Moving from Assessment to Instruction

My buddy is a creative, intelligent 4th grader. She enjoys reading both fantasy and non-fiction and incorporating what she reads into her stories. She loves to write fantasy stories in her free time, especially stories about werewolves. Her non-fiction readings about wolves adds realistic detail to her stories.

During the level four assessment, "Amelia Earhart", my buddy had strong reading comprehension skills, placing at an independent level. She answered seven out of the eight comprehension questions correctly, missing the one question that we as group decided was a poorly written question and that she had technically answered the question correctly, but it was not the answer given by the assessment. Her read-aloud fluency placed her around the 50th percentile , reading 117 words per minute, without any miscues. She reads at comfortable rate, paying close attention to punctuation. I believe her independent reading rate would be higher.

While my buddy is reading above a fourth grade level, based on the above assessment and on prior work with her, I believe she would benefit from additional read-alouds to raise her fluency rate. A read aloud activity like a readers theater would help her build confidence and read faster. This lesson would satisfy EALR 1.4.3 Apply word recognition skills and strategies to read fluently. Apply different reading rates to match text.

Project 1: Analysis of Student Writing

Analysis

This analysis is based on one sample of Sarah's (pseudonym) writing, a short-story draft of a girl and her dog who can talk for a day. Additionally, we conducted a 25-word spelling inventory.

Ownership and Meaning of the Piece

Sarah displayed great ownership for her fantasy story, “The Day My Dog Talked” and quickly offered to read it to us. In the story, when Sarah is awaken by her mother for school, she is shocked to learn that her dog “Ruby” can talk. When she arrives at school, for pet day, Ruby begins talking and creates a chain of humorous events. Sarah told us she thinks of herself as a good writer and enjoys writing both at school and at home. She mostly writes fantasies with talking animals, especially werewolves.

Six Traits Assessment

When looking at the ideas in the short story, it is apparent that Sarah has drawn from her own knowledge and experiences. She made herself the main character, her mom is in the beginning and ending of the story, and she has a dog of her own. The story is six pages and while it is titled, “The Day My Dog Talked” she has several events occurring throughout the day. If she eliminated the last event, which doesn’t fit as well as the first three, then she could expand the others and eliminate potential questions from the reader.

Organizationally, the story has a clear introduction and conclusion. The day begins with Sarah waking up to her dog talking and she falls asleep to her dog barking. The story transitions smoothly from the morning to school, but then begins to lose the fluidity when it transition from school to home. The title accurately describes the story, although; it’s not unique or original. It’s an obvious restatement of the prompt (NWREL, 1992).

As the main character of her own story, Sarah talks about herself in the first person, making the voice of the story personal. She also uses natural and engaging language when expressing dialog between herself and other characters, such as when the cat said, “Where’s the bathroom in this place?” In the story when Sarah is at home with her mom she reveals personal details; however, when she’s at school and on her way home the story avoids risk and she loses her natural language (NWREL, 1992).

The short story is written as though Sarah is telling the story, “I rolled out of bed… My mom yelled”. For this reason the word choice is adequate and familiar, with sporadic striking words and phrases where Sarah paints a picture for the reader, such as “sarcastically” and “she took me the wrist and dragged me to her office”.

Sarah’s ability to use conventions and sentence fluency is difficult to accurately assess since the work we saw was a first draft. However, based on this draft the sentences are varied and constructed correctly; although, the story could benefit from the use of connecting words and phrases, such as “however” and “therefore”. Since this was a rough draft there were editing marks from her teacher, correcting a few misspelled words and helping Sarah with sentence structure. The grammar and punctuation is used correctly overall, and it is apparent that they have been working on writing dialog in class with the use of quotations and comas. She attempts paragraphing, but most of them run together and she’s only beginning a new paragraph when she starts a new page, this has been corrected by her teacher, but she could benefit from additional practice with paragraphs.

