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During this lesson, I observed the teacher using formative assessments to check students understanding. The teacher provided students with sticky magnetic strips and word cards on the whiteboard and asked students to build and read a complete sentence. The teacher read the send He had a rash on his back. As students moved and arranged the sticky magnetic strips. The teacher told student to make sure to underline digraphs and circle trick words. She after asked the students who were seated to make sure that the student who placed the sentence on the board was correct.

Students seemed engaged and were following the teacher along. They were paying closed attention what would be the teacher’s next directions, word or sentence to be able to go up to the white board. While students were up on the board, teacher was seated next to the board asking the students on the rug guiding questions like what is your friend doing next.

Throughout the observation, the teacher made sure to observe each student that went up the board. She would make sure the students were correct and asked their peers to hold them accountable. It’s important for teachers to be able to provide these assessments to insure how to help students in the near future and seeing how they can differentiate the lesson plan to supports student’s learning.

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During one of the days I observed, one of the teachers was teaching the class on drafting their first draft; while she was teaching the class, the second teacher was in the back grading the previous picture novel the students had completed last week with a rubric of 1-4 and appropriate comments to each of the students work. The final product the students hand in are graded and returned to the students to give to their parents. The formal grading provides valuable insight not only for the parents but for the teachers to gauge where the students are in the class.

When the teacher finishes the first draft lesson which requires the students to draw out their main ideas and supporting details. The teacher asks the students to pick a room in the school and draw out the supporting details–the teacher provides a list of the smartboard with all the different rooms in the school. The teacher walks around the room, and gives out compliments to the children who have a clear and concise plan of what they want to write about. There are some students who understand the idea of what a first draft is, but didn’t pay close attention to the instructions of the assignment which requires the students to draw, so they write one word answers instead—the teacher asks the students to redo the draft following the instructions. In my opinion, one of the most understated forms of assessment is oral assessment because it has the power to not only give praise and compliments but also to redirect students in the right path.

During the draft lesson, I had the opportunity to walk around and observe the work the students produce. From the get go, it was obvious who understood the lesson and who didn’t. The students who understood immediately started drawing their main idea. One of the easiest ways to identify the students who need extra help is that they will simply ask! The biggest takeaway from all of my education courses is providing a safe and nurturing environment for the students—it had been my second week of fieldwork and the students got comfortable with my presence there. Since I was placed in a small class of 16 students, the ones who didn’t understand the lesson and were too shy to ask for help stood out the most because of their body language–staring blankly at the worksheet and looking around the classroom.

In this specific drafting lesson, the teacher learned about how students handle instruction–about half the class wrote one answer words instead of drawing it out. So, for the next writing lesson where the students are required to do multiple drafts, the teacher can tweak the first draft instruction to draw out and write out instead of just drawing. In the next session, where the students are writing out what they drew; the teacher provides feedback on how neatly they write, and compliments students who remembered to use their periods.

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During my fieldwork in this 1st grade classroom, I observed the teacher using a written response activity as a formative assessment connected to the book My Librarian Is a Camel. Students were asked to explain how children in Kenya get books, using text evidence to support their thinking. The worksheet included a checklist reminding students to include details from the text, write complete sentences, capitalize proper nouns, and use correct punctuation. As students worked, I noticed them rereading the text, referring to the checklist, and drawing to support their ideas, which showed engagement and different ways of processing information. By walking around the room and reviewing work like the sample shown,where the student mentions camels bringing books and attempts to use proper capitalization, the teacher could see who understood the lesson and who needed support. This assessment gave the teacher valuable information about students’ comprehension, writing skills, and use of conventions, helping guide future instruction and allowing opportunities to give students feedback on their literacy development.

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A students work during assessment review

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I observed the teacher giving students an assessment review because they would have an assessment 2 days later. Before they started, the teacher reviewed glue sounds with them using the Fundations cards. They also practiced their R-controlled vowel sounds using the book, but most just focused on coloring the page instead.They did their assessment with their Fundations workbooks. The teacher dictated some sounds for them to write (ones they just went over), then some words using a sentence as an example, and then finally a full sentence to transcribe. Some students had a difficult time due to the accent difference.

The teacher made it obvious to the class on who knows it or not because she singled out a few students to come sit on the rug and do it. The whole time, she yelled at those kids especially.

At the end, students had to show her and get approval/corrections to maybe get a sticker, but not all students end up getting checked. When students receive corrections they are only told what they did wrong, not what they improved on as well.

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Nia Benjamin

EDCE 42000

While observing in my fieldwork placement, I saw a lot of formative assessment strategies being used, whether it be simple ones like “Thumbs up, Thumbs Sideways, and Thumbs down” to gauge class engagement, to a bit more challenging ones like the exit ticket pictured. For the main lesson, the students focused on practicing their CVC words, how they would be used in a sentence, and how to identify the vowel in said CVC words. The teacher directed students to take out their Fundation Journals, and listen closely. She then said the sentence “The girl is always mad.” word by word, asking students to write the full sentence in their journals. Although some students had trouble spelling the word “Always”, that was not the part of the sentence being assessed. The word “Mad” was the word that the students had to be clear on, as that was one of the CVC words they discussed in both their previous phonics lesson (Padlet 1), and the CVC focused lesson beforehand. The teacher then went on to implement two other formative assessment strategies, those being a combination of whiteboards and turn-and-talk. She did this by asking students to pull out their whiteboards, and then identify the CVC word in the sentence, along with the middle vowel, and write it down. After this, they were told to talk to their peers at their table and compare answers. I really liked this combination assessment strategy, as it gave the teacher the ability to see what words the students were writing on their whiteboards when walking around, and gauge their understanding of the concept of CVC words, rather than just having them write the sentence down with no further developments. I thought the turn-and-talk portion was also excellent, because students who got the CVC word right, were helping other students that didn't fully understand the task. I believe that being able to teach others is a great way to foster understanding as well.

