Journal-Patrick2

Journal Entry 2

This individual performance assessment was evaluating a student’s accuracy, fluency, comprehension, and retell ability. The teacher worked one-on-one with a student and they read to the book __Bread for Ducks__ to test the four reading skills. The student read out loud while the teacher assessed his fluency and after reading the student was asked numerous comprehension questions. Once he had answered the comprehension questions the teacher asked the student to give her a summary of what the plot was. This summary allowed the teacher to assess the students retell ability.
 * Context:**

The teacher is able to determine each student’s reading ability and monthly improvement through her assessment sheet. The teacher has a typed up version of __Bread for Ducks__ so that she can make marks where the student has difficulty reading. If a student cannot say a word, has mispronunciation, or reads slowly the teacher marks it on her sheet. The teacher is mostly looking for syntax, visual, and self correction errors while the student reads. When the student is unable to decode a word they are told to skip it and move on. The teacher has found that when a student struggles too long on a word it affects the rest of the testing because the student becomes more nervous. After reading out loud the student is then asked comprehension questions that have the students talk about what they read, work on inferences, and make connections between things. The students are also asked to give a retell. The teacher asked this particular student, “What do you remember from the story? Can you tell everything you remember?” When the student is giving the retell and makes generalizations (her, him, they, them) she makes the student clarify and say exactly who it is. This helps the student work on their retell ability.
 * Details:**

After she and the student had finished she gave him good feedback. The teacher told this student the things he excelled in and also the things they will work on over the next month. After the assessment the teacher met with me and told me what she learned from the testing. This student was spending too much effort decoding the words, and was unable to give a full retell. These results told the teacher that she and the student needed to work more on his cite words so that he could focus on the meaning on the book and not the words themselves. One thing that the teacher did notice and was happy about was the amount of self-correction the student was making. He didn’t just move on from a word that was problematic, like most children do, he instead went back and made sure he said everything correctly.

I believe that this was an effective assessment on the students reading ability. It didn’t just pin point one aspect of reading but looked at the student’s fluency, accuracy, comprehension, and retell ability. The teacher now has on recorded the student’s progress for that month and is able to go back and look for improvement and strategies that might help that student in the future. If I were to do this assessment the only thing I would do differently was work in a more secluded part of the classroom. Throughout the test other students were coming up and interrupting the testing. I don’t think it dramatically affected the student being testing but it definitely was a distraction.
 * Reflection:**

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