Brianne McGlone Word Study Assessment 26 March 2013 The purpose of a word study assessment is to determine what blends,

vowels, digraphs, or endings a student may need to work on. Each time the student writes the word they are given, it is an opportunity to see how well they recognize the sounds of the word and if they can accurately determine the initial consonant, blends and vowels, and endings. Once it can be determined what areas a student has difficulty with, that area can be worked into lesson plans or can be an individual goal with that student to improve upon by working one on one with him or her. By doing a word study assessment with all students in a classroom, it becomes possible to note any trends of errors among all the students in the class. This makes it easier to plan lessons accordingly that will address the common errors and help the students improve in the areas that need work. The child I did the word study assessment with is a first grade student. His reading level is a little lower than some of the other students in the class. I asked him to come into the hallway with me and sit at the desk right outside the classroom. I told him I was going to read him some words and I wanted him to write them down for me, but it was not a spelling test and he would just be helping me with my homework. I did the word study assessment with him during book shopping time, and it only took five or ten minutes. I gave the student a piece of notebook paper and he had his own pencil. I told the student that I would tell him a word, then tell it in a sentence, and then repeat the word. I asked him to write down each word on the paper. As I went through the list of words, I noticed that he was writing them one after the other on one line,

as though they were a sentence, not a list with one word on each line like I had expected. As he wrote the words, I watched to make sure I could read each letter and if I had a question about what he wrote I asked him if he could read the letters he wrote down. The student that I was working with spelled the first eleven words correctly before making a mistake on the twelfth word. He did very well with blends and even got the blends correct on the words he misspelled. He did an excellent job at determining the initial and final consonants on all but the last word. For a few of the words, like shine for instance, he would write it down spelled incorrectly, then look at it for a few seconds and then fix it so it was correct. He had originally written shine as shin but within a few seconds added the e to the ending. This told me that he knew that the e was at the end of the word, but it took him a few extra seconds to remember. It was not as automatic as his spelling of the earlier words, like fan and dig. The first word he misspelled was blade which he spelled as blayd. This informed me that he had some difficulty with the long vowel pattern of a-e. He also spelled coach as coch which again was a difficulty with a long vowel pattern, this time oa. The third word he spelled incorrectly was fright which he spelled as frit. This demonstrated a difficulty with long vowel patterns again, but this time igh. These three misspellings showed me that he needed to work on long vowel patterns with these vowel combinations. He also had difficulties with vowels paired with w. He misspelled chewed and crawl as chood and crol. This showed me that he did not grasp the combination of a vowel with the letter w and would need to work on his understanding of those combinations. The last area he had trouble in was inflected endings. He had difficulty with chewed and wishes, which he spelled as chood and wishish. This led me to understand that he needed work on endings -ed and es.

Based on these findings, I could use them to dictate what I would need to work on with that student. Something I could do would be to give him word study words that involved these vowel patterns and inflected endings. If I were to do this, he would get increased exposure to words with these kinds of vowel patterns and endings, which would give him practice with these types of words. I could have him sort these word study words by vowel patterns to help him practice and understand these patterns. If I noticed a pattern in the class of several students making the same mistakes, I could give all of the students who had this issue the same word study words. Helping the students to understand these vowel patterns and endings would be essential before the students would be able to work on spelling the words that were towards the end of the spelling inventory list. The word study is important for the teacher to determine what each student needs to work on and what the class as a whole needs increased instruction on. It helps the teacher to plan instruction accordingly to address the areas the students need more practice in.