Elementary Literacy and Language Arts

1. Elementary Literacy and Language Arts Megan Student Examples Harley Tommy

2. Functional Writing • Literacy assessment results will vary based on the type of task. • When students are dealing with their own ideas and very familiar topics, we will see more of their written and English competence than in contrived and unfamiliar contexts.

3. Megan, Tommy and Harley • Second graders • Profoundly deaf • Self contained for language arts • Co-taught in a second grade class for science, spelling and mathematics • Manually Coded English signers

4. Functional Writing

5. Functional Writing

6. Functional Writing

7. Contrived Writing • When students are dealing with adult ideas and new topics, we may see a breakdown in some of their skills. • However, contrived written assignments allow us to assess a student’s ability to utilize various teaching strategies as supports.

8. Contrived Writing Example The Tom Story is an assessment tool designed to elicit written and signed or spoken language from reluctant communicators.

9. Contrived Writing Example Step One: The Tom Story begins with a series of five pictures. Each picture is presented as the whole story is told by the teacher or examiner. The language level of the picture depends on the individual child.

10. Writing from a Picture Sequence

11. Contrived Writing Example Step Two: The child uses the pictures to retell the story through the air, using his or her most fluent communication mode. The teacher keeps track of the details the child includes.

13. Contrived Writing Example Step Three: The teacher asks questions about each picture, and records the child’s answers for later scoring (accurate, appropriate, on topic, off topic).

15. Contrived Writing Example Step Four: The child writes the story, using the pictures as stimuli. If the child cannot write, then this step becomes a dictation task, with the child monitoring the scribe.

16. Contrived Writing Example Pre and Post Test: Like a standardized test, a contrived written task allows the child to demonstrate any changes in literacy competence over a given period of time.

17. Tommy: Fall and Spring Samples

18. Megan: Fall and Spring Samples

19. Harley: Fall and Spring Samples

20. Think about what information we could get from a written language analysis of these samples.