Signature Assignment: An Analysis of Five Essential Literacy Assessments

Jessica Weiner
Dr. Madden & Dr. Browne
Language Development and Emerging Literacy
10 November 2014

Introduction
The purpose of this assignment is to get an idea of the importance of literacy assessments,
the emerging literacy of a child that is in the pre-literacy stages of language development, and
understand how the assessments work, as well as how to conduct them. Therefore, I selected
Marc, a five year old boy in a kindergarten class at Grenloch Terrace Early Childhood Center.
Through my child study for my Growth and Learning course, I have observed Marc for
seven weeks during his school day. These observations have enabled me to learn a lot about this
boy, including his home life, educational experiences, and his knowledge base and
developmental abilities. For instance, Marc has an older brother that is just one year older. His
mother is a school administrator and supervisor and his father is a graphic web designer. Because
Grenloch offers half-day kindergarten, Marc attends a Goddard School afterwards. Also, from
my observations and the help of a developmental checklist from the Center for Disease Control
website, I have been able to determine that Marc is at his proper developmental level in almost
all of the domains, but has shown signs of hyperactivity and trouble focusing as I watch him
constantly fidget and lose focus; often having to be redirected throughout lessons.
To understand his language development, I conducted five literacy assessments. I
assessed Marc with Marie Clays Concepts About Print, Letter Identification, and Writing
Vocabulary. I also completed the Yopp-Singer Test of Phoneme Segmentation and a student
dictated story with the child. With these assessments, I have been able to analyze and assess
Marcs linguistic ability and emergent literacy, which will be discussed later in the individual
analyses of each assessment.
In comparison to the children at the Head Start Center, conducting these assessments with
Marc was extremely simple. Because the children at the Head Start Center were between ages
three and four, they struggled to understand the questions I asked and hardly knew any of the

answers. However, Marc fully comprehended my questions, especially with prompts and
examples. He also had a much broader knowledge base about print and literacy than any of the
children at Head Start. While this was expected, it was surprising to see such a huge gap in the
knowledge between children with an age difference of only one year.
This assignment has enabled me to firmly grasp the content we have been going over all
year in this course. It has allowed me to contextualize and really see the concepts we have been
discussing put into action. I was extremely excited to conduct these experiments, but actually
doing them showed me how precise and complex they are. It also enabled me to see exactly what
the assessments determine as far as literacy ability and what to look for in order to assess these
abilities. Overall, this assignment really put the importance of emerging literacy and assessing a
childs early ability into perspective with real life experiences.

Concepts About Print

The first assessment Marc and I completed was Concepts About Print. Marc was excited
because I told him these assessments were his way of helping me with my homework because I
needed help reading a story, writing words, etc. For this homework assignment, Marc helped
me read the Sand booklet that was created for Concepts About Print. I followed the
administration instructions, asking Marc to first show me the front and back covers of the book,
which he did so properly and promptly, and so on.
Marc did very well, getting a score of eighteen out of twenty-four correct, placing him in
the sixth stanine group for his age. This stanine group provides a guide to how well the child
compares with a sample of 796 New Zealand children in February 2000 (Clay, 2013, p. 48).
Because Marc ranked part of the sixth group out of nine, one can conclude that he tested
relatively high for his age (Clay, 2013, p. 48).
Moreover, he did especially well on the questions relating to books in general. For
instance, he was able to tell me where the front and back of the book is, where to start reading,
which way to go, and even how to return-sweep at the end of a line of text. He was also able to
follow along while I read, matching each word I said allowed with the words on the page. Marc
was also able to point out the bottom of the picture on page 7, despite it being inverted. Lastly,
he was able to call attention to the fact that the words were inverted on pages 8 and 9 so he
turned the book around before telling me where to begin. Additionally, Marc was able to exhibit
a firm grasp about books when he showed me how to read a story when there was text on both
pages. He pointed to the left page first and continued on to the right, correctly for item 11.
However, Marc struggled to properly show me where to begin reading. For item 2, he pointed to
the picture rather than the text. Additionally, while an educator can conclude that Marc has a
strong comprehension of books and how they work, one can also see how he struggles with

punctuation and actual words and sentences. For instance, Marc was able to tell me what
question marks and periods were and what they were used for, but failed to define commas and
quotation marks. However, according to Clay and her Age Expectation chart, these questions,
items 17 and 18, are of a high level of difficulty for children at his age (Clay, 2013, p. 49). Marc
also struggled with the altering of a line, the change in word and letter order; however, this again,
is considered difficult for children of his age (Clay, 2013, p. 49). While he struggled with these
few concepts, he excelled in letter identification for item 9, reversible words, and displaying his
knowledge of words and letters with sliding cards for items 21-24.
Based on Marcs results for the Concepts About Print assessment, I conclude that he has
a strong knowledge base about books; however, he could use more support with learning about
words and sentences. As Marie Clay discusses, Marc will exhibit a lot of progress over the rest
of the year as well as the following year as he receives more direct literacy instruction. While
many of the concepts about books can be observed, the concepts about words and sentences that
Marc struggled with require formal instruction, which he will most likely receive later on (Clay,
2013, p. 42).

