M.

Koehn Informal Spelling Assessment

Informal Spelling Assessment

Michelle Koehn

RDG 510: Inquiry-Based Literacy Instruction Professor Dr. Daniels February 23, 2010

M. Koehn Informal Spelling Assessment Informal Spelling Assessment Description of Assessment The informal spelling assessment I chose to use was the Words Their Way Intermediate Spelling Inventory, due to the fact that my test subject is an eleventh grade Special Education student with a learning disability in reading and writing. This inventory provided me with

several levels and criteria to determine the student's instructional level and was appropriate for the student's age and ability level. The student was also asked for a writing sample, in which he wrote a paragraph about himself (see attached Writing Sample). Writing Sample Results and Analysis After examining the writing sample, the student made an honest attempt to do well, making several self corrections. However, several error patterns were still discovered within the student's writing. For example, this student often omitted letters from words, as seen in his spellings of eleventh, athlete, and electronics (see chart). He also had several scratch marks

on his writing piece where he began to spell a word but then crossed it out and began again, or sometimes even chose a different word. Writing Sample Words Spelled Incorrectly: am/an eleventh/ elenth father/farther wrestle/ wrester athlete/ athleat collage/colige electronics/ electron

M. Koehn Informal Spelling Assessment Spelling Test Results and Analysis

It was clear that the student was very insecure in his spelling as he openly admitted this fact at the beginning of the spelling test. However, he did try his best to sound out words, sometimes verbally or by writing the word and then erasing to make self corrections. Overall, the student received a score of spelling 11 out of 25 possible words correct. Based on this test, some problem areas for the student were in the categories of "Other Vowel Patterns" where the student had three mistakes and "Harder Prefixes & Suffixes" where the student had five mistakes (see Feature Guide Scoring Sheet and Student Spelling Test attached). Overall, the student had omissions, deletions and a lack of phonemic skills that hindered his spelling. Instructional Plan One lesson for remediating the other vowel, or irregular vowel patterns would be for the student to complete a word mapping activity, where they break down words into their phonemic parts. For example, the word night would be broken into n / igh / t. The student could make maps of typically irregular spelled words and then analyze the patterns within them. For example, the "igh" sound and what other words use this same sound (sight, tight). Another lesson to help this student may find helpful would be to make a spelling word collage of his commonly misspelled words. The student could use magazines to cut out individual letters/ phoneme/ prefix/ suffix sets and glue them onto his paper in the correct spelling. This student likes working with his hands, and so it may be a more stimulating activity for him. Another activity in relation to this would be to print several letters on cardstock that could be cut into individual letters and /or phoneme sets, keeping common prefixes and suffixes clumped together on once piece. The student would then rearrange the cards on their desk to form their spelling words. Every day the student could come in and make his "words of the week" to help prepare himself for an eventual spelling quiz on the words.