UEDU 5000

Elementary Literacy Instruction and Assessment

Brittany Kelly
Guided Reading and Assessment
Fall 2015
UEDU 5000- Fall 2015 Kelly
Reading Assessment and Instruction Assignment

Assessment

Introduction:

Adventure Elementary is a K-6 school in Mapleton School District located in

Westminster, Colorado. Adventure serves approximately 350 students with 22 fulltime

teachers. The majority of the students identify as Hispanic and 88 percent of the

students receive free/reduced lunch on a daily basis. Literacy is taught in both English

and Spanish since many of the students at Adventure are also English Language

Learners. For the purpose of this assignment, I decided to focus my attention to one of

my students, ES. ES is in a self-contained kindergarten and 1 st grade classroom. He is a

kindergartener with Downs Syndrome. He spends all of his day aside from special,

lunch, and recess in the self-contained classroom. ES is not excited about reading or

books unless it is on his terms. So, I performed the assessment during our cool

down/free read time when I saw he was looking at a book and pretending to read it. ES

speaks English at school and has receptive language in Spanish but typically responds

in English. Both parents speak both English and Spanish in the home. He knows the

sight words friend, boy, girl, me, I and happy.

Rationale:

ES was selected for this assignment because he is an average functioning

student who has recently showed more interest in learning. I feel that throughout the

semester I have made a connection with this student and have noticed him pretending

to read similar to the teacher, with the book facing forward and pointing to most of the

words on the page, while saying nonsense words or making up words and stories to fit

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Reading Assessment and Instruction Assignment

the pictures. This reading assessment will provide me and my clinical teacher with

information to provide evidence for his IEP.

Assessment Procedure:

I know that ES does not fully read yet. He knows some sight words but cannot

read full sentences as of yet. I used the Concepts of Print checklist and the book that

ES was looking through at the time of beginning the assessment. I wanted this

assessment to be on his time because he is typically difficult when he knows he is

supposed to be learning or is being tested. Since he has an aversion to learning most

of the time, I took advantage of incidental learning. The important idea behind incidental

learning is that when a student is doing something that is fun, he can be learning a great

deal without having to notice it. Students with disabilities require repetition and in the

self-contained classroom we typically teach lessons quite different than general

education teacher. I completed this assessment two times on two consecutive days.

During cool down after lunch, ES was looking at books and I asked if I could sit and

read with him and he agreed both days. Throughout the 20 minutes, I was able to ask

all of the questions while seeming like we were just reading books together. I sat down

with the student and picked a random book from the bookshelf and asked him which

side was the front and he pointed to the front. After a few seconds, I asked where the

back of my book was and he flipped the book over and pointed to the back. I then

asked ES where does the story start and he turned my book to the correct page. By this

point ES was very interested in helping me and looking at my book. I asked ES where

the picture was and where the words are. He accurately identified both and we talked a

little about the picture and then I asked for ES to point to where we start reading and

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Reading Assessment and Instruction Assignment

when do we read after that. He pointed to the first word on the left page and then

pointed to the words in the rest of the sentence. We read the right page and at the last

word, I asked where do we read after this? He pointed to the first word on the next

page. The assessment then asks to distinguish the difference between letters and

words. He did not receive any points in this section on either day because he could not

identify the difference between a single letter and a whole word. On a page that had

more than two lines of text I read the top line and stopped at the last word on that line. I

asked ES where do we read after this and instead of pointing to the next line he pointed

to the first word on the next page. Therefore, he did not receive a point for that section.

While reading the story he pointed to each word with one-to-one correspondence.

Overall, the student missed about half of the questions. Knowing this, I have based the

lesson on book handling skills.

Reflection:

I spent a good majority of my internship in the self-contained classroom, we were

constantly progress monitoring for the students IEP goals. We also quickly adapt our

lessons to meet our students where they are at in any given moment. Sometimes we

will have a given task, such as the reading assessment for this project, and we will see

the students interested in the topic unprompted. When we notice this we try to take the

time to turn it into a learning opportunity. I think I did a good job recognizing this learning

opportunity for the student. This was an incredibly beneficial formative assessment

because it allowed my CT and myself the opportunity to focus on important skills that

the students need to know. The literacy books we use are in a tent format so they dont

work exactly like regular books. This assessment showed us that we do need to teach

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Reading Assessment and Instruction Assignment

the students the book handling skills, such as, proper book handling, parts of the book,

where to begin reading, directionality of print, etc. My CT has many years of working

with children and it was really wonderful getting her insight on many subjects including

literacy instruction for special education students.