Spelling

In “The Day My Dog Talked”, there are several spelling errors. Most of the errors are vowel patterns, especially diphthongs, including “ea” and “ou”. For example, “scremed” for screamed and “arond” for around. In addition, there were two homophone errors, “there” for their and “herd” for heard. In the spelling inventory Sarah missed seven of the last eight words. With “cattle” and “ripen”, she spelled them “catle” and “ripen”, either doubling or not doubling the consonant and with “cellar” and “favor” she spelled them “celler” and “faver” missing the long vowel. “Fortunate” and “pleasure” were spelled phonetically, “pleasher” and “forchanit”, and “civilized” was spelled “sivilized” missing the base word civil. The last word “opposition”, spelled “apasishion” shows that Sarah was guessing at how to spell the word and we encouraged her to try her best. Toward the end of inventory, Sarah spelled the words left to right without recognizing the patterns of letters working together to represent sounds (Templeton & Morris, 1999, p. 105). After comparing the spelling inventory with the errors from the short story, Sarah would benefit from additional help with vowel patterns.

Lesson Plan

Objective:

Student will be able to sort words according to diphthong patterns and by words that sound and look alike.

Standard:

EALR 3.3.2 Spells words appropriate for the grade level accurately.

Material:

One set of words cut into easily, manipulative rectangles.

Instructional strategies:

This lesson is designed for one-on-one work with Sarah. The words chosen for this activity were taken from Sarah’s short story. These are words she is comfortable with and will be a mixture of words she spelled correctly and incorrectly in the story. In addition, the sort will include words that look and sound familiar to the spelling errors, so she will begin to see patterns.

I will start the activity by explaining to Sarah what a word sort is and how we’re going to use this activity to work on the vowel patterns “ea” and “ou”. After this introduction I will hand her the set of words and give her a minute to read over the words and familiarize herself with them.

Once she has spread the words out on the table, I’ll ask her to sort the words into groupings that sound alike in the middle.

After she has finished her sort, we’ll discuss the groupings she’s created and what the sound is that makes the words similar. Having her see the vowel pattern similarities between the words that she uses on a regular basis.

I will ask her to sort the words a second time by grouping the words that look and sound alike.

We will discuss just like after the first sort.

Assessment:

Teacher will informally assess student’s ability to sort words by diphthongs and by words that sound and look similar, by looking at the groupings Sarah creates during the two sorts.

Predictable Books

During my kindergarten September experience, I took a picture of each student's face. My master teacher and I then cut out the faces and glued them onto pages with the student's letter of his or her first name. For example if a student's name is Bella, her page would read "B My Name is Bella". We called this book, A My Name Is and every student got a copy of the book to put in his or her book bag, an extra large Ziploc, of "just right" books that each student keeps in his or her cubby.

Every student enjoyed reading the book, but our ELL learners read the book over and over. According to Fox, "predictable books-books with repeated phrases or sentences- hold a special promise because they bring English syntax and English words within easy reach of young children who are beginning to read a language different from the one spoken at home" (2008, p.231).

This book gave everyone success. The students were able to use the cue from the picture, the student's name, to not only tell the written word, but also hear the first letter sound, so they know the letter. With "B My Name is Bella". The student knows Bella because she's in his class, and by knowing Bella, he can stretch B-ella and relate the sound to the letter, if he was unsure of the letter.

This book was so easy to make, and the kids loved it. It is a fun, inexpensive tool that all kindergarten teachers could use in their classrooms.

Rhyming

This week in our kindergarten buddy activity, we did a rhyming read aloud, Sheep in a Jeep and the activity, “Word Family Muffins” (Fox, 2008, p.103). We chose this activity because our buddy has a basic understanding of rhyming; he can give a clear textbook definition of what rhyming is and recognizes the rime in cat, bat and mat when looking at the words in print, but when he hears them read a loud, without a visual, he struggles to list a word that rimes with cat.

In the activity our buddy picked a tile from the letter tins and one from the word families, at, ell, or old and recorded it on the “muffin word guide” worksheet. Our buddy was finding the correct family, but he was doing so by stretching out the words, he wasn’t recognizing the patterns of the word families. It wasn’t until the very end, did he start to pick up on the patterns, and I’m still not sure if he understood the riming or if we had just done it so many times that he had memorized the words.

I think about how close my buddy is to fully grasping rhyming. I wish I had more time to work with him and see his growth. Lamott said, “the job of the teacher is to hold the lantern while the student digs”. I love this quote and I’ve been thinking about it for a few days. My buddy needs teachers to hold the lantern through providing activities and read alouds about rhyming while he digs in and sees the patterns and gets a strong hold on it.

