Jennifer Engo ELD 307 Professor Rich 4/30/13 Word Assessment

Every child has their weak and strong areas, but spelling seems to pose a weak area for many students. A word study is the assessment of how a child chooses to apply previously acquired knowledge to known words and unknown words. The purpose of the assessment is to see how one child in particular takes previous knowledge and applies it to words they know and words they may have not been introduced to yet. When I began my assessment I predicted that my student Brian would get most of the words on the primary spelling list and get a few on the elementary list. For my word assessment I chose a child in the second grade classroom whose name is Brian. I explained to my student that I was going to first read him twenty-six words on a word list and we were going to do his best on spelling each one of them. Brian is an individual who appeared to perform at an average level for second grade. He did not appear to struggle with literacy, yet he also did not appear to excel with literacy. I chose this student because I feel as though he has the capability to surpass his current standing. Even though I expressed the fact of there being two separate spelling lists and that the word lists may be a challenge to this individual, the student was more than willing to rise to the challenge. He was ambitious enough to try both the Primary Spelling Inventory as well as the

Elementary Spelling Inventory. In order to control for other unneeded distractions, we started the activity by being in a separate room. I feel as though the child benefitted from this environment because it took him away from the other students, which minimized the feeling of being judged, and pressure of others watching him perform this task. The first twenty-six words went by fairly average and easy for Brian. Words that were misspelled were fright, chewed, growl, tries, and clapping. He only got five out of twenty-six words incorrect which gave him a practice grade of about eighty-one percent. The first word fright he spelled freap which could have been from a misunderstanding of the pronunciation of the word. I feel as though the student misspelled this particular word because he has become accustomed to spelling words as he hears them. The next word chewed was spelled chaed. The way that he spelled this word showed promise. He was able to use the correct diagraph by including the letters ch. This particular student struggled with the vowel part of this word. Instead of writing ew this student wrote ae. Even though he had difficulty pointing out the vowels in this word, he was able to name the diagraph as well as the inflected ending. Two of the words on the list are words that I believe every child struggles with at one point and with time and instruction they will be able to learn the specific pattern that is needed in order to correctly spell those particular words. The words that I believe are consistently problematic to children are clapping and tries. These words can be problematic because they involve doubling a consonant as well as dropping a vowel and replacing it with the letter I. He almost got each word correct with the exception being that he left out

the double p in clapping and forgot to change the I to y in tries. Overall he did pretty well with the Primary Spelling Inventory only getting five wrong out of the twenty-six wrong. Only three were not close to the actual spelling of the word. I have complete confidence that over time and with practice each of the words will be corrected by the end of their second grade year. This particular student would not need too much further instruction involving the correction of the words that he misspelled. If I were to implement this in my own classroom I would have an individual spelling list for each child. The students that frequently had difficultly in regular writing formats or on other spelling tests would be on their own personal spelling list. I believe personal individualized spelling lists are important especially during the second grade year because children are all over in their abilities. It is important to differentiated and individualize some areas such as spelling so that each child can thrive by the time they leave that grade level. With teaching children even just spelling individually they are not competing with the rest of the class on spelling tests or who can spell the hardest words. They are building at their own pace and competing against themselves which is the only person in the classroom whose work is of importance to them. Overall I believe that the student that I conducted this spelling assessment on would have benefited from an individualized spelling list. He excelled with several different aspects of spelling such as with initial and final consonants. He struggled with the combination of vowels. If this were my student I would want to give him more practice with vowels. I would compose an individualized list of words

that was based on this format. I feel as though with practice this student would be able to master the concept of vowel usage.