a beginning reader and writer. The student is
still working on spelling words, but at 55% accuracy, he is able to sound out the simple
words and spell them correctly. Jake is also a beginning writer in the way that he can write
the letters of the alphabet legibly. A beginning reader is building between 10-100 sight
words. On a list of 20, Jake could read 14 of them, which puts him in that range of 10-100.
While reading Sam, the student knew what was happening in the story by using the pictures
as clues and as he read the story, he pointed and read word by word. Lastly, during the
letter-sound production task, the student demonstrated that he could identify phonemes
(Reish,2016). Overall, all of the data from this literacy assessment supports that the student
is beginning reader and writer.

The same student also participated in a retelling assignment. This is an assignment

that evaluates a student on his recall of a story. In this specific retelling assignment, the
story The Three Billy Goats Gruff is read to Jake and then is retold with the story figures
using all of the story elements. The story elements that are assessed in the recall are setting
and characters, story problem, sequence of major events, resolution, and reaction of
characters. After the story is read and the retelling was demonstrated, Jake retold it with the
story figures and was observed for what he was saying.
When the student was first asked if he knew the story he seemed very excited. He lit
up with a big smile and began to tell the version of the story he knew right away, which is
almost the same as the story that he was about to hear. After the full story was read to him
he then retold the story again in his own version, but this time he used the figures and a few
more basic details about the plot like in the example retelling beforehand.
Jake received a 12 out of 15, which puts him in the assessed category of developing
retelling. Overall, the student knew the main plot points of the story, however there were
details missed that were important to the background knowledge of the story. The two main
things were specific names of the characters and the end of the story, which states that,
the three brothers crossed the bridge whenever they liked... This student had a
preconceived idea of the story and that is one reason why he may have missed some of the
main points to the retelling.

References
Reish, M. (2016). Developing stages of reading and rriting for students
[PowerPoint slides].
Retrieved from
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