Shannon Young

TLS 357
Sung Eun Jung
7 December 2018
Assessment Case Study

My first case study child is a seven year old girl named Sarah. Sarah is a very bright child
who loves reading and writing. She is one of our highest readers and has a very strong family
home. They read all the time together at home and since Sarah has started reading she reads to
her family now. She also is the kid in our class who loves to write everyone letters and draw
them pictures. She is very giving and helpful and always listens during class. One thing that
Sarah does struggle with is her math skills. Since I have been watching and assessing Sarah I
have noticed a drastic change in her mood when she goes from reading or writing to math. She
closes off a lot and gets very quiet and very rarely does her work. She also gets very frustrated
when trying to help her because she is such a perfectionist and when she cant do something she
shuts down and gets very upset. When starting with our assessments together I decided I wanted
to start out with the reading assessment because I knew it wouldn’t make her uncomfortable and
shut down to do math so I wanted to start with something she felt safe and confident doing.
For the first assessment that we did we did a reading assessment because that is her
strongest subject. For this assessment the student will pick a book of her choice and read it to
herself. She will then go through and ask about words and phrases that she does not understand
and needs help with. For this assessment it was just me and Sarah in our reading area that is in
the far left corner of our classroom and at this point the other students were at the carpet because
it was the morning time so they do their math whiteboards there, so I knew that would be on the
other side of the room and would not be able to come over to us a distract us. Sarah started out
by looking through our library and went to a section of books where she usually picks from
because it has her favorite type of books which is very girly fiction books. Sarah is a very
independent person but also loves to have feedback on what it is that she is doing. While she was
picking a book I made sure to tell her to pick one that she thinks is right for her level and that she
would enjoy reading and telling me the story of the book. I wanted to encourage her to pick a
story with a lot of voice so when it was time for her to tell me I could see if she could understand
voice and phrases because that is the next step of what we are working on for her reading level.
There was a lot of ways that I could assess Sarah because she does have such a high
reading level it would be easy to give her a good assessment. I wanted to make it harder for her
and push her farther because I know how smart she is and how far she can go. As Sarah was
reading her book I watched her body language and her face to see if she was struggling or if it
was too easy for her. From what I could gage about her face and body language it seemed like
the book she picked was what we call in our classroom a “just right” book. A just right book is
what we call in our classroom for when a student has the perfect level of reading where its not
too hard but it does challenge them a little bit so they are always growing. She finished her book
and before she told me the story I had her give me a hand sign that we do saying if they thought
the book was good or bad. I wanted to see if she liked the story line of the book because if she
didn’t I knew her rephrasing the story to me wouldn’t be as good as if she liked the book a lot.
She gave me a thumbs up and then I asked her if she would retell the story to me. Sarah did a
very good job at explain the beginning, middle, and end to the book which is mainly what I was
looking for. Because Sarah was telling me everything orally I decided it would be helpful to
voice record what she was saying and go back over it later to determine how well she put
together the story. I was also looking at her sequencing and to see if she could place all the
events from the book in the right order. Overall I think that Sarah did a great job at explaining to
me the book that she read and I think it had a lot to do with how much she liked the book. She
did a very good job on the assessment all together and I look forward to extending it into harder
task like creating a story line or even creating her own book on her own.
For my math assessment during this time we were doing geometry so I wanted my
assessment to go along with what my kids were learning then. For this assessment Sarah will be
given a piece of paper and will be asked to draw 6 different 2-D shapes on the paper. The student
will then be able to verbally name the 6 different 2-D shapes that she drew on the paper. . Since
Sarah doesn’t like math she wasn’t very happy when I pulled her aside during our math station
so a separate table. I told her that I just wanted to see how far she has come from the beginning
of the math lesson so that she felt better and more confident with herself and her math skills.
Sarah was able to draw all of the shapes but when it came to trying to name all the attributes of
the shape like the edges, sides, and vertices. She was able to name the square and triangle but
when it came to harder ones like the circle and trapezoid she got very flustered and didn’t want
to try. I tried giving her hints because I knew she understood the topic because she got the two
other shapes right so I pointed out the sides and edges on the square and she was able to look at
the other shapes and figure those answers out too. At the end of the assessment I wanted to make
sure to give her positive feedback because i’m working on trying to build her confidence in math
and I could tell it made her happy to find out she did good on this assessment.
