Emily Winslow

Professor Sung Eun

TLS 357
December 5, 2018
The Assessment Case Studies of Two Children
The ELL student, Alex, was born in California and is seven years old in a second grade
classroom. He is able to speak and understand Spanish, Russian, Ukraine, and English. However,
the only language that Alex can read or write in fluently is English. Alex is very proficient in
both mathematics and language arts. He seemed to really enjoy working with me on these
assessments and was able to provide me with his best work.
The two assessments I did with Alex were in mathematics and in literacy. The first one
on mathematics was about telling time. I had Alex look at both analog and digital clocks. I would
ask him to tell me the time on the clocks when I moved the hour and minute hand. We mainly
focused what hand was the minute hand versus the hour hand. I assessed Alex in the hallway
outside of the classroom and it was just the two of us out there. I did this assessment during math
time when the rest of the class was working on a worksheet. I did this assessment by using
pictures for the digital clock and having Alex tell me what they said. For the analog clock I used
a toy clock and would move the two hands to show different times and have Alex tell me what
the clock showed. For documentation I had Alex write down the times he told me and he knew to
write them like, 2:30 or 6:00.
For the second assessment I did with Alex we focused on literacy. I asked him question
about the story that the class read all together. These questions were about the main idea of the
book, the different characters, and how this book was similar to other books we have read in the
classroom. I asked Alex this questions at the back table in the classroom with just the two of us
right after the story was over. When I asked Alex questions about what the book was about and
who the characters in the book were he was able to tell me right away with detail. He knew how
the characters related to one another and the importance they had to the plat of the story.
However, when I asked him about other books he had read being similar to the book he was not
able to come up with any and had a hard time relating the theme to previous books. For
documentation I wrote down what Alex said and the wait time it took him to be able to answer
the questions. I also wrote down the ways I promoted Alex to think.
I think that Alex would benefit from having more experience talking about different
times than just times relating to the hour and half hour. I also think that Alex would benefit if he
learned more about themes between books and how things can be similar with out being exactly
the same. I think Alex benefits from physically moving while learning and that he should reword
the information to how it makes the most sense to him.
The second student that I worked with for this assessment project was my other case
study student, Claire. Claire was born in Tucson, Arizona and is in a second grade general
education classroom. Claire was diagnosed with Autism in preschool but is able to preform
proficiently in the classroom and is one of the smarter students. Claire struggles with more social
emotional learning and working with her peers. This is evident when it comes time when
students have the option to work in partners and she chooses not to. This is also evident when
she is playing at recess. She is part of a group to help promote kids to learn how to play with one
another but she still tends to do her own thing during this time.
When I did the assessment on Claire I worked on her with literacy. For this assessment I
met with her before and after the book was read to the class. I met with her initially at her desk
so that I could inform her on the questions I was going to be asking her after we read a book as a
whole class. I also asked Claire to think about what the book was going to be about and why she
thought that. After the book was read to the entire class I pulled her outside of the classroom so
that she would not be distracted by the rest of her classmates. I assessed Claire by asking her
questions about the book was about, the different characters, and why the characters did the
actions that they did in the story. I recorded what Claire said by writing down what she said to
each question. I learned that Claire was able to tell me what the story was about and who the
different characters in the story were. However, when I asked Claire why the different characters
did the actions they did in the book she struggled to answer. She could not think why someone
would act the way that they did and the emotions that they felt.
I think that Claire would benefit strongly from having extra time learning about different
emotions. Although Claire does show different emotions when she is sad versus happy she could
not explain why others feel or act the same way. Instructional ways that Claire would be able to
work on this skill would be to watch short clips on students feeling different ways and say the
emotion she thinks they are feeling. Then she could try to explain why they could be feeling that
way or a reason someone might feel that way.
Overall I felt that the processes of planning and implicating my own assessments on my
two case study students went well. While working on the initial assessment at first was very
challenging. I have never made an assessment for a student before so I had a hard time coming
up with a fun way to evaluate these students and to not create any stress for them. Once I was
able to think of activities that would assess these students and fit the standards I was able to
come up with how I planned on assessing them. When implementing the assessments, I was able
to enjoy watching the students think in a new way and work one on one with them. I learned
more about their thinking and the different strategies that they used. This part of the assignment I
thought went much better than I expected. The students responded well to me doing this and
were excited to work with me. When it came time to think of the next instructional step I was
able to pull from where I felt the student struggled the most. I thought that this would be
important to work more on with the students because this was the area that needed the most
improvement.
My growth as a teacher has come from learning what strategies work best when assessing
students and learning how to see what the students need more lessons on. I have learned that
making the assessments fun and non stressful get the students excited to participate. That treating
assessments as just another activity and not putting pressure on the students to do well they are
able to really show their best effort. I also now know that when giving simple assessments you
are able to see what needs to be implemented in the classroom more from the areas the students
struggled in.
My strengths were that I was able to engage the students for the entire assessment. My
weakness was that I should have created more of an assessment atmosphere. I think this would
have been a good way to prepare the students for when they take real assessments. I think that it
would be a good idea for the classroom to have assessments that are not graded. This would help
students get in a routine of a non stressful test and for the teacher to understand how the students
are understanding the lesson materials.