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Runninghead:READ5463OlderStudentAssessment

READ5463June21,2015
OlderStudentAssessment
TarriO.Miller

TexasWomansUniversity

Tarri Miller
READ 5463
June 21, 2015

Assessment Profile
Table of Contents
I.

Introduction

II.Students Interests and Analysis


A. Weaver Interview
B. Index of Reading Awareness
C. ElementaryReadingAttitudeSurvey
IV.

Reading Assessments for Instruction and Analysis


A. QRI-5
B. DRA 2
C. Major Point Interview for Readers

V.

Phonics and Word Assessments and Analysis


A. Names Test

B. Orthographic Development Assessment: Words Their Way


VI.

Writing Assessment and Analysis

VII.

Assessment Report and Student Learning Goals

VIII.

References

Malachi is an eight-year-old boy who has just completed second grade. He was born in
Michigan, where his mother currently resides. His contact with his mother is limited. He is being
raised by his father and has a sister who is one year older than he. His sister was a student in my
class this past year. He has a very close relationship with his sister. It is evident that they love
and watch out for each other. Both Malachi and his sister are very respectful and good role
models for other classmates in their respective grade levels. The family resides with Malachis
paternal grandparents. Malachis grandmother has visited the school on several occasions to have
lunch with her grandchildren. Malachis father works quite a bit to support his family. Although
his job keeps him away, at times, from a more active role in their schooling, he is deeply
invested in his childrens education. He readily makes himself available to conference about his
children, either by phone or communication through the student planner.
Malachi first enrolled at the school during his Kindergarten year, but soon withdrew. He
and his sister reenrolled midyear his first grade year and is still currently attending. According to
his school records he has attended Extended Year (EY) in both Kindergarten and grade one, with
an emphasis on reading. He also speaks with a slight speech impediment, which at this time has
not been addressed by his previous teachers. He is a Tier 2 RTI student in reading who has also
attended after school tutoring the second semester of this current school year. There was the
possibility that he would attend EY again this summer, but he met the criteria for promotion.
I selected Malachi as my practicum student based off my on going conversations with his
second grade teacher in regard to his reading and writing challenges. His teacher shared that
he did meet standards at the end of the year. Because he will be entering grade three in the fall, I
would like to identify and address Malachis academic deficits. Through the assessments
performed, relevant information was collected to determine Malachis strengths and identify

essential skills in need of further instruction to assist him to achieve his highest potential.

Assessment Report for: Malachi


Date: June 21, 2015

Teacher: Tarri Miller

Weaver Reading Interview


The Weaver Reading Interview is a tool used in helping to understand what a reader thinks is the
purpose of reading and the process of reading. Interview questions include student interests, reasons
for reading, student attitude toward reading, and strategies used to help comprehend reading. This
profile will provide assistance in understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the reader.
Malachi understands that good readers have to read because reading is good for them. He knows that
he reads to learn new information. He is unaware that there are different purposes for reading. He is
aware that books are categorized as fiction and nonfiction, but was not more detailed than that. He
enjoys reading the Magic School Bus books, but he also showed an interest in chapter books,
Spiderman, and Batman. He could possibly be describing graphic books, but again he was not
specific. When Malachi is reading and comes to a word that he does not know he sounds it out and
looks at the letters in the words. He also mentioned that he thinks about the word in his head before
he says it out loud. He says that is retelling to think what I am saying. These strategies tell me that
he relies mainly on two of the three cueing systems graphophonics for decoding, does it look right
and syntactic for word fluency when difficulty with defining the word. Malachi offered no other
strategies when difficulty occurred with decoding and structure. He believes that good readers also
sound out words ion order to pronounce words right. Malachi believes that he is a good reader
because he likes to read. When asked what he would need to do to become a better reader, his
response was to read words and pronounce them. He added that he likes to read out loud at home, but
that he is scared to read when the teacher calls on him. He said that did not want to miss a word or not
say a word correctly if he read out loud. He did not want to make a mistake. He did not elaborate as to
why he felt this way.
Index of Reading Awareness
The Index of Reading Awareness is designed to evaluate how students use their prior knowledge to
initiate a strategy when they approach a reading activity. The assessment also measures how a student
uses those strategies to problem solve and monitor themselves during the reading process. The
assessment is composed of sub tests, which measure four areas of metacognition in reading. Those
areas are evaluation, planning, regulation, and conditional knowledge. The format is a 20 item
multiple-choice assessment. The student earns points for each subtest.
Section
Interpretation_____________
Evaluation
Planning
Regulation
Conditional Knowledge

