On Friday I was able to do Clay's observation survey with a 1st grader named Isaac. I was able to do all five subtests, but I still need to do a running record with him. For the Concepts About Print task, Isaac had a raw score of 15 and a stanine of 2. I thought it was interesting that he focused so much on the picture when I asked him what was wrong with this...and this...and this. He was obviously not looking close enough to the text as I read or he didn't know how to spell those words enough to realize that they letters were mixed out of order. Isaac pointed out that the picture on page 15 was all wrong because the "house" was too small. This made me laugh inside. It was very good thinking on his part to notice something like that, though it wasn't quite the answer I had in mind. On page 14, when I asked if there was anything wrong, he said it was all messed up because there were two "and" words on top of each other and then three "a" words on top of each other. I never would have noticed this. He did not mention the jumbled up spellings though.
My favorite subtest was the writing vocabulary assessment. Isaac, once he was running out of ideas, said he was going to start looking at the posters in my classroom to figure out how to spell more words. He saw "FACE" on a poster and wrote FACE. He saw "CLASS" on the rules poster and he wrote CLASS. I thought, wow he's a smart kid to look at the wall! After I noticed he was doing this, I began to prompt him with ideas for words like the word book, red, look, big, etc. He did a lot of slow, sounding out of letters as he wrote his words down. This is also the case when he reads. When we did the Word Reading subtest, Isaac was very slow and sounded out each letter by itself. He was able to blend sh in shouted but not ch in children. He has difficulty knowing when a vowel, particularly e, is long or soft.
I enjoyed doing the observation survey. It made me want to teach Kindergarten and first grade! Now I'm working on the summary of the observation survey. I'm interested to see how Isaac reads a book when I do the running record. It's been fun learning this new way of assessing students. Up until now I've really just used the DRA. I am glad that this course has been worth the time. I'm happy to finally be taking courses that truly mean something to me and that are applicable to my students!
I think that is great that you shared your observation survey with us. At first before I started practicing it to give the observation, it just seemed so silly and simple. But after doing my 1st grader this last week and reading about your 1st grader the results were very different. Yours seems to be keen on the observation of what normal print looks like when you asked him what was wrong. Mine just shrugged at me with a look that said, "Theres words there in a line so nothings wrong". But I could tell it was because his spelling was not in tune with his reading yet, so he did not notice any oddities. As far as the other tests we had to give, I too loved the vocabulary it was so cute to see the 1st grader try so hard thinking of all the words they know. When I asked mine about his name he spelled his name, his brothers, than he tried to spell some Harry Potter names (which were not spelled right)and I just cracked up inside. Any ways I did learn some interesting facts from all those observations that I will gladly share with that students teacher this next week. Thanks for sharing your story as well.
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