Angela's Diagnostic Assessment (Day 2)

On April 16, 2013, I continued the diagnostic assessment on my student, Angela (not her real name). Before we started the assessment, I gave her some crayons and a coloring sheet. Since I learned that her favorite cartoon is Fairly Odd Parents, I printed out some Fairly Odd Parents coloring sheets. During our first day, Angela wrote only words in response to my writing prompts. So, after she colored a page, I asked her if she can write a paragraph. She nodded. So, I asked her to write a paragraph about her mom and dad.

Fairly Odd Parents Coloring Sheet

Angela's Expressive Writing Sample

WRAT3 Blue Reading
Angela was able to read items 1 to 11 without difficulty but with Filipino accent. For items 12 to 23, she sometimes interchange letters or replace letters with another letter. Some long vowel sounds  were changed to short vowel sounds. Here is a summary of her scores:
Letter Reading = 15
Word Reading = 11
Total Reading = 26

Absolute Scores = 480
Standard Score = 8.8
Grade Score = 2
Combined Age Norms Grade Score = 2.5

WRAT3 Blue Written Encoding
Angela answered items 1 to 5 and 7 to 8 correctly; the rest has errors in spelling. Some words were spelled very differently (e.g. which for "reach," ercele for "circle," owin for "ruin," etc.). Summary of her scores is as follows:
Name/Letter Writing = 15
Word Spelling = 7
Total Spelling = 22


Absolute Scores = 484
Standard Score = 9.1
Grade Score = 2
Combined Age Norms Grade Score = 2.4

Elementary Spelling Inventory
I asked Angela to write the words that I was going to pronounce on the sheet of paper I provided her. Out of 25 items, she got 8 correctly. When I summed the feature points she got 30 out of 53 of these features correctly. So her total score is 38 out of 78. Based on this test, she is prone to commit errors in terms of syllables, affixes and derivational relations.

Angel's test sheet for Elementary Spelling Inventory

Dolch Basic Sight Words
Angela got 19/20 for the first list and 20/20 for the second list. This means that she can identify sight words automatically. This is one of her strengths. Her only error is the word "he," which she pronounced as "she." This is a frequent error even when reading other materials. Her pronouns get interchanged frequently.

Flash cards used in the Dolch test

Qualitative Reading Inventory
Angela recited the word lists for pre-primer up to third grade. Here is the summary of results:

Pre-primer  

• Total Correct Automatic (TCA) = 17/20 = 85% (Instructional)
• Total Correct Identified (TCI) = 2/20 = 10%
• Total Number Correct (TNC) = 19/20 = 95% (Independent)

Primer

• TCA = 11/20 = 55% (Frustration)
• TCI = 9/20 = 45%
• TNC = 20/20 = 100% (Instructional) 

First

• TCA = 16/20 = 80% (Instructional)
• TCI = 4/20 = 20% 
• TNC = 20/20 = 100% (Independent)

Second

• TCA = 10/20 = 50% (Frustration)
• TCI = 5/20 = 25% 
• TNC = 15/20 = 75% (Instructional)

Third 

• TCA = 8/20 = 40% (Frustration)
• TCI = 7/20 = 35% 
• TNC = 15/20 = 75% (Instructional)

Therefore, I think that Angela can handle first grade materials independently but she will have some level of difficulty when handling higher grade materials.



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I was thinking yesterday if I was underassessing my students because I have been desensitized about the current situation I am in. When I had a consultation with Teacher Hazelle, she said that my student is a poor speller. Before that day, I was thinking that Angela was doing okay and she is at par with the rest of students her age. I was thinking this because I asked my niece who  is the same age as her to take the spelling test and she got the same score. My niece studies in a public school. Aside from that, I work in a public school. I think I already got used to seeing low scores in my high school class that I now thought that that was the norm or the standard.

I need to review the standards for grade 2 so I can prepare better materials for her.