After this first sentence, she moved onto the next sentence which was a bit more challenging. She repeated the entire process for the sentence “The girl led the duck to the barn.”. This was a step up from the first sentence, as it was longer, therefore making it a bit trickier to identify the CVC word in the sentence. However, due to the students’ turn-and-talk with their peers, some students that had trouble before were now able to not only identify the CVC word in the sentence (“Led”), but also identify the vowel in the middle. This seemed to be a clear implementation of formative assessment strategies, and also a showcase of how it can be used to benefit struggling students.

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This was the students' exit ticket right after their phoneme lesson on digraphs.

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During this lesson, the students were going over some digraphs. They started going over with some flashcards at the carpet and then some individual work in their workbooks. The page of the workbook asked students to spell out words that contained digraphs and to underline the digraphs. Some of the words were talk, stop and ship.

A lot of the students looked at some of the classroom charts of words with digraphs to find the answer. For example, one of the students saw the word, shop, listed in the digraph chart and then realized that the word ship had the same digraph and proceeded to underline the

"sh" in ship.

After the individual work, the teacher stuck a giant piece of paper to the whiteboard. She explained that each student was going to walk up to the board pick a word, underline the digraph and sound it out. One by one, each student went up, picked a word, underlined a digraph and sounded it out. Some students completed the task with no issues and some students went up and underlined the right digraph but struggled to sound out the right sound. For example, one student underlined the "wh" in the word what, but made a /y/ sound instead of the /w/ sound. When mistakes occurred, the teacher reminded them of each of digraphs sound and where the student made of gotten the mistake from. For example with, what, the student probably confused it with the same sound structure as, why. This allowed the teacher to quickly access where some children are at and the minor mistakes that could be fixed through brief explanations to prevent them from happening in the future.

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This is the worksheet the teacher gave students to check if they understand their morning routine.  

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In the first-grade classroom I observed, the teacher began the lesson by reviewing short “a” and “u” words with the class. She held up cards with the words cat, map, jam, cup, sun and mug and had students say each sound out loud while emphazing each sound the letters made.The word cards had pictures beside the word  so students could connect the sounds to meaning.  The class practiced blending the sounds together to read the whole word. After this practice, the teacher gave the students a worksheet where they had to match short “U” words to the correct pictures. The teacher let me know she had given them an “a” worksheet the day before, and now she wanted to see how they were doing with their “U” words. This worksheet helped her check if students could use what they just learned on their own. While the students worked, the teacher would ask students how they were doing and towards the end she walked around the classroom to see if students completed it. As I walked around the classroom while the students did the worksheet, it was easy to tell who understood the lesson because those students could read the words and find the right picture quickly. The students who I saw struggling were the ones I noticed were distracted while on the rug. They didn't seem focused on the worksheet. One ESL student was just coloring the pictures. I had to assist the student and redirect them to what they were supposed to be doing. I explained what he had to do in Spanish, and like that, he actually started trying. The teacher gave quick feedback to support them, reminding them to break down the sounds, and she would shout out students who had made correct matches. By using this worksheet, the teacher learned who needed more practice with short “U” words and who was ready for the next step, which helped her plan future lessons that support everyone’s reading growth. The video “Elsa Cardenas Hagan: Making Connections for Structured Literacy Instruction Among English Learners” connects to my observation because Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan explains that English learners benefit from visual supports and making connections between sounds and meaning, which is what the teacher did with the word and picture cards. She also talks about the importance of strong language instruction for reading, and in my classroom, the teacher helped students blend sounds and understand the words they were reading. Hagan also encourages teachers to support multilingual learners by using their home language when possible, which is what I did when I helped the ESL student understand the instructions more clearly in Spanish.

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Padlest #2_JHidalgo : My Cooperative Teacher likes to print out phonic activity sheets like these that have illustration and the sound dividers. It reminded me of the worksheets that peers used for their presentations !

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‧₊˚✧ For this padlet assignment, I was able to get my hands on the worksheet that my cooperative teacher gives out to their students. Similar to the worksheets that our classmates have used in their presentation, my CT picks out worksheets from the web and prints it out for the students. They informed me that they also like how these worksheets have an illustration to match the word since it helps the children out.

