Running Head: STUDENT ASSESSMENT PROJECT 1

Student Assessment Project

Carly McDonald

EDU 325
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This assessment was given on a homeschooled kindergarten student. She has six brothers

and two sisters. She does not have a formal disability, but is a struggling reader. She is not yet

reading independently which is okay for a child this age, but her mother was concerned since her

other children had been reading independently at this age already.

She is homeschooled by her mother who uses the K12 online program. There are a lot of

online activities and lessons through this program but there are also some that her mother needs

to facilitate to her. She is struggling with reading. In her spelling instruction right now she is

working on CVC words and is able to print all upper and lowercase letters. Her main academic

strengths are math and vocabulary. Her main academic areas for improvement are reading and

handwriting.

She is a very well behaved and hard working child. Her mother could not even think of

any behavioral areas for improvement when she was asked. She is friendly, but a little shy. As

far as organization and decision-making skills, the student is calm and likes to get her work done

correctly. She is motivated by free time and computer game time. The two goals her parents have

by the end of the school year are for her to read independently and write sentences via dictation.

Procedures

I reached out to the mother of the student to do my assessment because I had been going

to her house every Thursday morning to help homeschool the children and take care of the baby

for my diverse field hours. I had been working with the student and noticed her struggle with

reading so I wanted to do my assessment on her.

This assessment was administered on a Thursday morning in the home of the student. It

was given after a long morning of doing school work for her so that could have affected her
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results because she was tired and bored of schoolwork. Her siblings were also waiting for us to

finish so they could go watch a show so she could have been distracted or felt rushed by this. The

assessment was administered in the family room with her mom and siblings there doing their

schoolwork so there was a lot going on around us while we were doing the assessment.

I began by asking the student if I could do the assessment on her after we had completed

the schoolwork I had been helping her with. When she said that I could, I sat down with her,

showed her the materials, and described the assessment to her. The first probe that I did was the

First Sound Fluency. I read the instructions and practice items aloud to the student, which I had

highlighted previous to arriving at her house, and then set my timer for one minute. I completed

the assessment and asked her questions to get to know her as I prepared for the second probe.

The second probe I did was Letter Naming Fluency. I began by opening the student

packet to the correct page and setting it in front of her. I then read the instructions and modeled

pointing to each letter as directed. I then set my timer for one minute. After the probe was

complete, I continued to ask her questions as I prepared for the third probe.

The third probe I did with the student was Phoneme Segmentation Fluency. I began by

taking the student packet away from her so it would not be a distraction. I then read the

instructions and the practice items. I set my timer for one minute and began the probe. After the

probe was complete, I prepared for the next one.

The fourth and final probe of the assessment was Nonsense Word Fluency. I opened the

student packet to the sample page so she could look at it while I read the instructions and showed

the example. I then flipped the page for her to the assessment and set my timer for one minute.

After the probe was completed, I thanked the student for allowing me to assess her and she ran
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outside to play. I waited to score all of the probes until I got home so I could double check my

work with the manual.

Assessments Given

First Sound Fluency was the first probe given. This probe measures the student’s fluency

in identifying the initial sounds in words. It is easier to identify the first letter of a word rather

than segmenting the whole word which is why this probe is used in kindergarten. According to

Goldstein et al. (2017), “children who lag behind their same-age peers early in the development

of literacy skills often struggle in school.” This demonstrates the importance of the First Sound

Fluency probe because it shows mastery of one of the most basic literacy skills. When giving the

probe, the administrator begins by reading the directions and sample activities verbatim. The

sample is to introduce the task to the student so they know what is expected of them. The

administrator sets a timer for one minute and begins to read each word from the list. The student

is to say the initial sound of the word after the administrator says the word. The data received

from this probe measures the student’s phonemic awareness skills.

Letter Naming Fluency measures the student’s ability to recognize individual letters and

say their names. According to Hagan-Burke, Burke, & Crowder (2006), “in today’s technically

complex, information-based society, the ability to read is perhaps the most important skill for

success.” The Letter Naming Fluency probe is crucial in measuring reading development

because being able to identify and name letters is a skill needed to move further in reading

instruction. The administrator begins by reading the directions to the student verbatim and sets a

timer for one minute. The student then looks at the list of letters and says each letter’s name. The

student is to identify as many letters as possible in the minute. In the list, there is a mix of
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uppercase and lowercase letters. This probe assesses the student’s automaticity with letter

naming. The purpose is to assess the student’s fluency with identifying rather than the actual

identification of the letters.

Phoneme Segmentation Fluency measures the student’s fluency in segmenting a spoken

word into sounds. This is very crucial to developing reading skills according to Carroll (2004),

who says “evidence has come to light that it is awareness of phonemes, rather than of larger

segments such as rimes and syllables, that is most closely predictive of learning to read.” The

probe begins with the administrator going through the procedure and the sample and then sets the

timer for one minute. The administrator will say a word and the student will say all of the sounds

in the word. An example would be, the teacher says “soap” and the student says “/s/ /oa/ /p/.”

The data from this probe is important because it gives the assessor insight to the student’s

phonemic awareness skills.

Nonsense Word Fluency assesses the student’s knowledge of letter-sound relationships

and their ability to blend letter sounds into words. This probe is very important for reading

because as said by Fien et al. (2010), “use of student NWF gain data can be used to make

determinations about the effectiveness of core reading instruction, as well as intervention

effectiveness for students placed in decoding interventions.” The probe begins with the

administrator going through the instructions and the sample. The timer is set for one minute and

the student reads as many of the make-believe words as possible. The student will need to be

able to blend letter sounds to read the words. The data from this probe helps the administrator

understand the basic phonics skills of the student.

