This summary provides an assessment of an 8-year-old third grade student's reading and writing abilities. The student struggles with reading fluency, comprehension, writing stamina, spelling, and punctuation. However, the student is highly motivated and has a positive attitude. The teacher recommends strategies to help improve the student's reading fluency, comprehension, and writing skills through repeated readings, modeling, story mapping, and making text connections.

1. Caila Bishop
Individual Student Assessment
I chose to do my individual child assessment project on an eight year old male student
who is currently in the third grade at Stratton Elementary School. This student is extremely well
behaved in the classroom. There are times when this student can be caught out of his seat
socializing with one of his cousins in the classroom; however, once the student is told to reset, he
quickly corrects his behavior. This student always arrives to school on time and enters the
classroom with a positive attitude. I have never seen this student upset or angry. He is always
polite to everyone and socializes with the majority of students in the classroom. During recess,
this student can be seen playing basketball and soccer with two other male students in the
classroom.
I conducted a brief interview on this student and asked him questions about his family
and home life. The student lives with his mom, dad, two younger brother ages five and seven
months old, a younger sister who is one year of age, a cousin, uncle and an aunt. The student’s
home life is very busy and because of this he has a hard time concentrating on his homework
when he gets home from school. With such a busy home life the student will walk over to
Douglas Branch Library after school with one of his older cousins to complete his homework. If
the student needs help with his homework he will either ask his mom, aunt or uncle for help.
Sometimes the student’s mom will read to him at home but it is not very often. The student does
not have very many books at home. The student eats dinner with his family and goes to bed at
eight thirty every school night. Last year the student liked going to school because he was able to
play games and use the computer. This year the student likes school because there are lots of
books in the classroom and he is given plenty of time to read.

2. I choose to do my project on this student after I observed him the first few days of school
during independent reading.. I noticed that the student was skimming a chapter book by looking
at the pictures in the book, instead of reading the words on the page. The student would keep his
eyes fixed on the picture and would quickly turn to the next page. I went up to the student and
asked him what his book was about. He looked at the picture and based off the illustrations in the
book he gave me a brief description of what he thought the chapter was about. I asked him to
read a few words from the book and he responded by closing the book and asking if he could
find an easier story to read to me.
In regards to reading this student is not at appropriate grade level. A running record has
been kept on this student since kindergarten. The running record reveals the following (see figure
1): It shows how the student ended his kindergarten year reading at a level three which was at
grade level. The student entered first grade and had dropped to a reading level two at the
beginning of the year. The drop in reading level at the beginning of the school year was most
likely due to a lack of reading over summer break. I came to this conclusion during my interview
when I asked the student if he read any books over the summer. He stated that he did not do a lot
of reading over summer break. At the end of first grade the student had made improvements in
his reading and ended the school year reading at a level eight. Although he had gone up reading
levels he was expected to end first grade reading at a level sixteen. The student entered second
grade at the reading level he was at the previous year. He jumped up four reading levels while in
second grade and ended the year at a reading level twelve which is still a first grade reading
level. A developmental reading assessment (DRA) was conducted on the student at the beginning
of the school year. The DRA results show that the student needs to improve in his reading
fluency and reading comprehension (see figures 1a-1d). In regards to fluency the student needs

3. to improve in his reading expression. As the DRA was being conducted on the student he read
the story with little expression. The student remained monotone as he read the text. Moreover the
student needs to work on phrasing. The student does not heed all punctuation while he is reading,
which hindered his understanding of the story. In addition the student needs to improve on his
reading rate. The student is reading 44 words per minute at a first grade reading level. The
student should be reading 80 or more words per minute at a third grade reading level. In addition
the student needs to improve on his reading accuracy. The student had a total of four miscues and
did not attempt to self correct any of the miscues. Moreover the student paused four times
throughout the reading when he came across words that he could not pronounce. All four times
the teacher had to tell the student the word.
In regards to comprehension the student needs to improve on retelling the story. The
student was not able to retell the story using all the characters name or important details from the
text. Also, the student needs to work on retelling the story using more vocabulary that was in the
story. The student was able to retell the story using some language and vocabulary from the text;
however he did not have a good understanding of key words or concepts. In addition the student
needs to improve on retelling the story without teacher support. The student had a difficult time
retelling the story without questions or prompts to guide his thinking process. In addition, the
student needs to work on his reflection following the story. The student’s reflection was limited
and lacked a relevant reason as to why he liked the text. Moreover the student needs to work on
making connections to the story. The student lacked literal and thoughtful connections to the
story.
The writing stamina of this student is very low. I noticed that this student is a very slow
writer and has a hard time staying focused during writing activities. Sometimes the student’s

