Practicum Literacy Profile

By: Samantha Holland

Practicum Assessor: Nancy Hanes

Semester: Fall 2016
School Site: Whitman Elementary School

Student: Angie (Pseudo Name)

Grade Level: 5
Classroom Teacher:

Current Age: 9

Background Information:

Angie was quirky, spunky, artsy and unique. This little girl showed me so many
interesting perspectives that it was truly inspiring to be able to work with her. She was always so
curious about the concepts being presented to her. She had to know more details, why, who, what,
where, when. It was admirable to watch her always have such eagerness to learn more about
anything and everything. Angie and I shared a special relationship. She expressed that I was her
role model and that she admired my goals as an educator and that one day she hoped I could be
her teacher. Academically Angie struggled in most content areas, she just loved art. Once, I
learned about her passion for drawing and painting I decided to try and incorporate more art into
my work with her. I found success by doing this because it was more engaging for her and she
found it easier to make connections. Overall, Angie is very interactive while working with others
in the classroom. I have noticed she takes the lead and likes to have a say in what is right or
wrong. She is a very bright young girl who just needs a little extra help to get her caught up to
grade level. Angie has demonstrated that she wants to succeed in school and go off to college.
She is willing to put in the extra work to learn. She displays that she is curious and eager to learn
all that she can.

Current Assessment Information:

Interests and Reading Survey

1. This survey allows for an educator to learn more about the student as an
individual. With a wide range of questions asking about academic interests and
personal interests. For example, this survey asks about favorite subjects, favorite
hobbies, and any other extra curricular activities that the child likes to participate
in. Additionally, a large section of these survey focuses on getting to know the
child as a reader. This survey will help the teacher be aware of how often the
child reads, how the child feels about reading, what kind of books the child is
interested in, etc. Knowing a students attitude toward reading can help predict
certain positive or negative behavior associated with reading. Attitude can reflect
effort and confidence level for developing readers.
2. September 20th, 2016: Approximately 10:30am
3. Angie expressed that she has an interest in reading and that she enjoys reading
for fun in her spare time. She chooses her books based off the covers or if she
 knows its an author or genre she already likes. Angie expressed that when she
was younger she struggled learning how to read, but she now believes that she is
a good reader and only hopes to get better.
4. As a fifth grade student Angie is not up to grade level on her reading skills. I
have found through assessments and through retrieving information that she is at
about a third grade level. She reads very slowly, but thats because she is trying
to enunciate every word correctly.
5. A recommendation to improve her reading development skills would be to
practice reading a loud, challenging herself with higher leveled books, and to
write down words she is unfamiliar with. Then later looking up those words and
learning them. This should help speed up her identification of words and get her
rate and prosody more fluent and appropriate.

Spelling Stages (Monster Test)

1. A teachers awareness of childrens developmental spelling progress enables
her/him to respond intelligently and more instructively as children progress
toward spelling competency. A good place to begin gaining a better
understanding of the developmental spelling process is to administer a
developmental spelling test.
2. September 29th, 2016: Approximately 10:15am
3. Angie spelt ten words to the best of her ability. She spelled one word at the
phonetic stage, four words at the transitional stage, and five words at the
conventional stage.
4. Angies answers demonstrate that she is roughly between the levels of being a
transitional speller and a conventional speller. At this level she thinks about how
words appear visually when trying to spell and is beginning to understand the
letter-sound correspondence within words. She is on the verge of being a
conventional speller with a little more practice shell be completely at that level.
5. A recommendation Id have for Angie is to just practice more with her spelling.
To practice this she can play a variety of computer games that help children
develop better spelling skills, she can play games such as scrabble, etc.

Words Their Way

1. Words Their Way is a foundational program that helps students develop those
foundational skills targeted in the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). This
assessment aligns students spelling development into the following five
research-based stages. This developmental model recognizes the synchronous
nature of reading, writing, and spelling, and has identified common
characteristics of readers, writers, and spellers along the literacy continuum.
Student responses to the spelling inventory can be broken down and analyzed to
see what developmental spelling level they are at as well as the certain skills that
the student has accomplished and still needs to work on. Teachers can then use
this information to guide future instruction.
2. October 10th, 2016: Approximately 10:20am
3. Angie spelt 25 words to the best of her ability. Her responses indicated she
successfully wrote 7/7 consonants, 5/5 short vowels, 5/6 digraphs, 6/7 blends, 3/5
common long vowels, 5/7 other vowels, 3/5 inflected endings, 3/5 syllable
junctures, and 1/5 unaccented final syllables. She only got 9/25 of the words spelt
correctly and 38/62 feature points.
 4. Angies performance indicates that she is at a middle/late letter name alphabetic
stage. In order to help improve her spelling development skills, she needs to
perfect her digraphs and blends before she can start working on any of her
vowels.
5. In order to improve Angies spelling skills, she must work on her understanding
of blends of words. Amy can use of list of words that demonstrate words with
blends and she can practice spelling these words. Once she has a clear
understanding of blends she can then work on her vowel spellings, especially her
long vowels. Having her practice words with similar sounds and spellings will
help her make connections to spelling these words correctly. It is important that
connections are formed that link spelling of written words to their pronunciations
and meanings in memory.