My second case study is very different from my first in a lot of ways. His name is Chris
and he is a 7 year old boy. Chris’ home life has been very difficult since he was younger, his
family has had a lot of problems and I think his family problems effect him at school a ton. There
are many days where he comes to school and falls asleep for most of the day. He has a lot of
struggles with self esteem because he is told a lot that he cant do things and he then turns that to
his school work and struggles to make it through one lesson. Ive found out a lot about his work
ethic through the semester and what I've found helps the most is when he is getting one on one
attention from someone and they are pushing him to finish that is when he does his best work.
He is a natural very smart little boy but he has trouble focusing on one thing for long periods of
time and is frequently getting distracted by the other students. For this assessment I had to make
it easier for him because he is a very low reader and has very low math skills. He is not able to
read barley any words so for him picking out a book I gave him options of books that were at an
easy level.
For the reading assessment Chris will read a book of his choice and one they feel
comfortable with. I will ask the student to be able to tell me the title and the author of the book
just by looking at the front cover. I chose this assessment because I felt like it was a challenging
assessment for him which is what I really wanted because I knew we would be working one on
one so I knew he would corporate and work his hardest because he was getting that attention. We
sat in our reading area away from everyone else which I knew was very important because of
how distracted he gets. He picked out a very simple book that only has three words on each page
and it was very repetitive which was good. I picked the assessment to be of him understanding
and expressing because to me that will be the start of him learning how to read. Chris always
asks in all of his work if I can help him because he cant do it and I figured that would happen
during this assessment so before he started I told him that I couldn’t help him at all during the
assessment and I knew that he was a smart kid and could do it all by himself. I asked him to first
point out the title of the book and he pointed to it which was good and exactly what I wanted him
to do. He then began to sound out the letters one by one. It took him about five to fully say the
title of the book which was Pat and Zac. It helped a lot when I told him that they were names
instead of just words. He was not fully able to read the authors name which I expected but in my
assessments later on I will be working on that with him.
For the math portion of the assessment I was excited to watch him do it because he is
stronger in his math skills and if you sit with him he will do all of his work. For this assessment
Chris will be handed a work sheet with different 2-D shapes on them. He will be able to look at
the shapes and name them and given visible examples of their attributes and point out the
different attributes. Once again Chris was very excited to be able to have that one on one time
with me to do his work away from everyone else. When I first put the paper of shapes in front of
him he did not want to even look at it or do any work. He wanted to sit and talk and ask
questions like he usually does. Once he finally started working I was shocked to see how much
he knew. He was able to name all six of the shapes and could name the attributes of five of them.
When we got to the circle he got confused about the edges and told me that there was one edge.
Overall he did a great job on the math assessment and was very pleased with himself and his
work.
When first starting this process I was very worried and scared that my kids wouldn’t want
to be involved or wouldn’t corporate with the work that they had to do. Planning the assessment
was the hardest part for me with getting the wording correctly but once I was able to visualize
the assessment it made it easier for me to make it detailed. I also thought it was hard to find out
what to do next and extending the assessment after they had finished it. Overall thought I thought
the project was very helpful in what I will be doing in the future and it has helped me with my
trial and error in finding out what works best for me as a teacher.
Working with these two kids so closely has really helped me learn about them as students
and as people. I have found out what works best for getting them engaged and helping them to
produce their best work they can possibly do. I think that as each assessment ended I was able to
look back and see what I did good and what I did bad and it helped me a lot when I recorded
what was going on so I could look back. I think I have grown a lot as a teacher from this because
it has helped me with my one on one work with each students. I think something that I struggled
the most with is over helping the student when they are struggling when that isn’t the point of the
assessment. Its hard for me to sit back and watch them as they struggle but thats the only way to
truly see how far they have come which in the end is what you really want to see. Something that
I think helped the most was taking the students away from the rest of the class so that we could
work in peace without any distractions. Thats one of the best practices that I've found from
working on this project. Overall I think that the assessments went very well and I am happy with
how much I've grown and how much I got work with my kids and see them succeed.