Clinical Field Experience C: Literacy Pre-Assessment

Answer

Clinical Field Experience C: Literacy Pre-Assessment

Part 1: Standards‐Based Literacy Assessment

The assessment of the literacy skills of learners aids in the development of activities suitable for their learning needs. Literacy assessment is one of the great practices which has been used to drive instruction (Kerkhoff & Spires, 2015). For this clinical filed experiment, I will be working with a group of 5 students in kindergarten. The literacy standards for reading comprehension and vocabulary in which the pre-assessment will be done is CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.K.2. A: Recognize and produce rhyming words (CCSSI, 2019). In specific, the learning objective which is both developmentally appropriate for the five students and which aligns with the state standards is that of equipping learners with skills to identify not only any rhyming words but also produce rhyming words.

The pre-assessment activity will be based on the book “Cat in The Hat.” In specific, the five students will be required to go through the text of the book. After reading through the book, the learners will then be told to identify as many rhyming words as possible from the story. The aim of such an exercise will be to pre-assess whether the learners have any understanding of what rhyming words are and whether they can point them out from a story. In the next exercise, the learners will be asked to produce five sets of rhyming words from their own without having to identify them from the book. From the pre-assessment, the teacher will record down and note any learning needs based on the assessment. The results of the pre-assessment will be used to drive instructions by ensuring that the instructions are in tandem with the learning needs of the students.

Part 2: Reflection

            The pre-assessment done on the five students had the objective of gauging the ability of the learners to identify and produce rhyming words. The feedback from the mentor has demonstrated that the assessment was appropriate in ensuring that the instructions that were to be used on the group of learners were developmentally appropriate to their learning needs (Kerkhoff & Spires, 2015). One of the strengths of the assessment is that it evaluated not only the reading needs of the learners but also their writing abilities. In specific, through the identification of the rhyming words from a story, learners could demonstrate their ability to read and find rhyming words. Similarly, the production of rhyming words assesses the level of writing of the learners. Based on the assessment, the learners have an opportunity to improve on their writing through production of rhyming words.

To better assess the students reading skills, I would change this assessment to include a story with some complex words and vocabulary. In specific, instead of using a story with grade-appropriate words, I would change to one which has more complex words. Using such a method will ensure that I can better assess the reading skills of the learners. The findings of the assessment will inform future professional practice in several ways. One of those is that they will reinforce the importance of pre-assessment in the development of developmentally appropriate instructions (Kerkhoff & Spires, 2015). Additionally, the results of the pre-assessment activity will help future professionals in ensuring that they use the state standards as the basis for any reading comprehension and vocabulary and thus become better prepared to address the needs of the learners based on a pre-assessment.

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