High Frequency Word

1. It is important for young readers to instantly recognize these words by sight in
order to build up their reading fluency. High-frequency words are the most
commonly used words in printed text and over 50 percent of all text is composed
of them. Because many are phonetically irregular, tend to be abstract, have
limited visual correspondence, or even easily understood definitions, students
must memorize them to read quickly and fluently. It is also important for readers
to practice words in meaningful context through phrase and sentence reading
practice.
2. November 1st, 2016: Approximately 10:15am
3. Using the San Diego Quick Assessment Record Form I started testing Angie with
the grade 3 words she only missed one, in the 4th grade words she missed two,
and for the 5th grade words she missed 6 so I stopped there.
4. Angies performance presented that she at an independent level for the 3rd grade
words, an instructional level for the 4th grade words, and a frustration level for
the 5th grade words. Since however Angie is a 5th grader that means she is not up
to grade level for her vocabulary knowledge. This could have a negative impact
on her reading fluency.
5. Although Angie has expressed to me that she reads often and enjoys reading, she
could benefit from more reading. Through more reading, he will be exposed to
these high frequency words more and it will eventually become second nature to
him. In addition to reading, flashcards with the high frequency terms can be used
in a game setting to encourage memorization. By Angie expanding on her high
frequency words will help in the achievement of accurate word recognition in all
aspects of fluency - rate, accuracy, and prosody.

Running Record
1. Running Records capture what children know and understand about the reading
process. They capture childrens thinking. Running Records provide an
opportunity to analyze what happened and plan appropriate instruction. From
Running Records, you have evidence of what the child is able to do, ready to
learn, and learning over a period of time. A Running Record provides you with a
playback of an entire oral reading conference, including the smallest details on
the readers attitude, demeanor, accuracy, and understanding.
2. October 18th, 2016: Approximately 10:15am
 3. Angie felt relatively comfortable with reading this short excerpt for this
assessment. Her score was 114/124, with only 10 errors making a 92% accuracy
rate on her running record.
4. Based on her results this reading excerpt may have been a bit too challenging for
her reading skills. However, Angie needs to improve her reading development if
she wants to eventually catch up and be at grade level.
5. Angie can benefit from monitored oral reading with a teacher or parent, also
paired partner reading with a classmate, and use of repeated readings.

Qualitative Reading Inventory (QRI)

1. The Qualitative Reading Inventory-5 (QRI-5) is an individually administered
informal reading inventory (IRI) designed to provide information about (1)
conditions under which students can identify words and comprehend text
successfully and (2) conditions that appear to result in unsuccessful word
identification or comprehension. This assessment is used to identify subjects
reading levelsindependent, instructional, and frustration and to provide
valuable diagnostic information. Like other informal reading inventories, the
QRI-5 provides graded word lists and numerous passages designed to assess the
oral and silent reading and listening ability of students from the pre-primer 1
through the high school levels.
2. November 10th, 2016: Approximately 10:15am/November 13th, 2016:
Approximately 10:15am
3. I first tested Angie on the level five QRI finding out after that it was far too
challenging for her skills. Therefore, a few days letter I assessed her on the level
three QRI finding that this was a more appropriate assessment for her. For the
level five QRI she had 17 total errors with 2 meaning-change errors, she recalled
20/53 ideas, and without look-backs had 6 correct and with look-backs had 3
correct. As for the level three QRI she had 6 errors with no meaning-change
errors, she recalled 28/55 ideas, and without look-backs had 6 correct and with
look-backs 8 correct.
4. Angie is at a frustrated level with the level 5 QRI and an independent level with
the level 3 QRI. Based off the results from the assessment, Id say that she then is
most likely in a level 4 instructional stage. In order to further develop her
comprehension skills she needs to work on her fluency and understanding of the
text.
5. A strategy to improve Angies comprehension would be to use strategic reading.
Within strategic reading the student will practice visualizing text, paraphrasing
text, clarifying text, predicting, generating questions, summarizing, and adjusting
reading rate to be more appropriate.

Writing Development Assessment

1. These stages represent a way of looking at writing development in children. All
stages overlap and children progress and reach writing stages at many different
ages. The development of early writing skills is another aspect of a child's
emergent literacy development. Regardless of which stage a child is at, writing
development can be enhanced through being encouraged to write on a regular
basis. Children should never be discouraged from exploring writing by the means
they are able to do, whether it be scribbling, letter strings, invented spelling, or
conventional spelling. Using these developmental stages allows educators to
 understand the level of writing the student is proficient in and how to best assist
their writing skills.
2. November 10th, 2016: Approximately 10:30am
3. Angie was given a prompt to: Write about your favorite place in the world. Give
reasons why this is your favorite place in the world. Her work demonstrated that
she is between a bridging stage and an expanding stage.
4. Her writing is below grade-level proficiency. By fifth grade she should have
better spelling, tier 2 or 3 vocabulary words, better grammar and punctuation,
and be able to elaborate more on details and ideas. Her writing lacks organization
and proper story structure (beginning, middle, end). However, she did
demonstrate the ability to write independently with not much notice or time
permitted.
5. To help further her writing development I suggestion I have is that she needs to
read and use texts that are accessible, engaging, and complex. This will help her
gain new insights and epiphanies, as well as challenge her. Additionally, she
could benefit by reading instructional read-alouds and shared reading. Teaching
her to start making connections and inferences to the text that she is reading will
also help her relay information over to her writing. Lastly, it is important she
receives adequate guidance and feedback. Let her see her errors, teach her ways
to better them, and allow her to practice using the feedback that was given.

Primary Goals for Improvement

1. Angie needs to improve her reading comprehension and understanding of implicit and
explicit questions of text as well as further develop her critical thinking skills.
2. Angie needs to develop the ability to express deeper thinking with increasing use of
details in her writing (elaborating).
3. Angie needs to improve her ability to recognize, read correctly, spell, and understand the
meaning of high frequency words.