The Subject’s Background Information
The subject is a five-year-old boy named Travis, an American of Irish descent, native English speaker. His parents are divorced, he lives with his mother. He does not like reading too much and prefers television as a major source of information about the world. His favorite programs include cartoons and children’s shows like The Amazing World of Gumball and Henry Danger.
The Assessment Process
For this paper, I have chosen Sebastian Wren’s guide to the evaluation of cognitive aspects of early reading development. It is simple, it lets the tester be creative, and it has three easy steps: Reading Comprehension Assessment, Language Comprehension Assessment, and Decoding Assessment.
Travis seems to have trouble concentrating and often gets distracted. He can receive and process information during tests and lessons, but he does not seem to memorize it after a test or a lesson is done. He does not have any speech impediments and translates his thoughts into words quite well for his age. He comprehends verbal speech without any difficulties. When asked to read a passage, as it is predicted in Wren’s methodology, the subject sometimes stumbles through the words, reads them incorrectly, or makes emphases in the wrong places. The Maze cloze reading comprehension task (Faykus & McCurdy 1-21) showed that the subject could guess the omitted words fine unless they had the meaning he did not know or could not guess from the context.
He can answer questions about a text without any problems, which confirms the fact that he at least understands its contents. Sometimes the subject asks questions of his own to gain a better understanding of what is being required of
him. The subject seems to understand written text better when he reads it out loud. He says he does not really understand it as much when other people do not correct him or explain unfamiliar words to him along the way. Travis also has some minor problems with decoding information – often he does not have any idea how to pronounce the words he sees for the first time. When isolated words are presented to the subject in the oral form, he tends to repeat them correctly 50% of the time. As for the next test when a child is asked to match a spoken word or a part of a spoken word with a written word (Wren 4), the subject is successful approximately 80% of the time.
Questions that Show Gaps in the Subject’s Learning
The subject’s lack of proper attention poses a slight problem. As I have written earlier, he often gets distracted and cannot memorize certain bits of information due to that. I suspect a minor case of attention deficit disorder. Symptoms of ADD usually include “inattention, hyperactivity, or impulsivity” (“ADHD: Clinical Practice Guideline for the Diagnosis, Evaluation, and Treatment of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder in Children and Adolescents” 6). I presume, Travis has these symptoms. It does not amount to too much trouble for now, as he is able to perform the majority of the tasks and pass the majority of the tests with relative success. However, it might cause more serious academic problems for the subject in the future. I recommend a medical check, just in case.
Next Steps in the Assessment for the Subject
Accuracy and fluency of the subject are below average and might need some further attention. To better ensure the subject’s reading will develop accurately, it might be necessary to run additional fluency tests. Shinn et al. highlight the connection between fluency and reading speed as “an individual reader has only a limited amount of attention to devote to the reading process” (Shinn et al. 460). This means that a person who spends more time decoding what they read can spare even less on comprehending the meaning of what has been read. Increasing the reading speed will help the subject to heighten his language comprehension level and word-naming skills. To improve on his fluency, the subject is advised to do more reading exercises in general. Teachers also recommend reading more difficult books (Fisher & Frey 182).
Another way of testing and improving the subject’s fluency can be practiced: give him a list of regular words and ask him to read out loud as many as he can in one minute. The words should be listed in a hierarchic order, starting with the most difficult ones. If he struggles with a word for too long, tell him to go on to the next one right away without pronouncing the problematic word. The similar experiment was described by Shinn et al. (464).
The subject’s difficulties with silent reading might also be corrected by conducting an oral retell test. The subject will be given a small story to read silently and then asked to retell it in his own words. The estimation could be performed based on the amount of (a) incorrectly pronounced words and (b) incorrectly interpreted events in the story. The similar experiment was described by Shinn et al. to assess fluency in younger students; originally the task was supposed to be done in writing (464-465).
Travis is not the only kid with fluency problems. According to the report by the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing, many children “find reading to be challenging, tedious and fatiguing” and “may need to be given more time and more breaks to combat fatigue.” In the same report, it is also noted that the subjects needed enough motivation to perform their reading tasks: “Students should take tests administered by their own teachers who care about them, in a relaxed environment where students are encouraged and motivated” (Abedi et al. 65). Given my subject’s inability to concentrate, it is harder to estimate his capabilities according to the standards of regular beginning literacy learner assessment. He needs an unusual approach, and giving him motivation is one of its components. Exposing the child to minor medical attention is also in order as we need to determine whether his hyperactivity and a lack of concentration are neurological rather than temporary individual traits that are going to pass with time.
Works Cited
Abedi, Jamal, Jenny C. Kao, Seth Leon, Lisa Sullivan, Joan L. Herman, Rita Pope, Veena Nambiar, and Ann M. Mastergeorge. Exploring Factors That Affect the Accessibility of Reading Comprehension Assessments for Students with Disabilities: a Study of Segmented Text. Los Angeles, California: National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing, 2008. Print.
“ADHD: Clinical Practice Guideline for the Diagnosis, Evaluation, and Treatment of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder in Children and Adolescents.” Pediatrics, 128.5 (2001): 1-18. Print.
Faykus, Suzanne P., and Barry L. McCurdy. “Evaluating the sensitivity of the maze as an index of reading proficiency for students who are severely deficient in reading.” Education and Treatment of Children 21.1 (1998): 1-21. Print.
Fisher, Douglas, and Nancy Frey. “Close Reading in Elementary Schools.” The Reading Teacher 66.3 (2012): 179–188. Print.
Shinn, Mark R., Roland H. Good III, Nancy Knutson, W. David Tilly III, and Vicki L. Collins. “Curriculum-based measurement of oral reading fluency: A confirmatory analysis of its relation to reading.” School Psychology Review 21.3 (1992): 459-479. Print.
Wren, Sebastian. Methods of Assessing Cognitive Aspects of Early Reading Development, Austin, Texas: The Southwest Educational Development Laboratory, 2002. Print.