‧₊˚✧ My CT looks for understanding of the lesson. So for this one in particular, she is looking to make sure that the students are able to hear all the sounds in the words and separate them correctly. One word in particular the some students had trouble with was the word boat. I think it is because when talking conversationally we (or at least I do) elongate the bo part of boat. So I say boat as bow-t. However, having the sound dividers help students ask/tell themselves: "No that can't be right, let me try again." Additionally, while the teacher did not use physical manipulative, she did help the students sound out the words using both the chopping board gesture and the tapping gesture. This is a strategy that the students are comfortable with so it allowed the class to go through the rest of the lesson smoothly!

‧₊˚✧ I believe that when the teacher sees these mistakes, she is able to assess which words she should take a little more time on. For the boat word, she used a similar word (coat) in order to correct the students misconceptions. I found this very informative and I applied to myself when going over this segment sound worksheet.

‧₊˚✧ One thing that I learned from this experience is that one must put themselves in the shoes of the student. Think about which words might seem tricky and find possible ways to correct the mistakes.

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	This image shows the main focus of their new literacy unit through the 2 essential questions that they are focusing on.

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When observing the second-grade classroom, I observed a literacy lesson in which the students were still focusing on introducing the new Unit Two, which was on Exploring Habitats.

A formative assessment that I observed was written responses. During the observation, the teacher introduced three to four books that focused on different habitats, for example, forest habitats, desert habitats, and more. During the lesson, the teacher would review each book and the students would answer particular questions, like their noticings of the book cover and mor,e through a discussion. Then the teacher would move on to more specific questions, like what the student would like to learn about the habitats, or what they knew about certain habitats, and they would write down in a packet full of different questions. They also had time to work on different questions in the packet on their own at their desk.

The students begin the lesson on the carpet. While the teacher is guiding part of the lesson, the students have a packet of questions, a pencil, and a folder that is specified for literacy lesson time, which they call “Fish Tank.” The students follow along, writing responses to the question or responding during the discussion, and they seem very engaged with the topic.

As I walk around the classroom, I do notice who understands the lesson and who doesn’t. I know this because many of the students were focused on writing their individual responses in silence. However, some students portrayed their frustration regarding not being able to answer the questions. Some students were receiving help from the teachers, and those who had paraprofessionals received help from their paraprofessionals.

The teacher is learning a variety of information about the students to inform future lessons. When encouraging students to describe the different things they know about the topic, which is Habitats, the teacher is gaining information about the students' background knowledge. Through asking questions about what they would like to learn in this unit about habitats, the teacher is learning about the students' different interests related to the lesson. When the teacher is walking around assisting students with their independent work, focusing on them one-on-one, she is learning about how to differentiate instruction for those students who might be struggling with the lesson and more.

When the teacher was walking around during the independent work, the students received feedback on their literacy skills. The teacher used a lot of positive reinforcement to encourage the students to continue doing good work.

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During the Heggerty and Fundations lessons, the teacher begins by telling the students they’ll be learning something new today. She smoothly transitions from Heggerty to Fundations by introducing what a digraph is. She explains, “A digraph is two consonants that make one sound.” Then, she shows an example using the sound qu, since the students practice tapping out sounds every day and are already familiar with it. Next, the teacher pulls out flashcards for the digraphs, each showing the letters and an image: sh (ship), wh (whistle), th (thumb), and ck (sock). She emphasizes that this part is very important, explaining that ck always comes at the end of a word, wh always at the beginning, and sh and th can appear at the beginning, middle, or end. The students on the rug begin to show understanding and excitement, especially when they realize ck always comes at the end of words. They start calling out examples with ck, showing their engagement and curiosity. The teacher reviews the flashcards again with the class, saying, “Sh-ship-sh, wh-whistle-wh, th-thumb-th, and ck-sock-ck.” As she models each sound, the students finger-tap the words to separate the sounds. She then asks them to turn and talk to their rug partner about what they now know about digraphs. Afterward, the teacher transitions the class to their seats and asks them to take out their whiteboards. She calls out a word with a digraph so students can write it down, giving her a quick way to check for understanding. For example, she says the word thin, and as I walked around, I heard students slowly sounding it out while writing. Most students spelled it correctly and underlined the digraph, showing that they understood the concept, though a few still needed more support. The teacher then reviewed the word on the board, allowing everyone to check their work. She even connected the lesson to a real-life example by pointing out that a student’s name, Jack, includes a digraph. The students laughed and eagerly wrote it on their whiteboards, remaining engaged throughout the activity. This lesson included several formative assessments, such as whiteboard spelling, partner discussions, and teacher observation. These strategies allowed the teacher to immediately see which students grasped the concept and which needed extra help. Although students weren’t given individual feedback, the whole-class review served as collective feedback and reinforcement. Walking around the room made it clear who understood, the students who could correctly spell and underline the digraphs showed strong understanding, while those hesitating or misspelling needed more support. Through these observations, the teacher could see which digraphs might need more practice and which students may benefit from small-group review. Overall, this experience showed me how formative assessments can be naturally built into phonics instruction to check understanding in real time while keeping students active and engaged in their learning.

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In the classroom that I observed, The teacher asked students to participate and come up to the front to lead the class in their daily phonic and phonemic recital. Multiple students would participate leading while the rest would following and repeat it back. The teacher would watch intensely watching which students are participating and which students are following along. the teacher would also call on students who aren't active in participation.

