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Reviewing for the Exam

READING ASSESSMENT AND INTERVENTION PLAN

Domain # 1 of TESS addresses practices surrounding planning and preparation, which includes assessment of student reading. By assessing a student’s reading, an educator can become familiar with the student’s strengths and weaknesses and therefore target skills that may need improvement. This process of getting to know where students are in their development as readers is directly related to Domain 1b: demonstrating knowledge of students. By assessing a student’s reading level at the very beginning of the school year, a teacher can use the results to design and implement instructional strategies and activities to advance the student’s reading skills further, aligning with domain 1c: setting instructional outcomes by creating a sequence of valuable instruction. 

In the context of my graduate program, I began working with a sixth-grade student, whom I will refer to as Amy, through a literacy camp held on the university’s campus. The UACL Spring Literacy Camp provided an opportunity for parents to enroll their child into an after-school program where the child would be paired with a college-student tutor to learn various literacy skills. Amy attended the literacy camp on Thursday afternoons along with her twin sister. I worked with a partner that also gave Amy different writing and reading assessments, but before administering any assessments, we spent several minutes getting to know each other. During this time, I learned that Amy is an avid reader and enjoys reading on the weekends and during her spare time, which even includes reading books aloud to her twin sister. When asked, she explained that her favorite types of books to read are suspenseful mysteries. Amy explained that as soon as she finishes one book, her father will take her to the bookstore to purchase a new one. After administering only a couple of the assessments, it became clear to me that Amy is confident in her reading and writing abilities, and- I was both impressed and excited by her skillful reading and motivation to read.

I administered a series of assessments to Amy during the literacy camp on the university’s campus on Thursday afternoons in a classroom along with approximately six other literacy camp students and 11 other college students. To assess Amy’s reading level, I first administered the San Diego Quick Assessment (see Figure 1), which measures word-recognition proficiency. When conducting the San Diego Quick assessment, if a student makes three or more errors within a word column, the student has reached their frustration level which signals the stopping point of the assessment. The student’s reading level is the word column before the frustration level column. It is recommended to start a student below their actual grade level, so because she is in sixth grade, I started Amy with the third-grade column. Amy was able to read all of the words correctly and without hesitation in the third, fourth, and fifth grade columns. She did have two errors and spoke a couple of words hesitantly in the sixth-grade column, and she had six errors in the seventh-grade column which proved to be much more difficult for her. Even with the increased difficulty, Amy still tried to pronounce and sound out each word on the list. The results from the San Diego Quick Assessment placed Amy’s reading on grade level, and indicated that her frustration level is with seventh-grade words. 

To assess Amy’s vocabulary, I administered the Core Vocabulary Screening assessment. The assessment asks for students to read a word in a box and to select which of the three answer choices are a synonym to the word in the box. Based on her SDQA results, I provided the sixth-grade vocabulary screening form first (see Figure 2.1), followed by the seventh-grade form (see Figure 2.2). Amy only had 6 incorrect marks for the sixth-grade vocabulary and seven incorrect marks for the seventh-grade vocabulary. Her results placed her performance in the benchmark range, meaning she is competent in understanding vocabulary words above her grade level. I also noticed that during the Core Vocabulary Screening Assessment, Amy implemented the test-taking strategy of skipping any numbers that she did not know the answer to right away and coming back to those at the very end, as well as double checking that all numbers were answered. 


To assess comprehension, I administered the Core Reading Maze Comprehension test, form 6-A (see Figure 3). This assessment asks students to read a short passage and in the passage, multiple sentences are missing a word and students are provided three options to choose from to fill in the missing word. These options were bolded and placed in parentheses and Amy would have to read all three and circle the word that she felt best completed the sentence.  I chose the “Not So Boring” reading passage specifically because it is a story about hiking, and I had learned from talking with Amy that she enjoys spending time outside. Amy was not able to complete the entire passage in the three minutes but had no incorrect marks for the answers that she did complete, placing her performance well above benchmark.

I considered Amy’s assessment results as well as my observations and determined that she has a strong vocabulary and reading comprehension skills, but she did struggle with spelling as well as pronunciation during the San Diego Quick Assessment. I feel that Amy scored only at grade level due to not having strong decoding skills which will help me in formulating an intervention plan. When considering activities to help strengthen Amy’s decoding skills, I thought of reviewing the six different syllable types to promote decoding and syllabication. (see Figure 4). Having a strong understanding of the six different syllable types helps students to divide words into syllables and decode them, predict the sound a vowel makes, as well as making it easier to break up multisyllabic words. Amy would benefit from all of the aforementioned skills and with the ability to differentiate the syllable types, she would have some knowledge to aid in pronouncing and decoding words that she is unfamiliar with. 

Reading Assessment and Intervention Plan: Projects
Reading Assessment and Intervention Plan: Pro Gallery
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