Bird By Bird

This week we started reading Bird by bird by Anne Lamott. At first I wasn’t sure if I liked it or not, but as I started to get into it I began to enjoy the book. I felt like she was talking to me and I enjoy books where I feel the author is interacting with me. It’s a nice change from our traditional textbooks.

On the first day of fall quarter, we read a quote on blogging. To paraphrase, the quote said blogging gives a person the opportunity to reflect and then write in a cohesive way for a reader. Lamott says to write about yourself, “remember that you own what happened to you” (1994, p.6), but many people sit down to write and begin to feel anxiety, that they have a whole autobiography ahead of them.

Lamott, says to begin with “small assignments…write down as much as…[you] can see through a one-inch picture frame” (p.17). In my dyad placement, my third-grade class is learning to write five-paragraph essays. My master teacher had the student bring in three items that are special to them, and is having the students write one paragraph at time about one object. This keeps the assignment small and the students only have to focus on writing one paragraph about something they’re experts on and not an entire essay.

One thing I’ve noticed while watching the students write their paragraphs is that many struggle with perfection. They want their first draft to be their final draft. One student asked for a new piece of paper because she didn’t want to have any mistakes. I explained to her the concept of a messy-first-draft, that this is where we get our ideas down on paper and that first-drafts are jumping off places for future drafts. She said, “OK”, but I know she still has her need for perfection.

I remember when free writing was first introduced to me a student. I had to write for five-minutes straight. I wasn’t allowed to erase or cross out anything, it was just a constant flow of ideas from my brain to my finger. This is a great exercise that writers of all ages can benefit from, and one that can help writers get past the block of perfection.

Stretching Words

With my main-place being in all-day kindergarten, I’m seeing similarities between the phonemic work my buddy uses with what I used in my September Experience. The most prominent similarity is “stretching words”. This process of segmenting sounds, gives students the opportunity to pronounce each phoneme in the same order in which it occurs (p.43).

In our “getting to know you” activity, as a group we worked together to stretch out the word monkey. Our buddy used his letter-sound relationship (p.10) to stretch the word and spelled it MKE. From the activity, I could see that he has a strong understanding of consonants and is still developing vowels, which is typical for his developmental level.

As a buddy-team we also utilized other ways of spelling and writing words. When asked his favorite animal, our buddy said “cheetah”, but after stretching the word he still struggled with determining the letters. As a group we talked about other ways of writing cheetah other than with letters. He drew an excellent picture of a cheetah and when he didn’t have a black crayon, he said he could use brown, “because some cheetah’s have brown spots”. He knew a lot about cheetahs and was able to convey his knowledge through his drawing.

One strategy used at my main-placement and I just started to talk to my buddy about is, “being a letter and word detective”. Each kindergarteners have a fabulous placemat that includes colors and shapes, as well as, how to spell them. My buddy’s favorite color is blue. He stretched the word out and came up with BL, but I noticed he had BLUE on his placemat and we started the conversation about using the classroom and his placemat to find words, just like a detective. I’m going to talk about this again in future activities because it’ll help him become aware of the words he knows around him.

Reader’s workshop in kindergarten

“Literacy should be an integral part of the overall curriculum” (Teale & Sulzby, 1987). This is evident in my main-placement, all-day kindergarten. The day begins with the schedule, where the students “read” aloud along with the teacher. Some schedule items have words, some are missing letter and other’s are just pictures. As a class they work together to read the words, fill in the blanks, or write the first letter of the word that corresponds with the picture.

The morning routine leads the class into reader’s workshop, which begins with the class gathered together on the carpet for a read aloud, followed by five minutes of independent reading. This model provides two dimensions for the storybook reading program. The read aloud teaches the students how to be readers (Teale & Sulzby, 1987). The teacher stops to point out keep concepts, asks the students to make predications, both to themselves and to the class and encourages them to look closely and “read the pictures”, for there are many ways to read, and reading the pictures is one way.

After reading silently for about five minutes (the length grows as their reading strengthens) the children put their books back into their book bags and set them in their cubbies, ready for “choice time” later or reader’s workshop the next day. Through daily interactions with the same books, the students gain deeper exploration of the books and “they become independent emergent readers of those books” (Teale & Sulzby, 1987).

Resource

Strickland, D. & Morrow, L.M. (Eds.). (1987). Emergent Literacy: Young children learn to read and write. Newark, DE. International Reading Association.