Another assessment that I was able to observed was a vocabulary assessment. The teacher would read a book to the students during read aloud while doing work like categorizing what is going on in different seasons to the leaves. The chart is separated to summer, autumn, winter, spring and summer and students would listen to key words they hear from the read aloud and write them down in the chart. So for Autumn students would write down "leaves turn red, orange and brown" The teacher would walk around rereading and double checking students' work and talk about it with the class after. After this read aloud the vocabulary assessment was passed out. Some words like "huddle" was in the assessment and in the book and the teacher would give an example such as "Do we huddle when it's warm out?" the students would check yes or no on their sheet.

While I walk around the classroom , I can see that some students are struggling during the assessment. Some students are leaving the answers blank while some students constantly asked the teacher to repeat the sentence. The teacher would repeat the sentence 3-4 times depending on how many students are asking her to repeat it. There was one student in particular who moves around a lot and at least half of his answer was blank.

The teacher does understand that maybe she would have to plan for extra time because she was unable to repeat for all sentences due to time constraints.

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This image provides examples and explanations, more so helpful reminders to assist the students with their story maps that they would complete after reading their book of the week. Their overall question is, “How do books change lives around the world?” which is why they fill out story maps for each book they read. This week’s story map included having to write their own stories using characters, adjectives, and settings in their story and sentences.

The children begin their activities. They draw the main characters on picture charts and write out their sentences. Miss Lauren emphasizes using time order words. She goes up to a student and asks him if he included time order words. He emphasizes that he wrote a long sentence. She encourages him and reassures him that he’s doing a good job, asking again if he sees any time to order words from the chart on his paper. He says no, and she asks where he can add some. He decides to add the time order word “first” to the beginning of his sentence. He carefully checks off the list provided at the bottom of their page and continues to write his story and draw his pictures.

As I walk around, I notice that many students created short sentences and then added on with other short sentences to complete their stories. I also noticed a student who, when we visited the public library on a trip, asked me to help her find a chapter book. I found that interesting because, compared to other students in her class who were reading books with shorter sentences, she was reading full-blown chapter books. For her story maps and her stories, she had very coherent sentences with plots and complete time order words, adjectives, nouns, and verbs, along with the correct punctuation and capitalization. I found it so cute when she would reread her work and check it over. Ms Lauren noticed this too and told me how this student loves writing and reading. It’s so nice seeing how dedicated she is to her schoolwork, even in math and science.

As I continue to walk around, I notice that many students had spelling mistakes, and again, they would spell words how they sounded out, but they tried their best, and it still made sense in the context of their stories. Some students were a bit more distracted and were not able to fully grasp writing their own stories. A lot of them felt that they didn’t know what to write. Mr. Alex, the TA in the classroom, was helping more students one-on-one, while Ms Lauren helped a small group on the rug. I felt as though they were both very attentive and interactive with the students, and with the charts on the board and printed out on their tables, they were easily able to see examples that could help them with their stories. These were not the only materials provided; in their green folders, they had an abundance of materials to help them write their sentences and stories. It definitely seems that both Mr. Alex and Ms Lauren are very dedicated to making sure that the students are able to not only do the work but also understand the work that they are doing.

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The classroom I observed is a first grade class. For the formative assessment the teacher used many ways. The teacher uses think-pair-share to help students talk about their ideas and check if they understand the lesson. Students first think on their own, then share with a partner, and finally discuss with the class. The teacher also uses written responses to see how well students can explain what they learned. While students are working, the teacher walks around the room to check their progress and answer questions. This helps the teacher know who needs more help and who understands the lesson well. During the lesson, the students listen to the teacher and follow directions. They work with partners to share their ideas and write their answers. The students stay engaged by discussing, writing, and asking questions. However, a few of them don’t talk to their partner so the teacher comes around and makes sure they understand and start participating. Yes, I can tell who understands the lesson and who does not. I know this by watching how students work and listen to their discussions. If a student is confused, they would ask questions or make mistakes in their written responses. Some just don’t do anything so the teacher knows that they need help. In a phonics lesson, the teacher listens to how students sound out words during reading practice. If some students have trouble with certain letter sounds, the teacher knows they need more practice on those sounds. She pulls them into small-group activities to help them improve before moving on to new sounds. Yes they are given feedback. The teacher says “Good job sounding out that word,” or “Let’s try that word again and listen to the vowel sound.” She also praises their effort and reminds them to keep practicing. I believe the teacher did a great job with teaching her class the lesson and making sure they understood it as well.

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Worksheet after introduction of power words. With two of the power words: Space and planet. 

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In this introductory lesson of module 2, I saw the teacher giving the students an introduction to the power words that they will see in the books that they'll be reading. The teaching point of the lesson was to answer questions and discuss meanings of power words. After refreshing their memories by asking students questions like 'What does identify means? What genre do you think the book will be about? What can we do to identify the things around us?'. The teacher proceeded to introduce the power words. Which were amount, material, space, example, easily, forms, planet, and tasty. After explaining what each word meant and acting it out for the students, the teacher used questions like; What is an example of something you can drink? Name a planet other than earth? What is something you can do easily? Which place has the greater amount of space, the school gym or the classroom? and finally If a food is tasty are you likely to eat it again? These questions helped the teacher check if students understood the new vocabulary. Then she gave the students a worksheet where they had to draw a picture of a planet and show the stars in the space around the planet.

