A Sigh of Relief

My knowledge of assessments has grown immensely over the course of the semester. I had gone from never having administering a literacy assessment to administering a whole array of them. My confidence level has grown immensely. I was very overwhelmed at the start of the semester. I was not sure how my student would respond to these tasks. But, my student has made these tests an easy and enjoyable experience. I believe that this experience has prepared me for future assessments. In addition, I have learned a great deal about reading and language. It is fascinating about learning about what makes it click for individual students. I have become better prepared to work with students on all different parts of the spectrum. Literary assessments are extremely important tool for teachers and I feel relieved to have gained so much information them.

While, I have been keeping administering assessments within a one week period of when they are discussed in class, I have not fully dissected my findings. I have made some initial observations about my student and noticed some telling patterns. He struggles with the short vowel sounds as seen in the Phonological Assessment, Spelling Assessment, and the Alphabetic Principle Assessment. In particular, it appears that he has trouble differentiating between the /e/ and /i/ sound/. When prompted during the Letter-Sound Knowledge Assessment, he could not come up with the long vowel sounds. I feel comfortable with interpreting the results. The examples in class have been extremely helpful. It is amazing how much you can learn about one student from an assessment. The only aspect that I am worried about is missing something crucial or having a different interpretation than another assessor.

Some of the challenges I have faced during the assessments was taking off the teacher hat and putting on the assessor hat. I did not feel entirely comfortable not explaining the correct answer when TJ asked if his answer was right or wrong. It took every ounce of my being not to explain that the long vowels say their names! I also kept thinking of the video we watched on the Reading Rockets website. I found myself saying “Good Job” over and over again. I tried to stop this habit immediately because I did not want TJ to notice if I did not say this. He is a child who needs constant positive reinforcement to begin with. It seems a lot harder to assess a student that you know quite well than it would be to assess a student that you do not know.

Overall, I feel I have had more successes than challenges. I have learned a lot about a future student as well as his strengths and weaknesses. The assessments have gone well and he has never seemed disinterested or become frustrated with the tasks. For example, during the Bryant Pseudoword Test, he thought it was a game and enjoyed doing it. I also feel like my personal growth in knowledge of Phonological and Phonemic Awareness has been a great success. I did not have a strong background in this area of reading. The wide variety of articles has shown me different approaches to teaching Phonics in a both fun and effective way for the students.

A question that I still have regarding literary assessments is how to apply them in a classroom. I understand that teachers are required to follow local and state standards for Reading and Language Arts. But, it seems like a difficult task to use these assessment tools for each individual learner. My school has a Title I Program for at risk children in Math and Reading. These teachers are paid by the government for at risk children. They give the students similar assessments to the ones that we are learning about. I was fortunate enough to receive copies of TJ’s scores from last year. To my knowledge, the classroom teachers do not administer these assessments in the K-2 classrooms. I would love to use similar assessments with my third graders but time would not willingly permit me to.