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Running record of Marcus's responses during assessment

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"I can see that the cover has some forest at the back. I think this cat is /p/.../t/..(Pete) and he is carrying lots of stuff, maybe going towards a camp as the sun is setting (points to sun)! There's some hidden eyes nearby but maybe it's just animals. This is a pretend story because there are no real pictures like other books I've read"

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"I've gone camping, like them. But many times and it's not my first time. I know how to set up a tent and we also bring Twinkle (his cat) sometimes"

"We have a packing list everytime. Sometimes it's different but most of the times we bring the same stuff. I think Pete needs to prepare early and maybe he needs some help because it's really important to bring everything"

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"They look really cute"
"/p/p/-/e/-/t/-/e/ might be the one in blue because his brother is showing him footprints and he is watching"

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To ensure progress is made, a range of informal and formal assessments will be undertaken, with educators working closely with Marcus to create a literacy portfolio that reflects current level of performance and documentation evidencing growing literacy performance towards the goals and objectives outlined. It will include his work samples from in and out-of-school settings, anecdotes from educators and photos or videos of multimedia literacy engagement such as reading e-books with peers. This portfolio is to be shared with his family and peers for a strengths-based approach to literacy assessment (DEEWR, 2009) to reflect on Marcus’s growing literacy skills, focusing on the Hundred Languages of a child and how he may use his unique, literacy interests and experiences to enrich his own learning as an active participant and co-constructor of meaning in this journey. To achieve genuine partnership in literacy practices with the family literacy model, documentation will reflect authentic engagement in literacy practices, including both children and family perspectives rather than that of the educator alone (Smith, 2010).

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https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/resources/work-samples/english-work-samples-portfolios/

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Expanding his role from a text participant to a text user, we will help him acquire new literacy skills, to “recognise and apply social and cultural functions of reading and writing practices, understanding their purpose in and out of school” (Department of Education and Training, 2019). He will be invited to record practices of using text at home with family in a journal and share it on the Padlet as a formative assessment which includes family partnership and their voices, as well as their funds of knowledge. He will explore questions such as “What is my purpose of using this text?” and “How can I use this text after reading?” This is a sample of a portfolio piece.

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https://reading.ecb.org/teacher/pdfs/lessons/qu_lp_QuestioningTheText.pdf

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It is intended for Marcus to expand his scope of meaning making to include text-to-world connections through questioning on literal, inferential and evaluative levels (University of Oregon, 2019). This will be done through graphic organisers, eliciting new ways of questioning and seeking answers within or beyond himself to bring deeper meaning to the text he has engaged with (Hill, 2006 & University of Oregon, 2019).

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Phonics and word knowledge are part of critical text processing strategies that readers may use to decode a text and is imperative to enjoy the new, unfamiliar words in an interesting but foreign text. These may encompass making further contextual, semantic, grammatical and phonetical connections which must be explicitly taught (McBride-Chang, 2013 & ACARA, 2019). The goal is to use them simultaneously while reading to decode meaningfully and engage critically with any text, beyond simply reading the words (McBride-Chang, 2013). With these, Marcus can experience a richer literacy world and be drawn in it to craft his unique literacy experiences beyond what letters and words alone provide. He can include others through these strategies, exchanging unique conversations and literacy worlds (Hill, 2006). At the same time, he can use this repertoire of skills to predict, recognise known and unknown words, being metacognitively aware of the strategies he can apply phonetically or semantically to monitor his own reading and move towards independent reading while identifying and correcting errors (ACARA, 2019). Critically, decoding with accurate blending propels comprehension and is indispensable to enjoying any text and acquiring further vocabulary (Jones, Conradi & Amendum, 2016). Educators retrieve words from familiar classroom text, model individual consonant, vowel and digraph sounds (e.g. cr/sh) before blending them in patterns and providing opportunities for practice as individual words and in other text (Jones, Conradi & Amendum, 2016). This helps learners consolidate understanding of existing vocabulary, applying blending skills to decode new words that they encounter. To start off, I will invite Marcus to bring in his photos for sharing, using vocabulary he discovered during his camping or outdoor adventures to consolidate a personalised word bank for his portfolio.