As I walked around the room, I knew who was understanding the introductory lesson and who was not. I was able to know by how the students got involved after the teacher asked each question. The ones who were understanding would excitedly raise their hands each time to answer. While the ones who still needed more time to understand would not raise their hands. Also, when the teacher would call on specific students who looked a little lost, they would answer the questions with things that had nothing to do with the lesson. So, the teacher would reword the questions and add more examples so those students would be able to understand.

The teacher used questions and a task as a formative assessment. With every question asked during the lesson, the teacher was gathering valuable information. Information like if they retained the meaning of the vocabulary they had already learned before and if she needed to review those words in future lessons. Then with the new vocabulary, the questions asked were furthering the students understanding of the words they had just learned. The final task given, which was a worksheet that include some of the new learned power words, showed if the students understood and remembered what two of the new vocabulary words meant.

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This is a photo of the sheet the teacher used to project during the whole group lesson on the rug. As she spoke with her class, she wrote down their ideas and reviewed different aspects of how to write a personal narrative.

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I observed a writing lesson that focused on strengthening the students’ personal narrative writing. The lesson was about organizing their story into a beginning, middle, and end while working on using descriptive language. Throughout the lesson, the teacher performed formative assessment by using the work the students do on their notebook, “planning sheets,” and a final work sheet to check for her students’ understanding and to know how to approach future lessons.

The teacher started the lesson in a whole group setting on the rug. During the lesson, the teacher asked clarifying questions about how to create a narrative. She asked them questions like “How do you introduce your story?”. She looked for different responses from students. Some students had a good grasp on the parts of a narrative and some students needed some reminding. When this happened, the teacher gave examples of ways one can introduce a story, or examples of setting etc. This session of reviewing their narrative in an oral way reminded me of our readings that discussed the importance helping students become better readers and writers by using conversation. I feel that this lesson provided that for students. After the whole group lesson, students went on to begin their narrative stories independently. First they drafted their thoughts into their notebooks and then they used their draft to write their narratives onto a scaffolded planning sheet, divided into labeled sections for the beginning, middle, and end.

This worksheet was a great assessment tool to help the teacher see each individual’s level of understanding. It also tested for many different types of knowledge. Reading comprehension, spelling/phonics, and their ability to structure their writing in a sequential manner. As I moved around the room, it was easy to notice which students understood the task. I read many of the students’ work. I was able to gather data about which students didn’t understand very quickly because the ones who didn’t were not on topic. For the students who struggled to write or come up with a story, the teacher provided small group support.

The teacher went around the room for the entirety of the writing activity. She read the students’ work and pointed out things she liked about their writing and worked one on one with students if she felt they needed extra help. She asked them leading questions to help them think more deeply about what they are writing. For some students she went over the different examples of activities you can do outdoors and tried to encourage them to think about stuff they like to do when outdoors. The most consistent thing I notices was that conversing with the students and asking clarifying questions seemed to help a lot of students. She asked students questions like ““Who were you with?” “where?” “What were you doing?”

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I am doing my observation in the first-grade classroom at PS 748 in Brooklyn. The classroom has 17 students. I go to my observation every Friday. The morning starts with a morning meeting, and after that, the class begins the ELA lesson.

During that day, the students were learning about digraphs. For a few days, the students were learning about digraphs, so they already had prior knowledge about the sounds that sh, ch, and th make. The teacher called the students to the carpet and asked them to take their whiteboards and markers. When kids were sitting on the rug, I recognized that the whiteboard came with Elkonin boxes.

After all the students sat on the rug with their whiteboards, the teacher asked them to sound out the word 'rash'. The students were using their fingers to sound it out and write it on the whiteboard. After everyone was done, the teacher asked the students to turn their whiteboards so she could see their answers. After the teacher saw everyone’s answer, she asked the students how many sounds the word ‘rash’ makes. After the students answered her questions, she placed the word in the boxes and asked one of the students to come up to the board and underline the digraphs.

After that, she also asked them to write ‘rich’, ‘rush’, ‘shop’, ‘bath’, and ‘fish’. While students were writing their answers, the teacher would ask them what sound they heard, how many sounds each word made, and what the first and last sounds of each word were. The teacher was able to check the work of her students every time they would turn around their whiteboard, each time she would pick up different students to come up to the board, she would ask the students about the sounds of the word, and underline diagraph, so she was able to check how much children understand and whey they have problems with at the moment.

While observing the teacher and students, I noticed that the students were doing very well with this assignment. The only two students who were struggling were the ESL students, one student speaks Russian, and the other speaks Spanish. While the teacher was very engaged with the group, I felt the two students who were struggling with the assignment didn’t receive enough help, which I believe was due to the language barrier.

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During the lesson, I observed the teacher use several formative assessment strategies to check for student understanding. One method was randomly selecting a student to lead the class in reading a word, for example, a – apple – /æ/. This allowed the teacher to see if students could accurately produce the target sound and participate confidently.

