Assessment for Preliterate Readers
L.A.C.O.E. On-line K-3 Reading
by Donna Chazanov
April 1999
The School Readiness Language Development Program
is a Los Angeles Unified School District Pre-K program. The age range of the
children when they begin the program is from 3.8 years to 4.7 years old. The
children attend school four days a week for two hours and thirty five minutes
for eight months.
The main purpose of the program is stated in the name
of the program: school readiness and language development.Children are always
involved in activities to help them acquire language in a meaningful way.
I am working primarily in English which is a completely new language for the
majority of the children.
I have not found any assessment tools for pre-alphabetic
age children, which would be appropriate for my group; they probably exist
but I am not aware of them. The first part of the Concepts About Print assessment
is appropriate. I am constantly assessing the children through daily observation
and adjusting my teaching. As a result of attending the L.A.C.O.E k-3 Reading
course I have incorporated new things into my day and put more emphasis on
things I already do.
When reading a book to my class I have always talked
about the people who make the book and the title. Now when I present a book
I always ask the children to name the parts of the book as well. I have also
begun asking them to point to where I read and after turning the page to point
to the page were I continue. Now that we are at the end of the year and I
am introducing the alphabet I do much more tracking with my finger. As we
get to simple words in the text, I sometimes stop and say, "Oh look!
We have already learned these letters. Lets see if we can figure out what
this says." I can tell by the oh-I-think-I-get-it look that the children
are beginning to get an inkling of how people read.
Many children come to me loving a story,
but only visually as in television or videos. At the beginning of the year
most of the children have trouble sitting still and listening to a complete
story. I can tell which of the children are being read to often and which
children never see a book. By the end of the year all of the children listen
to lengthy stories and become engrossed when the story is in a language they
understand well. Even when reading stories in English, by the end of the year
most children are absorbed by the story or at least by the detail of the illustrations.
I have thought the concept of reading illustrations and reading words. I tell
them that they are all readers, so though they may not comprehend all the
English or all the print, they know how to read. I use many predictable books
which helps them feel successful. They do go to the library and read stories
to each other.
Another activity that I do, but not enough
is to act out the story. As a result of watching the lessons on developing
comprehension I made a conscious effort to do a lot more of this. It is time
consuming and somewhat chaotic, but the results are amazing. The children
really start internalizing the vocabulary sentence structure and sequence
of the story.I have always used a special set of cards that I made to introduce
the names and sounds of the letters. We always do a lot of work around the
students' names to help them master the alphabet. what I am doing more of
is working on phonemic awareness using their names. I find that rhyming words
are very abstract for this age group. I do introduce the term and we listen
for words that rhyme in our literature, but I can still tell that most children
don't understand the concept. The following are auditory exercises that I
have begun as a result of taking the class After I call roll we "break
their names". Basically we clap each syllable, we break their names into
parts. I ask them how many pieces their name has. I ask them to tell me only
the last part or after we have broken the whole name. I will also call roll
saying their name in the "funny way", by saying each phoneme. All
the children have improved in their awareness of sound through these new activities.
There is a writing center in class. one of the activities
that I always do towards the end of the year is to put out blank mini books
with the instructions to draw or write a story, then they will read it to
me and I will write down what they dictate immediately afterwards. The children
understand the concept of describing what they have done on the page. Most
of the time they draw pictures, sometimes even at the end of the year some
children just do random marks but some are even writing letters.The language
arts skills that I would like my children to leave Pre-K with are culled from
various sources and fall into various categories. I do not expect them to
read as we define it in normal terms, but I do expect them to read. I have
made my own check list or assessment of the skills that I want the children
to exhibit by the time they leave this program. They are on the following
page.