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Marcus at the partial-alphabetic phase seeks to blend sounds, sometimes focusing on initial, midial and final sounds of words (Ehri, 2005) before consolidating with print automatization and fluency (McBride-Chang, 2013). This activity is supported by the bottom-up theory for decoding, using the graphophonic system with sound-symbol relationships (Ehri, 2005) as a code breaker through guided and independent practice. An example of blending and segmentation activity for Marcus looks like this, focusing on Consonant-Vowel-Consonant words to begin with.
https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/20125529557563732

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https://www.teachstarter.com/au/blog/28-punctuation-resources-activities/

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Deepening application of acquired literacy skills as a text participant will be achieved through text decoder practices to “respond to a range of punctuation conventions and confirm, re-read and cross-check based on what looks right” (Department of Education and Training, 2019). Marcus will participate in group activities on reading short sentences with punctuation, taking turns with others to fill in corresponding marks after a story on punctuation. It involves understanding the purpose each punctuation mark serves and how it affects emotions, intonation and sentence structures in texts (ACARA, 2019).

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Understanding learners and their present level of performance

Children can have strengths, as Marcus has shown, that may propel acquisition of further literacy skills in other aspects (Hill, 2006). It is critical to use child-centered practices and their ‘funds of knowledge’ to establish individualised literacy goals (Smith, 2010). As such, educators consider child-initiated literacy practices and include their voices in learning activities (DEEWR, 2009).

The specific long term literacy goal for Marcus is increasing his ability to engage with text as a participant and user while expanding his decoding skills. Learning objectives are to understand and apply a range of text-processing strategies to decode, using punctuation, questioning and phonetical knowledge which will enable him to develop semantic, grammatical and phonetical knowledge for other text processing strategies as a participant (ACARA, 2019) so he can monitor how meaning-making when reading into literal presentations of pictures or context is insufficient (Krauss et al., 2010).

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Beyond the assessment: Wider lens beyond the assessment, eliciting other strengths of the child 

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Beyond the assessment: Wider lens beyond the assessment, eliciting other strengths of the child 

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Other literacy practices of interest to him and representations of these

Both in and out of school, Marcus enjoys reading non-fiction magazines, take home readers, short narratives and environmental print. He often engages in discussions and responds to narratives with peers, sharing his experiences with family and classmates. He reads a range of narratives as well as non-fiction text, recognising that “fiction books can really help you”. He often reads “at home with mum and dad, sometimes I read my favourite stories to my little brother” and “draws stories”. This further relates to Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory in which drawings are a tool in the abstraction of language and children are unique co-constructors of meaning (Vygotsky, 1978). Importantly, it builds on the pre-alphabetic stage of reading through meaningful interactions with environmental print involving man-made and natural features for real-world literacy tools (Ehri, 2005).  Such practices can be part of formative assessments (Hill, 2006) which are evolving and can be shared with peers to reflect on growing literacy skills rather than in a summative manner which is based on a dominant perspective of the assessor.

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Understanding of sentence structures with simple conjunctions and clause 

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Understanding of sentence structures with simple conjunctions and clause 

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Marcus was able to identify parts of a simple sentence to “combine knowledge of context, meaning, grammar and phonics to decode text” (ACARA, 2019) for the changing settings and events towards identification of a plot and resolution in the story. He understood that “a basic clause represents: a happening or a state (verb), who or what is involved (noun group/phrase), and the surrounding circumstances (adverb group/phrase)” (ACARA, 2019).

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Understanding of conventions in English language for decoding

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Understanding of conventions in English language for decoding

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Marcus was actively applying recognition of proper nouns and pronouns using upper and lower-case letters as well as letter-sound associations. He was able to identify the pronouns and use them to identify main characters and their actions in the story. He commented that their names usually have a “big letter at the front, like mine” and used this knowledge to account for the different names presented in the stories. When asked, “How do you know if you are right?”, he paused to think and answered with a grin, “Sometimes when they are not hiding in the story, you can count the people or animals inside. You can find them and you just count them.” He understands that information can be literal or hidden contextually (ACARA, 2019), using the book to identify three male characters and one female character based on his prior knowledge of proper nouns. Occasionally, Marcus employed letter-sound associations to present phonemic awareness and link words he knows (Ehri, 2005), e.g. his name beginning with /m/ and ending with /s/, like “Macdonalds”, including some blending in attempt to read fluently.