Another assessment involved magnetic boards. The teacher would say the sounds of a word, such as /m/ /ɒ/ /p/ for mop, and students needed to find the correct letters on the magnetic boards and arrange them to form the word. Next, the teacher changed one sound when reading aloud—for example, saying /m/ /æ/ /p/—and students had to listen carefully and rearrange the letters to spell the new word map. This activity assessed students’ ability to connect phonemes to graphemes and recognize how changing sounds affects word spelling.

The teacher also used direct kinesthetic phonemic awareness checks. For example, asking, “Who can clap out the sounds in this word?” helped the teacher immediately identify students who could segment a word into individual sounds (e.g., /m/ /ʌ/ /d/ for mud) and those who needed more support. Follow-up questions like “Which letters do we need to spell this word?” provided information about students’ understanding of sound-letter correspondence.

The teacher used this information to inform future lessons by identifying students who needed additional support in phonemic awareness or letter-sound mapping. Students received immediate feedback during the activities, as the teacher corrected errors, praised correct responses, and guided them to the correct answers. These formative assessments helped the teacher monitor literacy skills in real time and plan targeted instruction.

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This image shows the letter chart used during the lesson, which includes glued sounds, digraphs, and bonus letters. The whiteboards show examples of student work from their phonics formative assessment. 

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For this fieldwork observation, I observed Ms. Ferris’ 2nd grade class’ word study lesson on phonics and phonemic awareness. She follows the same routine, beginning with phonics before integrating phonemic awareness. She began the lesson with phonics drills, using a letter chart and picking a student to read and sound out all the letters. The student said, “a, apple, /a/, b, bat, /b/, c, cat, /c/, d, dog, /d/…” followed by digraphs and glued sounds like “wh, whistle, /wh/” and “ang, fang, /ang/.” They had 3 extra cards to drill, which were glued sounds with long vowel sounds, like “ild, wild, /ild/, ind, find, /ind/, old, cold, /old/, olt, colt, /olt/, ost, post, /ost/.” The entire class echoed the student, through each letter, digraph, and glued sound, actively participating. Next, a student specified the cards based on color and pointed out digraphs, glued sounds, bonus letters, and number of sounds. Ms. Ferris asked the class to compare short and long glued sounds. A student was correctly able to state their differences and identified that glued sounds have 1 sound and that the long vowel sounds in glued sounds as a closed syllable exception. This discussion allowed her to assess students' understanding of previously taught concepts.

She reviewed the word “fold,” having students echo. She then used the word in a sentence: “Make sure you fold your laundry.” She then taps it out as a class, “f-old–/f/-/old/, fold.” She then writes it on the board and asks a student to mark it. Following this, Ms. Ferris asked the student to explain what they had marked and why. A student marked the long “o” sound, boxed “old,” and explained it was a closed-syllable exception because the “o” is a long vowel. Ms. Ferris follows this same process as she also reviews words that include bonus letters, short glued sounds, and consonant blends (swell, bolt, sang), asking consistent “why” questions to assess concepts and asking students to repeat after their classmate in unison. Asking students to mark consonant blends, bonus letters, or glued sounds if needed while explaining their reasoning, reinforcing understanding of previous concepts learned.

For formative assessment, Ms. Ferris used whiteboards to assess by having students spell and mark it on their board during their dictation activity. Students spelled the sound they heard: “ink, olt, and all,” demonstrating understanding of short and long glued sounds. She continues the assessment with the words dress, dunk, champ, hink, scold, colt, and brost. By first saying the word, having the class echo, having students tap the word together, and having them mark it on their whiteboards. Then the teacher picks a student to explain their reasoning for their markings. Ms. Ferris gave immediate feedback on their literacy; as she was walking around for the word “scold,” she asked the student to tap out the word (sc-old– /sk/–/old/, scold) and to look at the letter cards for any clues, as some students spelled “scold” with an “ed” at the end. I had also noticed students struggling with this while walking around the room, as some students spelled “scold” as “scoled,” confusing long vowel sounds with short ones. These observations help Ms. Ferris’ future lessons, as through walking around the room and seeing each student's response, she can see that some students still have some confusion about writing the correct letters for some long vowel sounds. Through this observation, I saw how Ms. Ferris uses white boards as assessment and feedback, maintaining active engagement and improving literacy skills.

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During my observation, I was able to see both a formative and a summative assessment take place. For the formative assessment, the teacher conducted a quick spelling and language activity using the sentence “The fastest foxes sprinted there by the hill.” This task allowed the teacher to assess whether students could spell complete sentences correctly, add suffixes such as -est (fast → fastest) and -es (fox → foxes), break words into sound segments (for example, s/p/r/i/n/t/i/d) (There is a chart on the wall that clarifies that “-ed” is pronounced /id/), and group words into scoops.

During this assessment, students first identified base words such as fast, fox, and sprint. They then practiced adding the suffixes and divided the sentence into three scoops: “The fastest foxes,” “sprinted there,” and “by the hills.” After writing independently, students spelled the sentence aloud as a class while the teacher called on multiple students to check for understanding. The teacher circulated the room, observing students’ work closely and providing immediate corrective feedback. She ensured that each student’s work was complete and accurate before allowing them to close their books.