4. inability to focus is due to his peers. Figure 2 and 3 is an example that shows the writing stamina
of this student. Figure 2 are notes the teacher had put on the electronic whiteboard for the
students to copy in their science journals while they were on the carpet. The teacher gave the
students fifty minutes to copy the notes as she discussed the topics. The students looked at the
teacher as she discussed the topics, however, a few times throughout the lesson the students eyes
would roam from the teacher, his paper, to small paper objects on the floor. Figure 3 shows the
notes that the student copied. This student was the only person in the class who was not able to
copy all of the notes in the fifty minutes provided. Although the student did not finish copying all
of the notes, he asked the teacher if she would print them off and let him finish copying them at
home.
Using punctuation is something else the student struggles with while he is writing. The
student does not use punctuation marks in his writing. He has a hard time showing where a
sentence begins and where it ends. He is familiar with the different type of punctuation marks;
however, the student told me that sometimes he does not know where to put the punctuation
marks. An example of the students writing without any punctuation marks can be seen in figure
4. Moreover the student writes with a mixture of capital letters and lower case letters throughout
his writing. Figure 5 shows an example of his writing where he has three uppercase letters in a
single word. The student knows that uppercase letters should be placed at the beginning of the
sentence, yet he fails to follow that rule. The student told me that he doesn’t think putting capital
letters in his writing should be a big deal since the meaning of words remain the same. I
discussed the importance of using capital letters and punctuation in his writing. I shared with the
student how the meaning of a sentence can change due to punctuation. After our discussion the
student went back an revised his previous journal entries.

5. In addition the student has trouble spelling recalling vocabulary that he wants to include
in his writing. The student constantly asks me to help him think about words that he can’t recall
or words that have a certain meaning. This in return affects the students writing stamina.
Moreover, the student has a difficult time sounding out words and spelling them. Figure 5 is a
page out of the student’s writing journal. The journal entry shows a ton of misspelled words. A
lot of the words the student misspelled are words he should know how to spell by this grade
level. Words such as “when, brother, cousin, slipped, rocks and hurt” are all misspelled. The
student could make a lot of improvements with his writing if he utilized the classroom word wall
and other classroom resources; however, he forgets about these classroom resources and has to
be reminded to use them. The student would benefit from using a dictionary, and knows how to
use one, however he would rather raise his hand and ask for help spelling a word because it takes
him so long to find a word in the dictionary.
After assessing this student for a few days and working with this student in the
classroom, two things impressed me. The first thing I noticed about this student is that he is very
motivated. Despite the struggles he faces with reading and writing he is always willing to learn
and never gives up. He likes to know if he has done an assignment correctly, and will fix it if it is
not right. The student takes pride in completing his assignments and learning new information.
The second thing I noticed about this student is his attitude and energy in the classroom. This
student is a very happy and social student. He never enters the classroom with a negative attitude
and is very respectful and responsible. He participates in class discussions and raises his hand to
answer a variety of questions. The student’s motivation and attitude are two big strengths that
have already proven beneficial in helping him grow in reading and writing this year.

6. If I were this child’s teacher I would assist this student with his reading fluency by
working with him on appropriate phrasing and expression using familiar texts. By allowing the
student to pick a familiar text at his reading level he will have an easier time focusing on the
expression and phrasing of the text. In small literacy group or one-on-one with the student I
would have him point to the different punctuation that he notices throughout the text. I would
discuss with the student what happens when that punctuation is present and how punctuation can
effect reading expression. In addition I would model and support reading in longer and
meaningful phrases with expression. I would assist the student in reading segmented passages
out of the story emphasizing parts of the text that should be read smoothly together.
In order to assist this student with his reading rate I would provide time and reading
material for repeated readings. I would start the student off with familiar reading material or
reading material at a lower level. I would have the student preview the reading material focusing
on events in the story and vocabulary before he reads it. Moreover I would support and reinforce
self-corrections of miscues as well as encourage the student to use context clues, word structure
clues and analogy clues to problem solve unknown words. Moreover I would teach him how to
look at picture for clues that would help with the identification of words.
In regards to comprehension I would assist the student in retelling the story by
encouraging the student to use characters names, key vocabulary and language from the text
when retelling the story. I would model and teach the student how to create and use story maps
that will help him in retelling the story. I would introduce story mapping as a collaborative
activity using a familiar text. I would encourage the student to visualize the characters, settings,
and events as he listens to the story. I would then discuss and chart the main characters and story

7. events. I would review the chart with the student focusing on the sequence of main events. I
would then have the student retell the story using the story map we created.
In order to assist the student in reflecting upon a story I would provide opportunities for
him to pick his favorite book and tell me why it is his favorite. I would also have the student go
through the book and point to the pictures or parts of the story that he has referred too. I would
assist the student in making connections to the text in two ways. First I would model and teach
the student how to make text-to-text connections. I would model text to text connections by
reading the text with the student and verbalizing my own thoughts beginning with “this book
reminds me of another book because….” Next I would display a chart of books and other reading
material that had been read together in the class to support connections. I would introduce and
make a list of different text to text connections such as comparing characters personalities and
actions, comparing story events, comparing story themes or comparing messages the author is
trying to convey.
I believe that the recommendations I provided above would improve the student’s reading
fluency and reading comprehension. A lot of these recommendations could be implemented in
small literacy groups or one-on-one with the student. I believe that this student should be
encouraged to participate in activities that will target those recommendations. Moreover, I
believe that the student should be encouraged and reminded to use the strategies he learns in his
literacy groups to assist him throughout the school year with his reading and writing.