Subtest Score
9
5
2
5

No significant weakness
Serious need for instruction in area
Serious need for instruction in area
Serious need for instruction in area

The assessment provided helpful information concerning Malachis awareness of metacognitive


strategies that were either effective or ineffective during reading. For subtest 1, no instructional
support was needed in the evaluation stage. Subtest 2, the planning stage, focuses on how Malachi
makes decisions and plans to read effectively. He scored 5 in this area. This indicates a serious need
for instruction. Malachi would benefit Subtest 3, regulation is concerned with fix up strategies, how
to monitor for reading comprehension. Malachi scored 2 points in this area. This does not surprise me
because during the assessment process this seems to be his biggest concern. Malachi is in serious
need for instruction in the regulation area. Malachi relies heavily on sounding out words as his go
to strategy. He needs to be instructed on what strategies he can use when comprehension breaks
down. He would benefit from identifying most important events, pay attention to his own thinking
(metacognitive skill), and slowing down his reading pace. The last area assessed was conditional
knowledge, how strategies differ based on the purpose of the text. Again, Malachi scored a 5. Malachi
would benefit from instruction in finding helpful strategies to monitor his reading and for
remembering information in a story. He needs to be instructed how to choose different strategies to
the purpose of a particular text.
Elementary Reading Attitude Survey
The Elementary Reading Attitude Survey is an instrument that measures two aspects of reading
attitude, recreational and academic reading. The survey features four different expressions of the
cartoon character, Garfield, ranging from happiest to very upset which assess younger childrens
attitudes about reading. It consists of 20 items that are simply worded, brief statements about reading.
The Reading Attitude Survey was quite revealing. Although Malachi does enjoy reading, he
associates reading with a lesson, not an activity he would participate in during his free time and is
not fun. He does not associate reading as something he would derive pleasure from recreationally
as noted in the survey when asked about his summer time. He did say that you can read at home all
you want, but he did mention that reading was an activity he included in his schedule. His interests
lie in electronics, specifically video games. He commented that he likes to reading, but only when it is
a lesson and that workbooks have lots of pages. A very telling comment that was made by Malachi
as I was conducting this survey, is the mention of not liking to read out in class. He said that he thinks
people will laugh at me and I dont like to be laughed at. It is obvious that he has experienced
ridicule from reading out loud in class that has left a negative impression. I wonder if it is associated
with his speech impediment. He is not very telling when I probed for further information. Malachi
needs to be encouraged to read for pleasure. Introducing reading material to him that is appropriate
for his reading ability may help to reduce his reluctance and lead him towards being an engaged
participant in reading.

QRI-5 Assessment / Major Points Interview for Readers/ DRA2


The QRI-5 is an informal assessment that includes grade appropriate word list and reading passages.
The reading passages are both narrative and expository form. This inventory assesses the student in
the areas of oral reading, accuracy, rate of reading, listening comprehension, prior knowledge, and
retelling through implicit and explicit questions. This assessment also helps to determine a readers
appropriate reading level, strengths, areas of concern, and instructional suggestions.
Independent level: Primer

Instructional level: 1

Frustrational level: 2 (expository)

