Reading Assessment I once again chose a child to work with that I am familiar with. The student is a male child of Hispanic decent. The student comes from a household which is considered middle class and both parents that reside in the household are working parents. The mother is a college graduate and works in the education field as a high school teacher. The father did not attend college and is the head of the maintenance department at a local area school district. Both of the child’s parents have worked since the child was born and the child stayed with grandparents or at a daycare facility until the child reached the age to begin school. The child has a younger brother who will begin school the next school year. In talking with the parents the feeling was the grandparents treated the child very well and read to the child on a daily basis when the child was in the grandparents care and the child has a great love for school and strives to be the very best in his class. The male child is about to turn seven years old and is in the first grade. The child attends a school that the mother and father are not employed and the grandparents are responsible for picking the child up after the school day is complete. The parents are very involved in the students’ school work and provide support for the student every evening when they are at home. In visiting with the student before we began our reading assessment I found the student to be very mindful and attentive. We discussed the students’ interests and I found the student was very interested in video games and games in general. During spare time on weekends the family likes to play games together and the student was very proud to tell me that the family owned an x-box and he could beat his brother in any game that they chose to play. So I decided I would make my assessment into a game and would challenge the student to see how many questions he could answer correctly. I decided to focus my assessment on phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is defined as an understanding that spoken language and words are made up of individual sounds (Reutzel & Cooter, 2011). In student performance the student needs to have the ability to pick out and manipulate sounds in spoken words and language (Reutzel & Cooter, 2011). I broke my assessment into three parts that consisted of letter names, letter sounds, and phonemic awareness. I feel that mastering each part is important to the student becoming a fluent reader at his current level. In part one I gave the student a list of letters, both lower case and capital letters, the students goal was to go through each letter and state the letter name. If the student identified the letter correctly we placed a check mark over the letter and moved on to the next letter. The student had to be one hundred percent accurate on the letter identification before we could move to the next part. I found the student identified all the letters correctly our first time through the letters. I gave the student a mixture of fifty letters and the only letter the student had any difficulty identifying was the lower case /l/. The student wanted to identify this letter as a capital /I/. I realized this was an error on my part because I did not make the capital /I/ in the manner I should have. In part two I also provided my student with a list of letters, once again both lower case and capital letters, the students’ goal was to say each sound the letter made with one hundred percent accuracy. If the student identified the sound the letter made correctly then we placed a check mark above the letter the student had identified correctly. The students only difficulty during this process was with the lower case /b/ and the lower case /d/. The student incorrectly made the /b/ sound with the letter /d/. We went through the process three times before the student correctly identified the sounds of all fifty letters. I have learned that this is a common mistake with young beginning readers on transposing of these letters and the sounds the letters make. In part three I focused on the phonemic awareness of the student. I broke this into five parts with the student each part consisting of five one syllable words that the student would have to answer correctly. First we focused on blending sounds into words. I pronounce the word by sounding it out and the student had to state the word I was sounding out. Secondly we focused on breaking down one syllable words into sounds. I pronounce the word and had the student repeat all of the sounds in the word the student heard. For example I used the word cat and the student repeated the sounds /c/ /a/ /t/. Thirdly I gave the student five words and his goal was to say the beginning sound of each word. For example if I gave the student the word boot he would then identify the beginning sound of /b/. Fourth I had the student break the words apart by separating the beginning sound from the rest of the word. For example I gave the student the word dog, he then broke the word down to /d/ /og/. Finally we played a rhyming game where I presented the student with five words and the student and the student repeated a word that rhymed with the word he was presented. For example when I gave the student the word hat he responded with the word cat. The student performed well in all of these tasks and it was very evident that the student spends time at home going over letters and sounds with the parents and also in school. The student stated that he had been playing games like these with his mother for several years now. I feel the next steps for this student to take in his educational process and what needs to be the focus are the sounds of chunk letters and the relationships that are shared. For example learning that /ck/ make the /k/ sound. The student also needs to continue learning his sight words that do not fit a specific pattern. Being able to recognize sight words is important because these words make up between 50-70% of the words we encounter in text (Julie, 2012). Sight words are service words that must be quickly recognized in order to read fluently (Julie, 2012). Overall I was very impressed with my young learner. It was obvious in assessing the student that the student had been provided numerous opportunities for practice outside of his time in school. I believe this student has a very firm foundation to become a very fluent reader in the future.
References

Reutzel, D., & Cooter, R. (2011). Strategies for reading assessment and instruction: Helping every child succeed (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Merrill Prentice Hall.

Julie, J. (2012, March 23). Learning Sight Words - I Can Teach My Child! Retrieved September 21, 2014, from http://www.icanteachmychild.com/learning-sight-words/