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Socially I believe that Sophia fits right in and has come a long way throughout the year. She started off not knowing her letters and didn’t have much progress until February. After her observations, She has flourished to being able to use visual cues and reading sylables on her own by creating words.

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For Sophia’s first observation, I created a specific formative assessment for her that I found would best document her progression with knowing her letter sounds. while creating the worksheet, I use images that she would be familiar with online games that we have available to them on clever. I also emphasized the letters that have been reviewed from the past month that I think that she would have practice. Coincidentally her mother volunteered the day that she took the formative assessment and was painting for a project that we needed for the door. During a lesson the only opportunity I had to be able to work with Sophia one on one I pulled her out of the classroom to work on the assessment with me. While taking the assessment, her mother was watching her in close proximity and helped me see how she would work when her mother was around. It was interesting to see how there was a moment where she didn’t know how to answer and ask her mother for help. Thankfully, her mother really wanted her to work independently and guided her to do it on her own, giving me the perspective that parents don’t always want to hold their hand.

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What I found that went well during this one on one assessment was very few aspects. She was able to maintain a positive attitude and did not display frustration when she wasn’t sure of her answer. She was able to easily identify all vowels and was able to move along pretty swiftly when identifying the letter names even if they were wrong. This is where I got a true grasp of her phonological knowledge and how she applies the alphabetic principle. This really made me Understand her independent writing samples, and what letters are missing in her repertoire. I saw how distracted she was because of the noise level in the classroom and constant redirection that was happening in the background. Other children had the incentive of playing with legos when they finished their work, this in turn had Sophia check out of the assessment and caused her to lose motivation to continue. It also did not help having children interupt asking questions in regards to the classroom lesson and sharing their excitement about being able to play with legos. This is what made me realize And reflect on how this form of assessment isn’t what best suits her.

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After speaking to the family, we have found that she depends on others for validation and affirmation frequently. She can be afraid to say she doesn’t know something and can become easily distracted when many things are going on around her. Our goal as a team is to have Sophia be able to work more independently, be able to phonetically sound out at least three words in a sentence and be more motivated to have inventive spelling. They suggest to keep her active and how she loves fine motor activities to keep her focused.

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Sophia’s Progress from the beginning of the year is:

Can identify letters

can identify the sound of the letters

can create connections from letters that she has worked on at home with her mom

Sophia’s strengths are:

identifying images in both english and spanish

being able to correctly identify K, G, F, C (suave)

Can sound out phonemes

Can identify syllables in words

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My mentor has described how Sophia has particularly had a hard time identifying lowercase consonant letters throughout the course of the school year. She was put on an MTSS plan to be able to reach her goals academically; this was done because she was having a hard time with letter identification, finishing her work, and her overall classroom performance. There has also been a consistent line of communication with parents through a performance rating system that describes if she did well in the morning or in the afternoon with a thumbs up or thumbs down. With this system it has been shown that Sophia’s performance has heightened because of the constant communication with parents and has allowed them to provide extra support at home, which has truly improved her letter recognition in both lowercase and uppercase.

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What I learned from my observation with Sophia, is how this form of assessment doesn’t really showcase what she can do. It honestly shows how this is a prime example that assessment tools like these aren’t always viable. This information can be shown to her parents to prove that she does need support, but to also have us as educators, find a way to use a different form of tool to assess children that have a short attention span. I would find that an assessment tool that would work best for a child like Sophia would be one that is more hands-on and visually appealing. Instead of having a sheet of paper with all the letters in random order, maybe having letter cards that are different colors would be more of a visual aid for her to recognize what each letter is and their sounds in lowercase and uppercase. This form of tool also gives us a way to make accommodations and alterations to cater towards children that have a harder time sitting for long periods of time. This might be a great way to start assessing children but shouldn’t be the only way to gather data and information about what they do and do not know yet. I found that Sophia is a visual learner and loves to make art so using this information gives me a basis on how to make formative assessment more authentic for her and another children.

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What I learned from my observation with Sophia, is that she is capable of way more than it seems to be when she’s working with an adult that she can trust. Sophia’s mom also observed the assessment being done gave her the perspective of where she is at academically and where she needs to step in in order to help her achieve the goal of knowing all her letter sounds in Spanish. These knowledge checks are also great artifacts to use throughout the year to document their progress, and as evidence of what they do, and don’t know. What I’ve also found is how easy it is to alter these assessments and finding a way to tweak them depending on the child or classroom can be important because there’s children who are at different levels, and for some it may be easier than for others.

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Sophia’s Progress from the beginning of the year is:

Can identify more than 0 uppercase letters

Can identify more than 0 lowercase letters

Can identify more than 0 uppercase letter sounds

Can identify more than 0 lowercase letter sounds

can create connections from letters that she has worked on at home with her mom

Sophia’s strengths are:

identifying 17/21 uppercase letters in spanish

Identifying 15/21 uppercase letter sounds in spanish

Identifies vowels in both uppercase and lowercase

identifies 10/21 lowercase letters