Reading: Malachis scored independent on the word list up through first grade. The third grade word
list indicated his frustrational level. The primer reading level was independent and level 1 was
instructional on both narrative and expository. Although he scored instructional on level 2 for reading,
the decision was made to designate level 1 as his instructional level due to the consistency of the
scoring in that level. Malachi automaticity of the reading passages ranged from 88 to 115. It should be
noted that the rate of 115 was from the last passage given and indicated a score of frustrational. This
information suggests that although he identified words accurately, this action did not lead to a true
comprehension of the passage. He self- corrected and repeated words or phrases on all passages,
which indicates his ability to incorporate the strategy of rereading to monitor his comprehension
when a word does not look right to him. Most self-corrections occurred when the substituted word
changed meaning for the text. His miscues can be attributed to unfamiliarity phonemic patterns,
grammar, substitutions, and to some degree his dialect which contributed to dropping the s at the
end of words. Malachi would benefit with additional support for his syntactic and semantic cues to
assist him for unknown words and aid comprehension.
Comprehension: Malachis retelling of ideas included most main parts and details in sequential
order. He is able to recall events from the story, but in most cases uses vocabulary not identified in the
story. The retell is still accurate and was relevant for understanding the passage. For primer and level
1 passages, he was able to recall 24/26 and 21/28 ideas For level 2 passages 25/44, 21/38 for
(narrative) and only 15/49 for expository. For explicit and implicit questions, he was quite successful
on all passages until he struggled with the level 2 expository passage only identifying 2/1
successfully.
To understand how much Malachi comprehended what he read, I conducted the Major Points
Interview for Readers from Mosaic of Thought, (Keene and Zimmermann, 1997). The focused
reading skills included schema, inference, asking questions, important ideas in the text as well as
strategies. The book that Malachi read was This Is Not My Hat, which he chose from a variety of
books spread out before him. BasedonthenotescollectedfromthereadingsessionwithMalachi,
itwasfoundthatwhenMalachitalkedaboutthemainideasofthestory,hetendedtorecallthe
lastinformationoreventinthestoryheread,butleftoutthemajoreventsatthebeginningand
themidpartofthestory.Whenaskedwhatelsehappenedinthestory,hesaid,nothing,but
afterprovidinghimwithprompts,hethenwasabletorecallmoredetailsofthestory.He
retrievedsomeminoreventsthathappenedinthestorywiththehelpofillustrations.Malachiwas
abletorecitemoreofthestorywhenhewaspromptedbyverbalcluesandvisualcluessuchasan
illustration.Hewasabletomakegoodinferencesandexplainhisanswers.Malachiwasableto
connectthestorymessage(stealingiswrong)fromhisbackgroundknowledge.Hewasunableto
makeanyotherconnection.

MalachiwasalsoassessedforcomprehensioninsilentreadingusingtheDRA2assessmentkit.
TheDRA2isanindividuallyadministeredassessmenttodetermineastudentsreading
capabilities.TheDRAsintentistobeusedasadiagnostictooltoinforminstructionandincrease
studentsachievement.Malachiwasabletoreadalevel28NonFictiontext,FromPeanutsto
PeanutButter.Hismiscuesincludedsubstitutionswithselfcorrections.Attimes,hereadata
quickerpaceanddidnotheedpunctuation,whichcanhinderhiscomprehensiononthisandother
texthereads.Hispredictionheskillsweregoodwhilebeingabletoaccessthetableofcontents.
Hewasabletoidentifytextfeatureswithdetail.Whileusingthetexttoprovideasummary,his
answersprovidedabasicunderstandingofthestory.Hisliteralcomprehension,interpretation,
andreflectionwereattheinstructionallevel.Malachi has some control of the necessary strategies
and skills to decode, comprehend, and respond to the prompts and questions for this text level. He
would benefit from modeling and demonstrations of what is expected to read text. Malachi should
have opportunities to learn and practice effective strategies and skills.Malachineedsinstructionin
theareaofdevelopingstrategiestobecomeamoreproficientreader.Thestrategieswould
includedeterminingwhatisimportantintext,askingquestions,rereadingforclaritytomonitor
comprehension.

