The Assessment Case Studies Of Two Children

Gabi Cohen TLS 357 Sung Eun 2 December 2018

The Assessment Case Studies of Two Children For the first case, I assessed my IEP case study Ria (pseudonym for privacy). She has a Specific Learning Disability which affects her in reading, writing as well as in math. I assessed her in math and in literacy. For assessing Ria in math, I pulled her aside and tested her math skills by giving her 5 problems (word problems and regular problems) with numbers up to 10. This was a written test that the class had been taking the same day. For assessing her in literacy, I had her listen to an audio book called The Runaway Pumpkin by Kevin Lewis and followed the book, by pulling her aside to have her write a beginning, middle and ending sentence about what she read. For my assessment in math with Ria, I decided to pull her aside because this is what her special education teacher usually does during math, and I gave her the test with 5 word problems and read them each to her a few times to make sure she comprehended them. My mentor stresses the importance of keeping the routine consistent and not changing anything, so I wanted to make sure I was complying with her routine. I had Ria find the missing part or the whole number (the answer) by using the “make 10 strategy” as well as the RDW strategy which stands for Read, Draw and Write which helps them find the answer to the problem by adding. My goal for her was to work with numbers up to 10. This assessment took place during our math time on Wednesday, November 7th. Ria and I were the only people present during this assessment. I assessed Ria at a desk right outside of our 1st Grade classroom at Robins Elementary School, where I do all of my small group work with my students. I had cube manipulatives on the desk for Ria to work with since she is a visual learner, as well as paper and a pencil for her to show her work. My method for assessing her, was to be repetitive and ask her which important information in the word problems we should circle for reference. For Ria’s literacy assessment, it was me and her as well, and it took place during the same week on Monday November 5th at the same desk. She listened to the audio book during Daily 5 centers with the other members in her group, but instead of working at her desk with the other students at the audio center for that day, I pulled her aside and assessed her outside the classroom where she wrote her summary sentences. I asked her to bring the book with her as well as the printout worksheet. I asked her first to tell me what happened in the beginning, middle and end to help her brainstorm before she started to write. After looking at her math and literacy work, I was able to have a better idea of what she understands and does not understand, or rather needs to work on. Ria has a good grasp of number 1-10 and how to make 10, although in some problems she showed her work correctly with her picture, but wrote down the wrong answer. I think this is just her not being careful or not checking her work. She showed me that she understands the math concept through her written

work as well as in her oral explanation. For literacy, after looking at her work, I can tell that she comprehended the book and was able to show me that through her cohesive and sequential sentences. The spelling on the other hand, is something that Ria needs a lot of work on. She misspelled most words in her sentences and lacks awareness of grammar and punctuation. An example of this is she will likely use her phonetic awareness of spelling i.e.:“uwe” instead of “you” which was an example from her work. Another thing I noticed with her spelling from this assessment was she will likely know the letters in a word but mix up the order i.e.: “hse” instead of “she”. My goal for Ria is to slow down and take her time for each content area. She is always eager to share her ideas in class and to try to answer questions that my mentor asks, but she is usually wrong. I love her confidence and that her learning disability does not make her vulnerable in the classroom. My suggestion for her is to think before she impulsively answers something. I think Ria in addition to that, needs work on her spelling and grammar and punctuation. She needs reminders about periods and commas during most lessons I observe during my practicum hours, and this showed in her literacy sentences. I think Ria would benefit from doing extra spelling homework each night or over winter break. For my second case, I assessed my ELL, Ari (pseudonym for privacy). Ari is the only English Language Learner in my 1st Grade class at Robins. Ari speaks and is spoken to in Spanish and English at home with her family, but only speaks English at school. This made it easy to select her as my case study child for this semester. For my assessments with Ari, I chose to do similar activities for her that we are working on in class, and I wanted to compare the results of my case study assessments. The only thing that differed in the cases was that for Ari in math, I tested her math skills by giving her 5 problems (word problems and regular problems) with numbers between 10 and 20 instead of numbers up to 10 since Ari is at a higher math level than Ria. I also did a Halloween activity with Ari since I assessed her on Halloween. The only thing that differed in the literacy assessment, was since it was in October, the audio book that she listened to was, The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury. Ari does well in school, but often relies heavily on the teacher, especially during math, and has a hard time understanding word problems. In assessing her, I read the word problems a few times and asked her some questions to make sure she understood each problem. For Ari’s word problems, after assessing her a second time, I wanted to connect them to her funds of knowledge. I made sure to include her family members names in each word problem, and to talk about things that are of interest to her. Since it was Halloween on the day I assessed her and I did not want her to miss out on the math activity, I assessed her on that as well. The activity was to add numbers together and based on the sum of the answer, color in the pumpkin in different colors that matched the sums. For math as well as literacy, it was Ari and me present, and it took place in the same location that I assessed Ria. I assessed Ari in literacy on Monday, October 29th. I assessed her in math on Wednesday, October 31st. They had a mini math lesson on Halloween, so I wanted to pull her aside at that time so she did not miss any of the Halloween activities. I assessed Ari in literacy by asking her questions throughout the read aloud and stopping the tape frequently to allow her to ask me vocabulary questions and to make sure she was understanding the book. For math, I did not have the cube manipulatives with me this time, and I think Ari would have benefited from that, which is something I will use for next time. For documentation from Ari, I collected her math and literacy work as well to assess how she was doing. She had a hard time understanding that this assessment was an independent

assignment and similar to how she is in class, she tried to rely heavily on teacher support. I told her that I wanted to see how she was able to do the work without my help, and that I had faith in her that she could do it alone. From looking at her work, I could see that the manipulatives and relating to the context of the problems, really helped her understand them. I can see that for the literacy worksheet, she understood the book, but had a hard time will spelling some of the words. I think this is likely because she was not exposed to many of the words in the book and has not had enough experience writing them. She did have sequential sentences and show proper grammar and punctuation. My suggestions for Ari is for her to get a word bank before she reads books. I think exposing her to new words before she reads them or is read to, would benefit her in many ways. I think if she had each word with the definition next to it she could review those words before she goes into reading it and can refer back to it as many times as she needs throughout the book. While I look and reflect on this entire process, I have learned how much goes into an assessment project. Doing the initial assessment gave me a good start into planning my assessments. Planning the assessment was a crucial step so I could make sure that I was fully prepared to do each of the 4 assessments. Implementing the assessment went smoothly and I do not think it would have if I had not prepared as much as I did. After doing the assessments, it gave me a good idea about where each of my case study children are and what I needed to do going forward with the next instructional steps. I learned a lot about both myself as well as my case study students from this assignment. I have grown so much as a teacher this year by understanding my children before working with them. I think understanding my students’ strengths/weaknesses, as well as understanding their backgrounds, helps me help them gain the skills they need by supporting them based on their specific needs. I have learned how to introduce an assessment to make it less formal and decrease as much anxiety as possible. I learned how to show my students that they are capable before doing the work to create that sense of self-worth and independence. I think my strengths are reducing stress with my introduction of the tasks, and explaining the tasks clearly. I think something I can work on is allowing them to do all the work on their own and taking a step back since this is an assessment of their understanding. I think this assignment gave me a good start and idea on how to assess my students and I have learned a lot from it.