Kathryn Beach 1

Literacy Assessment Summary

Student T is a five-year-old white male in Kindergarten.
When it came to figuring out which pictures rhymed, Student T needed some assistance figuring out what the
pictures were of, but quickly and easily knew which two pictures rhymed after distinguishing what they were
of. If he made mistakes, they were silly mistakes because he was moving through the activity too fast, and
would quickly correct them. Student T correctly identified two rhyming words for 9 out of 9 times.
As I called out each letter of the alphabet, Student T immediately wrote each one recognizably and correctly for
the most part, despite the fact that I said them out of order. Student T wrote each letter in its uppercase form
except for the letter r, and reversed the letters J and Z. The letter P is shaded in simply because Student
T wrote it once, did not like how it looked, and instead of taking the time to erase and rewrite it, drew another
loop and shaded it in. Student T correctly wrote 26 out of 26 letters.
Student T did an exceptional job with beginning sounds getting them all correct with confidence, demonstrating
the beginning sound for each picture. He did this so much so, that towards the end of the activity looking at all
of the pictures to know which one was correct, was not even necessary for him. Student T got 8 out of 8
beginning sounds correct.
Student T did these things at an independent or easy level.
While student T recognized the majority of the lower-case letters in the alphabet, and knows all of the letters
that are included in the alphabet, the student confused some letters that look similar to each other. For example,
Student T identified f as t, l as i, d as b, q as g, and m as n. These are all common
mistakes, and Student T will soon come to fully understand the differences between each of those letters. He
was confident in identifying all of the letters he got correct, however, he did not recognize the lowercase letter
m at all, and needed help simply guessing what letter it was. Student T correctly identified 21 out of 26
lowercase letters.
With respect to spelling, I called out 9 words for Student T to spell, in which he correctly spelled 1 word
Hop. Besides the word Hop, Student T only heard the first and last letters of a word, so that it what he
wrote, skipping silent lettersor vowelsaltogether (except for the word Gum, in which Student T heard
the middle vowel sound, but wrote the letter O rather than the letter U). He also knew that the last word,
Stick, should end with the letter C or the letter K as both letters make a K sound, and ended up
guessing that it ended with the letter C. Student T is an emergent speller, and will grow to hear and understand
silent letters and vowel sounds with time and practice.
Student T used but confused these things.
For half of the given letter-sounds, Student T did not know what sound the given letter or letter-combination
made. Student T correctly vocalized all letter-sounds for the letters B, S, T, O, J, A, K, V, I, P, Z, U, E, and D.
However, if he did not know what sound a letter madein this case, he did not know the letter-sounds for the
letters R, F, W, H, L, C, Y, G, and NStudent T either resorted to vocalizing the sound that the letter A
makes, or guessed a random letter. Student T guessed that the letters R, F, W, H, L, G, and N all made an A
sound. He also guessed that the letter C made an N sound, and that the letter Y made a W sound. It is
apparent that Student T does not yet understand the sounds that different letter-combinations make; for each
letter-combination, Student T said the sound that only the first letter in the combination made. While he said all
of the beginning letter sounds of the letter-combinations correctly, he disregarded the second letter and did not
seem to understand why it was there. For example, Student T said that Sh made an S sound, Th made a
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T sound, and Ch made an S sound. Student T correctly vocalized the letter sounds for 14 out of 26 letters
or letter-combinations.
These things are absent from Student Ts understanding.
Student T is an emergent reader because he is still learning beginning sounds and does not hear all letters in a
word when it comes to spelling, making it harder to recognize them when reading. He is an Early Letter-Name
Alphabetic speller, as he only heard the first and last letters of each given word. Student T can easily mimic a
teacher in reading and pointing to words, but when asked to do it on his own, forgets certain words or does not
know what they are at all. Student T is learning and demonstrating his literacy skills at an appropriate rate, but
needs more practice with reading and pointing to the words, and not rushing through tasks. Working on taking
his time with reading and writing will help Student T to better absorb and understand literacy tasks.