Phonics and Words Analysis


Decoding:
Analyzing Malachis decoding of words in the QRI5, I noticed that most of the miscues visually very
similar. Many of the substitutions made included vowels, word endings, and similar shaped words. In
almost half of his miscues, the miscue itself was visually similar and changed the meaning.
Most miscues were one-syllable words. He uses, in most cases, graphophonic (visual) and
semantically (structure) as his main word recognition devises. Malachis could be exhibiting
impulsiveness and need to slow down a bit. Malachi does try every word and makes some selfcorrection. For the miscues that are small/common words (it he), (the a), (was-is), Malachi could
show a weak sight word vocabulary. Malachi does use meaning sometimes to help him because he
substitutes some of his own words to make sense of text (mother- momma), (one- once), (same
-some). However, there are times that he misread words and carried on regardless of the meaning. He
needs to use his decoding skills effectively for new words. His need to take in the whole word
without close analysis of all its parts, leads him to leave off plurals. I also administered the Early
Names Test to see if my findings were consistent with additional assessments given for decoding
skills. Malachi was able to decode simple one-syllable names with short vowel sounds. His errors
occurred when he attempted long vowels. When decoding the more challenging Names Test list, he
was fairly accurate with first names. His challenges were with last names blends and confusing long
and short vowels, as well. Both visual and semantic cues were used for decoding. It would be
important to work on text with Malachi, possibly before he attempts to read it as a whole. By
identifying tricky or key words by skimming text before and working on the words features, meaning,
and through discussion of what the text may be about should make his reading more fluent and his
comprehension
Orthographic Development Assessment: Words Their Way
Words Their Way elementary spelling inventory is an assessment to help determine a students
developmental spelling stage. The spelling inventories are categorized into three stages primary,
elementary, and upper-level grades. The lists contain twenty-five words that have a variety of spelling
features. The words on the list increase with difficulty as it progresses. Spelling features that are
assessed include consonants, digraphs, blends, inflectional endings, unaccented final syllables, and
root words.
Words spelled correctly: 11/26

Feature points: 42/56

To understand Malachis orthographic development and to get a clear picture of what he knows about
words I administered the Spelling inventory from Words Their Way. Malachis assessment on the
primary spelling inventory for elementary showed his spelling stage of development is within the
word- early, long vowels patterns. He is able to spell single syllable words with complex consonants,
digraphs, blends, limited sight words, and short vowels. Malachi began to show errors at the early
stages of words within word, long vowel patterns. Malachi would benefit from instruction in word

knowledge in spelling patterns, dividing words into syllables, sorting two syllable words, and
suffixes.

Writing Development
AuthorsFountasandPinnell(2001)developedarubrictoevaluateastudentswritinginidea
developmentandconventionsofwriting.TwosamplesofElijahswritingwerecollectedfromhis
classwork.Onesamplewasfordescriptivewritingandtheothersamplewasforexpositorywriting.
ToassesstwoareasofElijahswriting,theFountasandPinnell(2001)writingrubricwasused.
IcollectedtwosamplesfromMalachiforhiswritingassessment.Onewritingsamplewascompleted
aspartofhisendofyearwritingsample.Hiswritingwasanarrativepieceaboutplayingwitha
friend.Althoughthepromptwaschosenforhim,hecouldchoosetheexperiencewithintheprompt.
Inhisclassthisyear,Malachiwasexposedtowritingonadailybasis.Thesecondsamplewasone
thatIaskedhimtocreateforme.Hisbirthdaywasquicklyapproaching,sothetopicwasoneIfelthe
wouldbeeagertowriteabout.Malachisinitialresponsetomyrequestwasmetwithsomehesitation.
Hedidnotseemeagertowrite.Aftertalkingafewminutesandgivinghimafewsuggestions,he
begantowrite.Whenhecompletedthesecondpieceofwritingforme,Iaskedhimtoshareitwith
me.
Malachiswritingisreflectiveofbothabeginningandexpandingwriter.Hewriteswithacentralidea
andisabletowriteseveralsentencesonhistopics.Heformsmostletterslegibly,butusescapital
lettersforwordsthatarenotpropernouns.Heusesspacingbetweenwordsconsistentlyanduses
punctuationcorrectly.Hecanspellsimplewordsandusesphoneticspellingformoredifficultwords.
Overall,theerrorsdidnotinterferewithtopic.Hissentenceswererepetitivewhichdoesnotallow
himtoexpresshisideaswithdetail.
Malachiwouldbenefitfromexplicitinstructioninprewritingstrategiestohelporganizehisideas.
Heneedguidancetopresenthisideasclearlyandeffectivelywhichwouldleadtocreatingwriting
thatisspecificandthoroughwithdetails.Heneedsguidanceinhisselectionofwordchoicetomake
hiswritingmoredescriptive.Malachiwouldalsobenefitfromtheguidanceofidentifyingwriting
strategiestoexpresshisindividuality.Hewouldalsobenefitfrominstructionineditingforgrammar,
punctuation,andspelling.