Results and Analysis

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In the First Sound Fluency probe, the student scored 27 points. This is well above the

benchmark for kindergarten at the beginning of the school year which is 10 points. The

benchmark score for the beginning of the school year is much lower than the benchmark for the

middle of the year which is 30. The probe was given a couple months after the beginning of the

year which could be why her score is much closer to the benchmark for the middle of the year.

The student was able to get full points on almost all of the words, but did lose points on a couple

because she blended the first two sounds into one. For example, the word was “skirt” and she

said /sk/ as the first sound.

In the Letter Naming Fluency probe, the student scored 55 points. There are not any

benchmarks for this probe so there is not anything to compare. The student correctly identified

every letter she named and did so quickly and efficiently. She did, however, skip two lines of

letters. This could be due to distractions in the room as she was testing. Her siblings were

running around and getting ready to go outside to play while she was completing this probe.

In Phoneme Segmentation Fluency, the student scored a 67. This was also well above the

benchmark which is 20-43. The student did a really good job at separating the sounds in these

words. There were only a few instances where she blended multiple sounds. For example, the

word was “send” and she said /s/ /end/.

In the Nonsense Word Fluency probe, the student scored 14 correct letter sounds and 1

whole word read. The benchmark for correct letter sounds at the middle of the year is 17 so the

student is below benchmark. This is surprising since the student was above benchmark for the

rest of the probes. There is not a benchmark for whole words reads until first grade so it is above

benchmark that she had even one.

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Targeted Area for Improvement A

The first area that the student needs improvement in is phonemic awareness. This area

needs to be targeted because of the student’s below benchmark scores of correct letter sounds in

the Nonsense Word Fluency probe. She had a hard time sounding out the nonsense words. This

area also needs to be targeted because of the student’s blending when she should not have been.

In multiple probes, the student was asked to say each sound and ended up blending multiple

sounds together without realizing it. It is crucial that this area is worked on with the student

because according to Daly et al. (2004), “children who cannot readily manipulate the 44

individual phoneme sounds that form the basis for the English language are at significant risk for

reading failure.”

One strategy that could be used to practice phoneme segmentation is clapping sounds.

The teacher or tutor would say a word and model the clapping first, then give the student another
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word and ask her to do it. For example, if the word is “cat,” the student will clap for each sound

of /c/ /a/ /t/. This will help the student develop phonemic awareness skills because using

kinesthetic movements paired with the auditory process will help scaffold their learning

(McCarthy, 2008, p. 346). This activity could also be done by snapping fingers, tapping the

table, counting on fingers, or any other physical movement. Progress could be monitored by

checklists of words at the level the students should be at.

Targeted Area for Improvement B

The second area that the student needs to improve in is phonics. This area needs to be

focused on because of the student’s score of one whole word read in the Nonsense Word Fluency

probe. According to Bradley and Noell (2018), “reading instruction that includes systematic

phonics instruction has been shown to be more effective than programs that do not directly

instruct phonics.” This emphasizes the importance of phonics instruction for young students.

One way phonics could be taught is by practicing words that end in “e.” This could be

done by writing CVC words on index cards and writing an “e” on a clothespin. The student

moves the clothespin from card to card and to see how the word and pronunciation changes with

the ending. Students who can consciously think about sounds and how they relate to each other

at a young age are likely to become strong readers (Henbest & Apel, 2017, p. 303). This activity

is a perfect way to help the student consciously think about language.

Conclusion

The student did very well on the First Sound Fluency, Letter Naming Fluency, and the

Phoneme Segmentation Fluency probes. She had the most difficulty with the Nonsense Word

Fluency, therefore needing phonemic awareness and phonics are the most targeted areas of
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learning. These areas could be practiced by clapping sounds and making words with index cards

and clothespins. Conducting this activity taught me how easily the DIBELS assessment can be

administered in the school day since it only takes a few minutes. I also learned the importance of

effective instruction in school so the students are able to succeed with their assessments.

Curriculum Based Measures (CMB) target the needs of the students and can be easily integrated

into the school day.

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Bibliography

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employing constant time delay instruction for struggling readers. ​Psychology in the

Schools, 55, 880-892. ​http://dx.doi.org.fr.opal-libraries.org/10.1002/pits.22148

Carroll, J. (2004). Letter knowledge precipitates phoneme segmentation, but not phoneme

invariance. ​Journal of Research in Reading, 27, ​212-225.

http://dx.doi.org.fr.opal-libraries.org/10.1111/j.1467-9817.2004.00228.x

Daly, E., Chafouleas, S., Persampieri, M., Bonfiglio, C., & LeFleur, K. (2004). Teaching

phoneme segmentation and blending as critical early skills: An experimental analysis of

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Fien, H., Park, Y., Baker, S., Smith, J., Stoolmiller, M., & Kame’enui, E. (2018). An

examination of nonsense word fluency initial status and gains to reading outcomes for

beginning readers. ​School Psychology Review, 39, 6​ 31-653. Retrieved from

http://www.nasponline.org/publications/spr/spr394index.aspx

Goldstein, H., Olszewski, A., Haring, C., Greenwood, C., McCune, L., Carta, J., . . . Kelley, E.

(2017). Efficacy of a supplemental phonemic awareness curriculum to instruct

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Hagan-Burke, S., Burke, M., & Crowder, C. (2006). The convergent validity of the dynamic

indicators of basic early literacy skills and the test of word reading efficiency for the
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beginning of first grade. ​Assessment for Effective Intervention, 31, ​1-15.

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Henbest, V. & Apel, K. (2017). Effective word reading instruction: What does the evidence tell

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McCarthy, P. (2008). Using sound boxes systematically to develop phonemic awareness.

Reading Teacher, 62, ​346-349. http://dx.doi.org.fr.opal-libraries.org/10.1598/RT.62.4.7