As I walked around the room, I could clearly identify which students understood the lesson and which did not. The students who confidently volunteered to spell words aloud or correct capitalization demonstrated understanding of the concept. The teacher also identified struggling students by noticing who did not raise their hands, calling on them intentionally to involve them in the lesson, and offering one-on-one support as needed. By observing both student participation and written work, the teacher was able to understand each student’s grasp of spelling, phonics, and grammar, which could inform future lessons and small-group instruction.

Following this quick formative assessment, the class transitioned to a shared reading activity. Students gathered in the meeting area and read a passage together before moving to independent reading at their desks. The teacher emphasized the idea of “scoops,” or phrasing words that naturally belong together, to support reading fluency and comprehension. Throughout the activity, she asked comprehension questions such as, “What’s the problem in the story?” and “What’s the main point of the second paragraph?” Students responded with key ideas like “The colt is missing” and “She is sad.”

The teacher continually monitored student engagement by listening to the group’s reading volume and fluency, pausing when voices grew too quiet and prompting students to project more confidently. She called on individual students by name when she didn’t hear them reading aloud and reminded them to change their tone when reading sentences with exclamation points to reinforce expressive reading.

Students also received consistent feedback about their literacy skills during and after the activities. The teacher corrected errors immediately and offered gentle redirection to those who needed additional support. This feedback helped students recognize their strengths and areas for improvement in both writing and reading.

In addition to the formative assessment, I also observed an MSOL summative assessment, which provided a useful comparison between the two types of evaluations. The formative assessment provided real-time feedback and allowed for the adjustment of instruction, while the summative assessment measured what students had learned after completing the instruction. Observing both highlighted the contrast in teacher support and student engagement between assessments designed for learning versus those designed for evaluation.

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The image is demonstrating the smog reading group discussions that were held at the teacher's desk, where she is following along in the book while one of the students reads it. She is asking questions based on comprehension, which is why she has the story structure organizer paper beside her. 

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The teacher I have been observing in a second-grade classroom has used numerous formative assessments. She constantly asked students to “reread everything we wrote” and “make sure it makes sense,” which helped her see if students understood what they were reading and writing. She also had them “turn and talk” with partners to explain their thinking or reread sentences together. I noticed how she would walk around listening in, sometimes stopping to ask follow-up questions or give quick feedback like, “Try that again, does that sound right?” or “Good job fixing that word.” Students also used whiteboards during Fundations time to write words and mark vowels or digraphs, and the teacher would check their boards before moving on. These small checks helped her see who needed more support in real time. She also does a spelling quiz every morning, and they review the words that they have previously been working on. The teacher says the spelling words out loud twice, then once in a sentence, and then the students copy them onto a piece of paper.

While students were working, most were either rereading, writing, or partner reading. I could tell who understood the lesson and who didn’t because the ones who were confident read smoothly and self-corrected, while others paused or looked to the teacher for help. The teacher paid close attention to that and sometimes tried to guide them through a tricky word. You could see her taking mental notes about which students were still mixing up vowel teams or forgetting to mark bonus letters. That information clearly helps her decide what skills to review or which groups might need extra practice later on.

Students were definitely given feedback about their literacy skills throughout the lesson. I heard her say things like, “You remembered to mark your vowel team, nice work,” or “Check your word again, does it look right?” This was her giving feedback that guided them back to the right steps. I really liked how the feedback was instant and connected to what they were learning, so students could fix mistakes right away and feel successful. She would also take some students to her desk and would do small reading groups with them individually. She showed me the rubric she used to assess where they are up to in the new reading skill they have just learned. This time, they were working on reading with fluency and comprehension. She was asking the students about what happened in the beginning, middle, and end of the book. She was learning which students understood what was happening in the book, and she was testing if they understood what reading with fluency meant (she would do this by reiterating that when we read words in quotation marks, we should be reading as if we were speaking to a friend.

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Students Collaborating and Sharing Ideas During a Reading Lesson Focused on Technology Around the World

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During this ELA lesson, the main formative assessment I noticed was the reading response activity that students worked on with their partners. The teacher used this task to check how well students understood the story “A Window to the World.” She also paid attention to their conversations while they discussed their ideas, which helped her see how much they understood before they even started writing. This type of activity let the teacher observe students’ comprehension in a natural and interactive way.

As the students worked, they were talking to each other, sharing their thoughts, and writing down their responses. Some students asked their partners for help when they weren’t sure about something, while others asked the teacher to explain certain words or check their spelling. The classroom felt active and collaborative, and students seemed comfortable discussing their ideas and asking for help when they needed it.

As I walked around the room, it was easy to tell who understood the story and who might need more support. The students who understood the reading were able to explain their ideas clearly and connect them to the text. Others seemed unsure or quiet, and they often waited for the teacher’s help before continuing. The teacher noticed this too, and she took time to guide those students by asking them questions or giving short explanations to help them get back on track.

From this activity, the teacher learned a lot about each student’s reading and writing skills. She could see who needed more help with comprehension, vocabulary, or spelling. As she moved around the room, she gave quick feedback and corrected words when students asked for help. This not only helped students improve their responses right away but also gave the teacher information to plan future lessons that focus on the areas where students still need practice.

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This image illustrates the vocabulary assessment worksheet that student used and completed during the lesson.  