StudentLearningRecommendations:
LongTermGoal:
Malachiwillbeabletomatchareadingstrategytoavarietyofreadingmaterialandmonitorhis
readingcomprehensionsothatitbecomesautomatic
InstructionalRecommendations
1.

2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

Applyavarietyofstrategiesthatincludeallthreecueingsystemstoassistwithunknown
wordsthatwillaidinwordmeaningandtextcomprehension.
a. Focusonstrategiestoidentifyunfamiliarwords,wordsfeatures(structure),and
meaning(semantics)withintextforaccuracyindecoding.
b. Usewordstudyforgainknowledgeinsoundandletterpatterns,dividingwordsinto
syllables,sortingwordsintomultisyllablewords,andsuffixes
Develop different strategies for student to apply metacognition to a variety of text to
actively monitor when comprehension breaks between words and text.
Apply his understanding of the text to determine what information is important and
support the information with details.
Generate ideas in text while reading text (asking questions)
Reread text to seek clarification to monitor comprehension (does this make sense?)
Engage reader with authentic text to promote reading for pleasure.
Understand how the planning process of writing generates ideas through pictures, listing
ideas, and sharing so that drafts can be developed.
Develop ideas for writing that include detail and description.

To summarize, Malachis assessments show that he is performing within the stages of a second grade
student. He enjoys reading in school, but only as a part of his reading lesson. He does not think that
reading is an activity to be done for free time/pleasure. He also does not like to read aloud in front of
his classmates for fear of being made fun of. He reads at a good rate, but could benefit from slowing
down to monitor his comprehension and heed punctuation. He relies on two of three cueing systems.
He needs to develop the additional cueing system of syntax to help him understand the meaning of
vocabulary and of reading passages. Malachi will need to include strategies to assist him to become a

proficient reader. With the inclusion of these reading strategies, he will be able to monitor his reading
more efficiently so that eventually this becomes automatic for him.

References
Bear, D.R., Invernizzi, M. R., Templeton, S., & Johnston, F. R. (2011). Words their way: Word study
for phonics, vocabulary, and spelling instruction (5th edition). Boston, MA: Pearson/Allyn &
Bacon.
Beaver, J., & Celebration Press. (2006). DRA: Developmental Reading Assessment. Parsippany, NJ:
Celebration Press.
Cunningham, P. (1990). The Names Test: A quick assessment of decoding ability. Reading
Teacher, 44(2), 124-129.
Fountas, I. C., & Pinnell, G. S. (2001) Guiding readers and writers: Teaching comprehension, genre,
and content literacy. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann
Jacobs, J. E., & Paris, S. G. (1987). Childrens metacognition about reading: Issues in definition,
measurement, and instruction. Educational Psychologist, 22, 255-278.
Keene, E. & Zimmerman, S. (1997). Mosaic of Thought. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Leslie, L., & Caldwell, J. S. (2010). Qualitative reading inventory (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson/
Allyn & Bacon.
Mather, N., Sammons, J., & Schwartz, J. (2006). Adaptations of the Names Test: Easy-to-use
phonics assessments. The Reading Teacher, 60(2), 114-122. Doi:10.1598/RT.60.2.2
McKenna,M.C.,&Stahl,K.A.D.(2009).Assessmentforreadinginstruction.(2nded.).NewYork,
NY:Guilford
Weaver, C. (2009). Reading process and practice. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Educational
Books.

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