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Reading Assessment and Instruction Assignment

Instruction
Grade: Level: Kindergarten

Topic: Literacy, Guided Reading

Format: Small Group

Length of Lesson: 20 minutes

Description of Class: The students in the literacy group are all have disabilities that

prevent them from being successful in a general education classroom. There are ELLs

in the class but in the literacy group I work with there are no ELLs. Even though some of

our students are not ELLs, most of our students are speech delayed.

Learning Outcomes/Targets/Standards

Common Core:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.K.1: Demonstrate understanding of the organization and

basic features of print.

WIDA:

Level 2: Students can

Listening: follow one step directions (show me the picture).

Speaking: answer questions with one or two words.
Reading: demonstrate concepts of print (left to right movement, beginning and

end, and top and bottom of page).

Writing: connect oral language to print.

Level 3: Students can

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Reading Assessment and Instruction Assignment

Listening: follow oral directions, one step at a time.

Speaking: make predictions (where do we read after this?).
Reading: demonstrate concepts of print (title, author, illustrator)
Writing: make connections between speech and writing.

Level 4: Students can

Listening: distinguish between what happens first and nest in readings. (Where

do I read after this?).

Speaking: Compare attributes of real objects.
Reading: identify some high frequency words in context.
Writing: produce strings of letters associated with pictures.

Lesson Objective:

By the end of the lesson students will have a working knowledge about book handling

skills and can demonstrate their knowledge by correctly answering book handling based

questions.

Planning Materials and Support Needed:

Before No, David! By David Shannon
Reading Puppet
Pointer

Introduction to Book Characteristics:

Using puppet, ask students how to hold a book. Be silly and
turn book in funny ways, to allow students to show the
puppet how to hold the book correctly.

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Reading Assessment and Instruction Assignment

Puppet asks students where the front/back of the book is. If

students do not know have puppet point to the front/back.
Ask, with puppet, where the title and author can be found and
ask students to point to each. If students does not know
puppet points at the title and author.

Read title and author while pointing to each word with

puppet.
Using puppet, ask students where we begin reading the story
(open the book to where the story begins). Have students
open to the first page and point at the first word on the page.

During Once students point to the first word, begin reading the story.
Reading Point to all the words as you read, to help children learn
reading words left to right.

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Reading Assessment and Instruction Assignment

Read 2-3 pages, on the last word of the left page stop and
ask students where we read next.
Continue reading.
On a page with 2 lines of text, read the top line and stop
reading at the last word of the top line. Ask student where we
read after this. If students do not know point to the first word
of the second line.
Finish reading the book.

After Reading Review parts of book (cover, title, author, and front/back)
using the puppet by asking student, Where is the ?

Reflection:

Overall, I fell this lesson went very well. I taught this lesson during our morning

circle. Our class has ten students, so it was difficult at times to keep their focus. The

puppet worked really well for these students because they loved him and listened to

every question he asked. I made sure all students had equal opportunity to answer

questions about the book by inviting each of them up one at a time to point to one part

of the book. They learned all the material by participating and also watching their friends

answer the puppets questions. The most challenging part about this lesson was

keeping the rest of the students focus while one of the classmates was attempting to

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Reading Assessment and Instruction Assignment

answer a question. I think in the future when I teach this lesson I would like to have

smaller groups. I think groups of 2 to 3 students would be the most successful for this

lesson. They will be able to get more individual instruction and I would be able to

differentiate for all of our students. If I taught this lesson to small groups, I would group

students by their reading level. All of our students still cannot read more than a few sight

words but some have better book handling skills and some need more assistance.

Other ideas I have for future instruction would be teaching students to gently turn the

pages. I really think that it is important to incorporate learning these skills in any lesson

that includes reading a book. By demonstrating proper book handling, we are able to

teach students how to treat books and how to read. This lesson is transformative

because students can apply what they know and have learned to all of the other

instances in which they read. Students will know that any time there is a group of words

they have to read from left to right and top to bottom.