Letter Identification
The second assessment I completed in our first session was Letter Identification. For this
assessment, I utilized the test sheet provided in Marie Clays, An Observation Survey of Early
Literacy Achievement. I placed the sheet in front of Marc and pointed to each letter, starting with
the first letter of the first row, working my way from left to right and return-sweeping at the end
of each row. I would ask him, What letter is this? and after his response I would ask if he knew
what sound it made and then if he knew a word that started with this letter.
Because Marc practices this concept daily in Miss Natales class; he scored near perfect.
Everyday, the class, in unison, says each letter, their sound, and word as they go through a chart
on the white board. For instance, they say, A, Ah, Apple; B, Buh, Bat, and so on. Therefore,
Marc flew through this section. However, when we reached the capital V, he could identify the
letter and sound, but when I asked if he knew a word, he responded, I dont know how to read
yet. As we continued, Marc was able to properly identify all the rest of the letters, until we got
to the lowercase b. He identified this letter as a D. He said it was a d, made the duh sound, and
said the word dog. While this is a common mistake for children his age while writing, it was
surprising to see during letter recognition. He responded similarly for the lowercase letters l and
q. For l, he recognized the letter as a capital I, which, in his defense, is similar. From there, he
responded with I, ih, itch. For the letter q, he recognized it as a p, responding with p, puh,
pan. Other than these minor errors, Marc was able to properly identify every other letter, its
phoneme, and a word that it begins with it.
Marc scored fifty-one out of fifty-four correct. Based on these results, one can conclude
that Marc is at the higher end of letter knowledge. However, it is important to keep in mind that
this observation task is designed not for predicting progress, but to find out what children do
and do not know, to be used as a guide for subsequent teaching (Clay, 2013, p. 91). While this

does not determine progress, it does shed light on Marcs understanding of phonics. Therefore,
Marc is phonemically aware because he was able to pronounce the proper phonemes for each
letter and even mention a word that has this phoneme at the beginning. Even when Marc
incorrectly identified a letter, he showed his understanding of phonics because he was able to
correctly name the phoneme and a word for the letter he thought was typed on the page. For
instance, for the letter b, he thought it was a d, but was still able to identify the sound for d
and a word that begins with it.

Written/Dictated Story
The next assessment Marc and I completed was the written/dictated story. Marc seemed
overwhelmed by the endless possibilities for his own story. He stared at me when I asked him to
tell me a story about anything he wanted. He told me he did not know what to write about and
put his head in his hands, sighing. Therefore, I began giving him a few ideas by saying You
could tell me about your favorite day with your family, a vacation, superheroes, or even
Halloween since its coming up soon. Marc seemed to like the idea of a story about Halloween
since he explained that he loved monsters. Once he began, he flew through his story as if he had
really lived it. I had to slow him down a few times so that I could write it all down. He was so
excited about it, especially, when I brought it back typed up the following week, allowing him to
illustrate his own pictures. As a surprise, I printed him his own copy to illustrate and take home,
as a thank-you to both Marc and his family for allowing me the opportunity to work with him.
He was thrilled about the idea that he was acting like a real-live author.
His story exemplifies his relatively strong command for the English language. Marc is
able to speak clearly and use full sentences, which according to the Center for Disease Control is
something a five year old should be able to do (Your Child at 5 Years, 2009). Also, he speaks
very much like an adult, using a broad vocabulary and varying his sentence structure.
Sometimes, his sentences were very short, such as, I saw a skeleton. Other times, he used
complex sentences, such as, Then I knew they were only decorations because I was taking a
walk with Grandma and Grandpa to the house with the decorations. At this age, his speech
should sound similar to that of an adult, according to the text. Therefore, Marc is in the proper
stage of language development (Morrow, 2012, p. 106).

Yopp-Singer Test of Phoneme Segmentation

Because Grenloch only offers half-day Kindergarten, Marc and I did not have enough
time to complete all of the assessments in one session. Therefore, I completed the rest of them
the next visit I made to his class, starting with Yopp-Singer. For this assessment, Marc had to
properly segment words based on their phonemes, or sounds. To begin, I had to first model to
him how to do it. Therefore, as the test sheet prompts, I explained how to segment the words,
using the word old as an example. Then, we practiced together using the words ride, go,
and man.
Marc did very well with this assessment, given his environment. He usually has trouble
focusing, but was overall, able to do so despite the noise of the other students in the background
and the lesson that was being taught. However, I do feel that some of Marcs mistakes had to do
with the noise level in the room because some of his incorrect responses were very off, leading
me to believe that he may have heard me incorrectly when I gave him the word. For instance, for
the word Keep, he segmented it as /k//nn/, which does not even have the proper phonemes in
it. When I asked him if he could Repeat what he said and please tell me the sounds in the word
KEEP, he got confused and merely repeated his incorrect response. While he may have not
heard the word correctly for keep, he still struggled with a few of the words. For the word,
that, he responded with I dont know how to do that one. Also, for she and in, he
segmented them with double phonemes, such as, /sh//h//e/ and /in//nn/, respectively. Lastly, for
top he segmented it as /t//a//o//p/ and ice as /ice//s/, showing his confusion for some
phonemes.
Although Marc struggled with a few of the segmentations and faced many distractions, he
tested very well. Based on his results, Marc can be considered phonemically aware because he
scored sixteen out of twenty-two points. However, sixteen is considered the lowest end of the

spectrum for phonemically aware students, therefore showing that he has not quite mastered this
literacy concept, but may be on the verge of doing so.

