Martinez 1 Ana Martinez Spelling Inventory Professor Rich March 26, 2013 Words The purpose of the Word

Study Assessment is to assess and analyze the spelling patterns of the student. Taking this assessment will allow educators to determine what strengths and weaknesses are of the student. Analyzing their spelling patterns will help teachers pinpoint the students problems and find strategies to help the student learn the patterns to use in future references. Educators will be able address the problems students have with blends, long, short vowels, inflected endings, suffixes, basses of roots, and digraphs. This assignment is to give the student a list of twenty-five words and have them spell out the words. These words are ordered by difficulty to sample features of the letter namealphabetic to derivational relations stages. This is so to help the teacher see what stage the student is in and needs improvement on. The words will be given once and then said in a sentence and then given the word by its self. The Word Study Assessment was conducted on Mia. Mia reaches proficient level for most of her subjects. In her writing she describes in detail the environment, she includes emotions, which adds to the story and writes well-structured sentences. She writes better when she can write about topics that are very dear to her, like her grandfather and her dog. In reading she is able to pronounce short and long vowels, which helps her problem solve her way through certain difficult words. She does get pulled out of her general education class to get extra help on her math skills. At times

Martinez 2 she does struggle with reading and writing but for the most part Mia is a student that problem solves her way through challenges she encounters in reading and writing. I have read some of her writing and have seen that the vocabulary words she uses are simple. Her vocabulary is limited but she does try to get out of her comfort zone and attempts to improve on her writing, she asks how to spell certain words, she asks if she has correctly used words, Mia struggles but is willing to try to address her weaknesses. Mia is very quite but when you approach her she is more than willing to. I asked Mia if she could be part of my school assignment and she was more than willing to help me with the assignment. I took two chairs outside in the hallway in order to get some quite. I described what this assignment consists of and how it will go and I told her that it is not a graded assignment; she was fine and glad to help me with it. I began conducting the exam. Mia was able to spell the first nineteen words correctly, words such as bed, ship, when, lump, float, train, place, drive, bright, shopping, and other words. The first seven words focused on the emergent, letter name-alphabetic, and early within word pattern stages. Emergent stage focuses on initial and final consonants of the first seven words in which she got correct. The letter name-alphabetic stage focuses on short vowels, diagraphs, and blends, these sections consists of words such as bright, drive, place, and train. It is making a transition from letter namealphabetic stage to within word pattern stage in which focuses on long vowels and inflected endings in which Mia is at. In her spelling I could determine that her spelling skills are at this stage and are beginning to struggle a bit. She is pushing herself and pronouncing letter by letter and is attempting to sound out the words. In the next stage, syllables and affixes, she is beginning to struggle. She misspells the words, ripen, cellar,

Martinez 3 pleasure, fortunate, civilize, and opposition. These words are the last on the list there for are more difficult to spell for a third grader. She has not grasped the idea that the bases of roots are within words. She spelled civilize, scfilis which indicates she is having difficulty with transferring sounds to spelling phonetically correct. She clearly is sounding out the word and is attempting to spell it the way she hears it in her head, which is incorrect. Mia still has not familiarized herself with harder suffixes such as, -ure, -ate, -ize, and tion. She spelled ripen ripein, cellar seller, pleasure plasher, fortunate forturnet, and opposition oplation. In order for her to that it is possible to have words that she is familiarized with can be embedded within other words. To help her with that and students who are struggling with that I would explain that some words could be broken down into parts, roots, prefixes, and suffixes. I will go over list of words that will belong in each category, to begin familiarizing themselves with words that can be used within other words. With each root word, prefix, and suffix, I will ask students for a definition of each, this is a form of an oral assessment. I will see what students know and what they do not know. Afterwards I will give them a worksheet with all the definitions on them. I will then ask the students to pick a root word and begin to write down all the words that have that root word in them. This assignment will help students with braking apart words and forming new words. Before focusing on root words I would focus on suffixes and prefixes. In order for students to piece together words they must fully understand what the beginning and ending of a words are. Familiarizing themselves with the suffixes and prefixes the students are considered to be at the derivational relations stage, which occurs a little

Martinez 4 before the roots of words. Students will be given a list of words containing suffixes and prefixes and they will be asked to circle the suffix and/or prefix of a word. This activity will help introduce the topic of morphology, the breaking apart and forming new words. With activities that help students understand the concept that words are embedded within other words, will help students move from one stage to another in the Elementary Spelling Inventory and it will help students break down words they are not familiarized with and can apply that concept to spell those words out. The Spelling Inventory will allow teachers pinpoint where the strengths and weaknesses the student may have lies. With identifying the problem, teachers will create and modify lesson plans to ensure the teacher is meeting the needs of his or her students. Building their word knowledge will tremendously assist his or her reading and writing.