Angela's Diagnostic Assessment (Day 1)

On April 25, 2013, I received my case work. My student, Angela (not her real name), is 8.7 years old, a middle child , and is an incoming 3rd grade at Valeriano E. Fugoso Memorial School. She is performing at grade 1.8 based on Gates MacGinitie Test, which she took prior to our first meeting. Her mother tongue is Tagalog.

During the first meeting, Angela was accompanied by her mother and younger sister. Mommy Rona, her mother, is a grade school teacher at the same school where Angela is studying. I noticed that Mommy Rona is eager to support her daughter in terms of academics. Aside from letting her daughter participate in our class' intervention program, she also enrolled Angela in Reading Link at UPIS. When I spoke with Mommy Rona, she suggested that I give Angela homework because Angela needs to improve her study skills. She also said that her daughter likes fairy tales and legends.

Angela was shy during our first meeting. She hardly looked at me but would respond to whatever question I throw her. She would frequently look at the glass door, perhaps to check if her mommy and sister were still outside. It was revealed through the background info questionnaire filled out by her mommy that she is more patient than her other siblings. I would tend to agree with this because she follows instructions without complaint.

Expressive Writing
In order for me to administer to her different tests, I needed to establish rapport with Angela first. So, I asked her questions like what her favorite cartoons are, what her favorite colors, etc. I also asked her if she would mind if I used camera and tablet to record our sessions. She nod her head in agreement. Since she was still shy, I asked her to draw some things first. The instructions were given in Tagalog. Then, I gave some writing prompts based on the drawings. These served as her expressive writing samples.

What do you feel when you are with your family? = HAPPY

What do you like about your best friend? = MABAIT, MAPAGKAIBIGAN

 Letter Recognition Inventory

Once the expressive writing was done, I asked her to write the alphabet on a sheet of paper. She wrote the alphabet in cursive. I noticed that her letters are upright and not slanted to the right. Her uppercase letters, specifically "F," "I," "L," "Q" "S," "T,"  "Y" and "Z," is a bit different from my own background knowledge.

Alphabet

Then, I administered the Letter Recognition Inventory. During the first task, she was able to identify all uppercase letters but got an error in the lowercase letters because she identified lowercase "l" as "i." She pronounced letter "z" as /zey/. For task 2 to task 5, she was able to identify all name and match all letters except for lowercase "l" that she identified as "i."

Phonological and Phonics Awareness
I also administered the test for phonological and phonics awareness. Most of the instruction was given in Tagalog.

Before the first subtest, I gave some examples of rhyming words then asked her to give examples too. However, she got shy and moved her head left to right. Then, I gave some prompts like "chair" and "hair" and asked her if she could give more words that rhyme with those words. She still could not give examples. However, during the demonstration, she was able to determine the correct answers in the Teacher Demonstration Page. So, I proceeded to give the first subtest. I found out that Angela had some difficulty detecting rhymes because she was able to get only one correct answer out of five.

For counting syllables and matching initial sounds, she got the perfect score of five for each subtest. For, counting phonemes, she got two out of five. For comparing word lengths, she got 4 out of five. For representing phonemes with letters, she got 4 out of five.

Summary:

• Rhyming Words:                               1/5
• Counting Syllables:                            5/5
• Matching Initial Sounds:                    5/5
• Counting Phonemes:                         2/5
• Comparing Word Lengths:                4/5
• Representing Phonemes with Letters: 4/5

Phonics Knowledge
For phonics knowledge, I learned that Angela needs some support in terms of intial blends and digraphs, vowels, phonograms, and vowel pronunciation.
This is the summary for the test in phonics knowledge:

• Initial consonants                           10/10
• Initial blends                                    8/10
• Ending sounds                                 8/10
• Vowels (sound-symbol)                  7/10
• Phonograms (sound-symbol)           6/10
• Blending (sound-symbol)                 9/10
• Substitution                                   24/25
• Vowel Pronunciation                     11/15

Gray Oral Reading Test
When Angela was taking the Gray Oral Reading Test, she committed 7 gross mispronunciation, 15 partial mispronunciation, and 4 repetitions. I also noticed that she tends to ignore punctuation marks because she often did not pause or stop when she encounters one. There are many moments when her tone was monotonous but there were also parts that she read with proper emotion. I think that she reads with feelings when she understands what she is reading. For the comprehension part, I find it a bit surprising that she got lower scores for passages 1 and 2, compared with passages 3 and 4. My hunch is that when she was taking the test, she was already tired and wanted to go home because she kept on looking at the door.

I find it hard to evaluate the Gray Oral Reading Test because my student is a Filipino native speaker. If I will evaluate her using American standard accent, she would score very low in pronunciation.

Overall, I think the conduct of the first day assessment went well. My student and her mommy were very cooperative. The child was shy but was willing to do the things that I asked her to do. The results of the test gave me insights about my student's strengths and weaknesses. I hope to learn more about her in the next couple of assessment tools to be administered.