Spelling Assessment

Context

When I asked my cooperating teacher in a Kindergarten class if I could do a spelling assessment with her students, she asked me to wait until her students get to know me a little better. She had given them something similar to this a couple of weeks prior to my first visit. She said they got very frustrated with writing words in a test form. She told me that some of them even cried. I decided to wait until my last visit at W.A. Young Elementary. At this time, the students were comfortable with me. I called the students to the back table one at a time. I asked them to spell these six words the best they could: feet, step, back, junk, picking, and mail. Then I used the QWIK scoring guide to do a phoneme count for the words I gave them.

Impact

By completing this assessment, students will practice listening for sounds while attempting to write. By this time, students have not learned all letters of the alphabet, how to write them and the sounds they make when we speak. This assessment also helps the teacher figure out what level her students are on at this point of the school year. It helps the teacher by letting her know what letters she needs to focus on more extensively in her classroom.

Alignment

I have met Standard 1, Indicator 1 by monitoring the developmental stages of learning the alphabet.

I have met Standard 1, Indicator 6 by assessing students growth in learning the alphabet. These first steps to learning the alphabet are essential for their growth in literacy.