Writing Vocabulary
The last assessment Marc and I completed was the Writing Vocabulary. I told Marc that
this was the last activity he would help me with and that it was going to be a game. I explained
that I would set a timer on my phone for five minutes and I wanted him to try and write down as
many words as he could, even if he was not sure he was spelling it correctly. While this intrigued
Marc, I could tell he was beginning to lose interest in the activities we were doing. He was
becoming distracted and wanted to eat his snack and join his fellow classmates. However, we
began the assessment and he was able to write down, he, Marc, my, and look.
I feel that this was not an accurate determination of Marcs ability to write and his
vocabulary. From observing Marc, I have learned that he struggles to stay focused, which was a
constant struggle during this assessment. He would constantly stare off into space and watch his
classmates, needing to be redirected. Also, he seemed very anxious during this activity. It
bothered him that he was not told exactly what to write and struggled to think of words on the
spot. Therefore, I prompted him by suggesting he write some of his sight words. Moreover, from
my observations I am also able to conclude that Marc has a much broader vocabulary and is able
to sound out words better than he displayed in this assessment. For instance, during Miss
Natales daily journal activities, the students always need to copy a sentence and fill in a blank
with a word of their choice. For instance, during my last observation they wrote, Save a turkey,
eat more __________. Marc is able to sound out the word he wants to write and relay it on to
the page. For this activity, he wrote lasagna, spelling it lazanya. His ability to use his
knowledge of phonics to spell this word, shows his advancement in literacy and language
development. However, his writing during the five minute assessment, does not really portray
this knowledge as it should. For instance, Marc spelled his first name wrong, which is something
he has never done before during my observations, leading me to believe he was nervous about

the time running out. Additionally, he spelled the words he and look wrong, writing hehc
and lek, respectively. While I have seen him properly spell these sight words before, his
attempt at spelling them for the assessment shows his knowledge of phonics because he was able
to detect the beginning letters and the end letter for the word look.
This assessment also depicts Marcs ability to use invented and conventional spelling.
When he knew how to spell a word, such as my, he did so, properly. However, when he was
unsure of the conventional spelling, he used his phonemic awareness and invented spelling to
make an attempt such as in his attempt to spell look. His use of invented spelling is common
for his age and as he receives more literacy instruction, he will continue to convert these
invented spellings to conventional spelling, mirroring adult writing (Morrow, 2012, pp. 264,
272-273).

Conclusion
These five assessments were not enough to be able to accurately determine Marcs stage
of literacy development. However, these assessments, in addition to the observations I have
made over the past seven weeks, have enabled me to draw several conclusions of Marc as an
emergent reader. First, Marc is considered a pretty advanced emergent reader. Based on the
results of his assessments, he scored average to high on almost all of them. For the assessments
that could not be directly scored, such as the Written/Dictated story and the Writing Vocabulary,
Marc showed an understanding of phonics, demonstrated his awareness of phonemes, and
displayed a strong understanding of the English Language. Using my developmental checklists,
provided by the Center for Disease Control website, I am able to conclude that Marc is on track
with his development of language.
These assessments have taught me that they are not accurate when used as stand-alone
determinations of a childs literacy development. Because I have witnessed Marc in the
classroom and have assessed his knowledge in my Child Study, I am able to see that there are
some flaws with these assessments and how using them without any background information can
be misleading. For instance, during the Writing Vocabulary, Marc was very unfocused and
anxious; therefore he was not able to write many words and struggled under the pressure. If I
were to evaluate him based on this assessment alone, I would think Marc had trouble with
beginning phonics and did not have much experience with writing. However, because I have
observed him during his lessons, I know that this is false and that he actually has a pretty firm
grasp of written language and beginning phonics.
These assessments also taught me how important they are when teaching young children
because they help determine the level of support the student needs in specific areas. For instance,
if I were Marcs teacher I would include more writing activities in my lessons so that Marc could

practice sounding out words and writing on his own. Also, I would probably incorporate more
lessons about sentences, such as a lesson on punctuation. Without these assessments it would be
difficult to determine the level of support an emergent reader needs and where they struggle the
most.

References
Clay, M. M. (2013). An Observation Survey of Early Literacy Achievement (3rd ed.). Auckland ,
New Zealand: The Marie Clay Literacy Trust.
Morrow, L. M. (2012). Literacy Development in the Early Years: Helping Children Read and
Write (7th ed.). Boston, Massachusetts, USA: Pearson Education Inc.
Your Child at 5 Years. (2009, January 1). Retrieved October 10, 2014, from
http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/actearly/pdf/checklists/checklists_5yr.pdf