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Questioning to clarify for deeper understanding and inferring beyond literal cues

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Questioning to clarify for deeper understanding and inferring beyond literal cues

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Marcus asked some questions about the text to clarify and extend thinking before, during and after reading (University of Oregon, 2019). He mostly applied questioning after reading the text, particularly paying attention to the note written by Bigfoot. “Why did Bigfoot write this note? Was it really him?,” he pondered after reading. Marcus was confident that the note was not written by Bigfoot, but might have been from Mum and Dad, parents of the main character, Pete in the story. He inferred that “Pete was feeling scared because it’s his first time camping and maybe he’s just little so mum and dad did not want him to feel scared”.  He used personal knowledge to construct meaning for the ending of the text, searching for other clues to evidence his inference (University of Oregon, 2019).

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Activation of prior knowledge, making connections with text and across texts

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Activation of prior knowledge, making connections with text and across texts

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A pre-reading activity was undertaken to assess if Marcus could apply prior knowledge for the purpose of exploring the text from his perspective, developing or adding to insights of the text (ACARA, 2019). He established text-to-self connections, identifying similarities and differences between events in the text and his personal experiences of camping in Australia by commenting that “There is no bigfoot in Australia! There aren’t any monsters but lots of wild animals”. The words and pictures reminded him of another text as he added, “I read a book on camping and how to set up a tent. It was not a story. It has some instructions and real photos to help me”. He reflected upon the nature of both texts, giving consideration to genre and how this narrative might differ from a non-fictional text (Hill, 2006). Currently, Marcus employs emerging text user practices to “identify some differences between imaginative and informative texts but recognise similar texts by their common language features and organisation” (ACARA, 2019). Familiar vocabulary or phrases such as “tent”, “fishing”, “setting up fire” enabled him to predict events in the text. Additionally, his role as a text participant is verified as he draws on personal experience and/or prior knowledge to modify and enhance meaning, engaging in reading comprehension by utilising familiar words to construct understanding in an unfamiliar text (ACARA, 2019).

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Understanding text structures to decode: Understanding of emotions with visual illustrations and punctuation 

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Understanding text structures to decode: Understanding of emotions with visual illustrations and punctuation 

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Marcus noticed how visual illustrations added meaning to the text (Hill, 2006). He matched the words like “excited” to the text and visuals, predicting who Bob and Pete (the main characters) might be. He also inferred their changing emotional states, noting their positive or negative body language and gestures. When prompted for an alternative in verifying emotions, Marcus said, “Maybe, but I don’t know. I am guessing”. We explored the use of punctuation and its effect on projecting these, possibly indicating emotions and perspectives undertaken by various characters. I also modelled the tone of a question in text, represented by a question mark alongside feelings of excitement, represented by an exclamation mark. Using these clues to highlight intonation and pauses when reading (ACARA, 2019), we searched for other emotive sentences in the book and Marcus later inferred that the main characters might be “curious or worried”, apart from matching visual cues. Currently, he is aware that he is familiar with visual cues and beginning to understand that punctuation comprises predictable pattern that he can simultaneously use for decoding (ACARA, 2019). He uses text participant practices to make meaning from text, using images to support, recall and co-construct meaning (ACARA, 2019).

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http://education.abc.net.au/home#!/media/32102/story-map-tool

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Present level of performance as an emergent reader: Reading comprehension as a text decoder and participant

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Present level of performance as an emergent reader: Reading comprehension as a text decoder and participant

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“How does Marcus understand an unfamiliar text? What strategies does he use to decode and engage with the text for understanding?”

