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Development

The range of literacy skills that can exist in a single kindergarten classroom are

broad—with some students demonstrating skills typical of three-year-old and others

demonstrating skills typical of an eight-year-old (NAEYC, 1998). Students enter

kindergarten with a variety of literacy related experiences. Some will have knowledge of

the alphabet and possibly letter sounds while others will have had very little exposure to

and concepts about print. The National Association for the Education of Young Children

(NAEYC) advocates for a blended instructional program with developmentally

appropriate assessments that utilize multiple indicators to identify a student’s literacy

skills (1998). This project is a literacy profile of a kindergarten student. It describes the

student’s attitude towards literacy activities, includes a Concepts About Print assessment,

an oral running record and an analysis of an emergent writing sample. Suggestions were

made for further instruction and interventions to take with the student as a result of the

analysis.

Whitehurst and Lonigan (1998) define “emergent literacy” as the “characteristics

of pre-readers that may relate to later reading and writing” (p. 849). These characteristics

are the developmental first steps a child takes before becoming a full-fledged reader and

writer. Because children will enter kindergarten with various exposures to oral and

written language, it is necessary for teachers to identify where each student is in their

literacy development. Teale (1988) describes reading and writing as “both a cultural and

developmental process…requiring integration of a number of processes, and a task that

can vary from context to context depending on the resources available to the child and the

background knowledge the child brings to particular task (p.175). Therefore, Teale argues
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for implementing literacy assessments in a variety of settings and across a period of time

so that the teacher can avoid wrongful assumptions of a student’s capability based on one

data point and can understand a particular child’s course of development.

The Concepts About Print (CAP) assessment developed by Clay (2014), allowed

me to identify the case study student’s understanding of text and the written language.

Children need to know the direction of print, and be able to identify a letter versus a

word. Understanding these key facets of the written language are an important pre-cursor

to reading. The CAP assessment helps a teacher to identify what knowledge a student

already possesses and what needs to be learned (Clay, 2014).

The Oral Running Record is another indictor of a child’s reading skills. A

Running Record can “provide evidence of how well children are directing their

knowledge of letters, sounds and words to understanding the messages in the text” (Clay,

2000, p.3). The Running Record conducted with the case-study student found that she

was an early emergent reader that still relied heavily on pictures to gain meaning.

“Writing”, Teale (1988) says, “is perhaps the most visible indicator of young

children’s letter-sound knowledge” (p.181). The analysis of the case-study student’s

emergent writing sample indicated that the student had not yet met the writing objectives,

however she was able to make some letter-sound correspondences, spell sight words

correctly and demonstrated knowledge of writing conventions through her word spacing

and capitalization. Combining the evaluation of a writing sample with observational data

of a student reading and writing creates a more accurate and layered portrayal of a

student’s literacy abilities (Teale, 1988).

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By utilizing developmentally appropriate assessments that identify a particular

student’s literacy skills, I was better able to scaffold instruction tailored to the student’s

needs. Some students will need explicit and direct instruction in phonics, while others

will benefit from a whole language approach in which instruction is based in authentic

texts and meaningful contexts for reading and writing (Quick, 1998). Whitehurst and

Lonigan (1998) describe a “developmental hierarchy of children’s sensitivity to linguistic

units” (p. 851) in which a child typically achieves sensitivity to rhymes and syllables

before phonemes. These phonological skills are important precursors to reading, yet

reading increases the phonological skills as well (Whitehurst & Lonigan, 1998). A child’s

motivation to practice reading or writing on her own is developed when she perceives a

need or a purpose to do so (Cambourne, 1995). A blended approach allows me to create

an environment that fosters intrinsic motivation, meets the varied needs of students in

which students learn decoding skills, and are given many opportunities to practice those

skills in meaningful and authentic contexts (NAEYC, 1998).

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References

Cambourne, B. (1995). Toward an educationally relevant theory of literacy learning:

Twenty years of inquiry. The Reading Teacher, 49 (3). 182-191.

Clay, M. (2000). Running records for classroom teachers. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Clay, M. (2014). By different paths to different outcomes: Literacy learning and teaching.

Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishing.

National Association for the Education of Young Children (1998). Learning to read and

write: developmentally appropriate practices for young children: A joint position

statement of the International Reading Association and the National Association

for the Education of Young Children. Young Children, 53 (4). 30-46.

Quick, B. (1998). Beginning reading and developmentally appropriate practice (DAP):

Past, present and future. Peabody Journal of Education, 73 (3/4). 253-272.

Teale, W. (1988). Developmentally appropriate assessment of reading and writing in the

early childhood classroom. The Elementary School Journal, 89 (2). 172-183.

Whitehurst, G. & Lonigan, C. (1998). Child development and emergent literacy. Child

Development, 69 (3). 848-872.