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During this observation, the teacher focused on literacy assessments connected to the book My Librarian Is a Camel, which explores how children around the world access books. The lesson began with a review of the vocabulary word wall. The teacher has students together read the vocabulary word out loud and have one student to use the vocabulary in a sentence. If a student is struggling the teacher will have the student pick another classmate to help.

After this activity each student was given a vocabulary assessment sheet that includes the reviewed key words from the book such as borrow, eager, migrant, mobile, imagination, and remote. The teacher read each vocabulary word out loud and will ask short questions using the vocabulary words, such as:

“Can you borrow a chair?”

“Is a city a remote place?”

“If a person is eager, are they sad?”

Students listened each question carefully and would circle a smiley face for “yes” or a frown face for “no” if the statement of the question is true or not. The teacher repeated the questions, paused to give students thinking time, and made sure everyone was following along before saying the correct answer.

I noticed that the students who struggled most during these assessments were the four ESL students in the class, two who spoke Spanish and two who spoke Russian. They often needed extra time to understand the directions and occasionally asked for help translating certain words. The teacher supported them by rereading questions, simplifying explanations, and modeling sentence structures to help them express their ideas.

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Students are sitting on the floor with whiteboards, writing the letter s as their teacher models the /s/ sound. This activity demonstrates a formative assessment strategy where the teacher can immediately observe each student’s understanding of letter and writing. By observing students’ whiteboards, the teacher quickly identifies who needs extra support and who has mastered the skill.

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During this literacy lesson, I observed how the teacher used various formative assessments to check students’ understanding of phonics. The teacher used whiteboards for students to write the letters as she made the sounds, allowing her to see who was forming the letters correctly and who needed more help. She also used oral repetition, phonics slides, and short guided reading to check for sound recognition and blending skills.

The routines and expectations were very clear and students seemed to understand well. The teacher modeled each activity step-by-step, used skywriting to show letter formation, and guided students through repetition and echo reading. Students were engaged, listening carefully and responding together. These consistent routines have successfully created a calm and focused learning environment.

I also noticed that the teacher modeled mouth movements and used pictures on slides to show how to articulate sounds like /m/ and /n/. The materials used included whiteboards, markers, reading booklets, and vocabulary cards, which all supported hands-on phonics practice. While the lesson was in full English, the teacher also provided plenty of repetition and gestures that helped ELLs to follow along. This lesson closely connects to our course by showing how phonics instruction and formative assessments can work together to support students in early literacy. The teachers use modeling and immediate feedback strategies that are greatly aligned with what we’ve learned about how to help children build a strong phonemic awareness.

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This photo shows flashcards the teacher used to assess students in their understanding of phonics/phonemic awareness taught in the classroom. 

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Masuma Begum

EDCE 32300

Megan Blumenreich

Fieldwork observation 2-assessment

October 20, 2025

In the classroom, I observed the teacher using alphabet flashcards with pictures to assess the students in the classroom. Each time he took out the cards, the students had to say each letter “a, apple \a\,” b, bat, \b\,” “c, cat, \c\” and so on without the teacher asking them to repeat after him. He also had students complete worksheets with three parts, sounds, CVC, and sentences to showcase their understanding. By assessing the students, the teacher told me that his goal was to ensure that students associate visual and auditory learning with these letters, images, words, and sentences. This formative assessment helps the teacher understand if the students are ready to move onto next steps of phonics instructions which students will need assistance and practice.

The teacher used worksheets that he distributed throughout the classroom to assess student’s ability to write letters by forming correct stroke orders. Each letter was written in the plane, sun, grass, or worm lines, depending on the type and placement of the letters. Then, he sounded out the letters, \f\, \e\, and \b\ for students to understand what letters does that sound make and write it down.This activity allowed the teacher to check each student’s skills and understanding of letter formation in a structured and visual way.

This observation connects to the reading from Shifting The Balance chapter 2, which emphasizes that “to develop awareness of phonemes, we have to rewire our brains, retraining our phonological processing systems for a new job. This new job involves learning to listen inside of words for tiny, little, mostly meaningless bits called phonemes. It includes pulling the sounds in spoken language apart, fishing them out individually, swapping or rearranging them, and pulling them back together” (Burkins and Yates, 2024). This quote explains that learning requires students to train their brains to recognize and manipulate small ounces of sounds. The teacher followed this process by using a phonics assessment worksheet and flashcards that asked students to write letters based on the sounds they heard. By making connections between sound and written words, rewiring our brains for phonemic awareness helps us understand its structure differently.

Furthermore, the teacher also assessed students by having them write CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words and wrote simple sentences for the class to follow along as well. During this assessment, the teacher used flashcards to review sounds and letters, which led to students to remember and apply their phonics knowledge while completing their worksheets and sentences. Through the combination of worksheets, sentence writing, and flashcards, it allowed students to engage with phonemes, which deepened their understanding of how sounds correspond with letters and words.

Overall, the teacher’s use of worksheets, sentence writing, and flashcards provided assessment of a student's phonics skills while supporting those who needed extra help. By observing this approach, it highlighted how phonemic awareness can be strengthened by connecting sounds to letters and words, reinforcing visual and auditory understanding for improvement throughout the assessment.