Summarising- When asked to recall the story, he was excited to retell the main events in in the correct sequence. He formed structured sentences using sequencing vocabulary such as “first”, “then and “last”. He knew where to find the beginning and end of the story by flipping to the pages near the front and end pages. Thus, he applied his understanding of print concepts to complete this task accurately, sequencing ideas presented (ACARA, 2019). The assessment tool, a story map, prompts students to summarise narratives using a structure that enables them to identify critical elements of a book (Krauss et al., 2010), such as the setting and characters. It helps them to identify and connect the beginning, conflict and resolution in a narrative text type. Marcus enjoyed completing the interactive map which allowed him to listen to the virtual cat’s instructions in simple steps. It assisted him with prompts such as “What happens at the start?”, “Is there a problem that makes the story interesting?” and “How does the story end?”. Marcus used drawings occasionally to replace words, while supporting them through the use of oral language (Sibhekinkosi, 2018). At present, Marcus is able to identify and present key information in the text, retelling its structure in the predictable manner of simple narratives (Connor, 2004). He uses summarising as a comprehension strategy to build “literal meaning about events, ideas and information in texts by drawing on growing knowledge of context, text structures and language features” (ACARA, 2019).

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Engagement with and interest in book

Marcus enjoyed the text because “this cat is so special and can go camping with his friends. My cat went camping with me but not with his friends” and “the pictures are really cute”. The level of challenge in reading this text was appropriate as he was able to read most of the sentences and unfamiliar words with some assistance. Marcus enjoyed reading the text independently thereafter. He was engaged and found some words challenging to him in the written form, applying blending and segmentation to decode and read these, seeking help from me when he could not read it fluently.

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https://www.icanread.com/9780062675309/pete-the-cat-goes-camping/

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Pete the cat, assessment tools and process

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Pete the cat, assessment tools and process

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This strengths-based and play-based assessment (DEEWR, 2009) involves a boy in Grade 1 named Marcus, using a paper book, “Pete the cat goes camping”, a running record and an interactive story map used during and post-reading respectively. The fictional story tells of Pete who goes camping for the first time, with events such as hiking, fishing, and eat s'mores by the campfire. He wonders about the existence of a mysterious creature named Bigfoot at night. Post-reading, he uses the story map to represent elements of a narrative, such as characters, settings, problem and solution. They are chosen because multiple types of play-based evidence, particularly in contexts such as those which interest the child, verifies the contextualised literacy practices children use authentically and demonstrates how they apply skills in more than one way to engage with the world from their perspective (Van den Brock et al., 2005 & Hill, 2006). It includes open-ended questions and answers from the child while reading, adult perspectives and observations from the running record, as well as the child’s work sample to see how he constructs meaning uniquely to others after engaging with the text. Additionally, these are strengths based to shape our lens and hold the highest expectations of each child’s learning, respecting that they learn through play (DEEWR, 2009).

Marcus, who will be assessed has a pet cat whom he loves and talks about. He also enjoys sports and outdoor recreational activities, often engaging in these after school with his family. In class, Marcus enjoys fictional stories, often recounting spontaneously what the story is about, retelling its content to his peers and other adults. He takes initiative and reads familiar texts to his peers and adults with expression and fluency. In this assessment, I intend to explore his understanding of prior knowledge and elements in a story by using parts of a simple sentence to identify the plot, characters, beginning and end as well as any problem or resolution. Prior to starting the reading session, we will explore open-ended questions such as “How can your experiences connect with this story?” and “How may camping look different across different places?” We will take turns to read, one page at a time after discussing the front cover, illustrations, pausing to observe visual representations in the pages to help him answer the open-ended questions below:

“How do you know if Pete is looking forward to his trip at the beginning of the story?”

“What happened after this? Why do you think they are doing this?”

“What comes to mind when you hear the word ‘tent’ or ‘fishing’?”

”What do you already know about camping and what questions will you have?”

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PART 1- Introduction to assessment, tools and justification 

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PART 1- Introduction to assessment, tools and justification 

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The chosen literacy content area is reading and viewing, with the focus area on reading comprehension. Reading comprehension is “the act of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning from the text” (Hill, 2006, p. 215). Children extract meaning from printed words on the page by working out how print operates to represent words. It is important because children need to build evolving meanings by integrating new ideas with old information. In doing this, they are co-constructors of meanings in asserting ideas for themselves or with others (DEEWR, 2009).