Literacy assessment

Reflection:

The student I chose to complete my literacy assessment on is a 5-year-

old girl who is in a full-day preschool classroom environment. Considering
Hazels age, she was unable to complete about half of the tasks laid out. The
first half of this assessment, Hazel completed with a lot of confidence and
excitement. The first task was to draw a picture of herself and write her
name, which she did with gusto. Hazel spent a lot of time on her picture,
adding all the basic facial features, and then writing her name big on the top.
One issue, that is a consistent through the rest of this assessment, is her
tend to write Z backwards, which is shown in the picture of her drawing.
Aside from this one letter mix up, Hazel drew a very detailed picture and
wrote her name clearly.
The second task for this assessment was to measure her knowledge of
concept of print. Hazel understood most of the questions that I asked her,
but there were three that she had difficulties pointing out to me. The first
direction was, Show me the title of the story, to which she shrugged her
shoulders. I have seen that most of the students in my practicum classroom
dont know what the title of the book is, I dont know if it has to do with the
word title that they dont understand or if they havent been introduced to
the concept consistently. The other two directions that Hazel could not
complete for me were pointing to the first letter of the word and to the
period. I was surprised that Hazel couldnt point to the first letter because
she pointed to the last letter, so I am not convinced that that was an
appropriate measure of her knowledge. However, students at this age are
not always aware of what a period is, so the fact that she could not point that
at is not surprising nor concerning.
Rhyming is a daily element of preschoolers school life, many of the
songs, tasks, books incorporate rhyming into them so Hazel was very
confident and had a lot of fun during this task. Hazel scored 7/9 and both of
the ones that she missed, she said she couldnt answer because there were
no rhyming words. Number 5 has a picture of a bug, rug, and cat, however
she thought the bug was beetle, number 8 has a picture of a clock, rock,
and fan, however she thought the rock was food with crumbs. The answers
to these questions shows Hazels deep understanding of rhyming, she did not
just guess when she didnt hear anything that rhymed, but she expressed
that there so correct answer.
The next task was to measure Hazels understanding of the beginning
sounds. During this task I spent a lot of time emphasizing the beginning
sounds of each item to assist her. I am not convinced that she has a strong
hold on what exactly the beginning sound is or how they were similar
throughout the different pictures. The last three items she completed fairly
quickly so I think the fact that they had very distinct beginning sounds, d,
p, and z, helped her find the answer. This is definitely an area that Hazel
needs to work on, but as I talk about her letter recognition and production, I
think its important that she become more confident in the different letters
first.
The next two task that I completed with Hazel were her lowercase and
uppercase letter recognition. She scored 16/26 for uppercase and 12/26 for
lowercase and a lot of the letters that Hazel could identify for both cases
were pretty consistent. I did notice that she could identify the letters of her
name and her sisters name, with the exception of mixing up L and I a few
times. Hazel also misidentified a lot more letters while during the lowercase
letters than the uppercase letters, which is to be expected at this age. I did
notice that Hazel would become uncomfortable when she didnt know the
name of some of the letters which I think could have led to her guessing
more often on the lowercase letters rather than just admitting she didnt
know the answer. When I asked Hazel to produce these letters, she scored a
14/26, only misrepresenting one letter incorrectly and writing E when I said
I. Something else that is important to mention about this task is that she
wrote the Z and the S both backwards, which is consistent with how she
wrote her name for the first task. This is definitely something that I have
noticed throughout the semester, every time she writes her name. The last
thing I noticed during this task is that Hazel wrote every letter as uppercase
expect I, which shows she is more comfortable with uppercase letters. I
think that the letter I is more cognizable to younger kids, in its lowercase
form, so it makes sense that she wrote it like that. The last task I used to
assess Hazel was the letter-sound production, showing her a sheet with
uppercase letters on it, I asked her to tell me what sound the letters make.
Hazel scored 14/26 in this task, couldnt produce any of the letter
combination sounds, and could mainly make the sounds of harsher sounds.
After completing this assessment with Hazel, I believe that she is on
track with many of her classmates and kids of her age who participate in a
more play-based preschool than others. Hazel is clearly an emergent reader,
with her capabilities to listen to a story and engage in conversation about it.
Hazel understands how to make predictions, what the pictures mean, and
that a word holds meaning. I do think that for Hazel to continue to progress
and move onto the next stage, she needs repetition and be introduced to
letters on a regular basis. I do believe that once Hazel goes to kindergarten
in the fall, her understanding of the alphabet and the sounds that each letter
makes will dramatically increase. The recommendations that I have for Hazel
is to spend more time on the alphabet, consistently, and work with her to
understand the correct way of writing a Z and S, especially since she has
to write Z every time she writes her name.