Qualitative Data
Student B Writing Samples
Student B started the year at the early phonemic stage, which is the most common place for students at the beginning of kindergarten. The student worked diligently throughout the year to make progress in writing. She moved from invented spelling to using conventional writing in six months. The samples below will show the progress she has made throughout the year.
September Writing Sample
Student Writing Sample
Parent Rubric
Student Rubric
This student received a one out of four on the parent and student rubric. This student was writing far below proficient kindergarten Common Core writing standards. This student began the year at the emergent stage of writing. She was matching letters and sounds and representing sight words ('I' and 'the'). In her writing sample, there are letters to represent sounds in other words like ('m' for 'mom'). Those representations suggest she is in a partial phonetic stage of writing, where small segments, such as sounds easily heard, are written down.
Next Steps:
This student has not developed a concept of words or sentences. To move her forward with writing, I used the sentence she was trying to write and placed each word on a separate card. I then made her touch and move each word in the sentence. The physical movement of the word card helped her understand the concept of words being separate entities.
December Writing Sample
Student Writing Sample
Parent Rubric
Student Rubric
This student received a two out of four on the parent and student rubric. Student B was writing below the proficient kindergarten Common Core writing standards. This student moved to the next stage of writing and was matching letters and sounds. She had written many sight words and this suggested that she was now fully in the phonetic stage of writing, where she could hear small segments of sounds and convert them into writing.
Next Steps:
This student has not developed the idea that words are separate and need to be separated in the sentence. To improve this student's progress, I provided her with short lines for the separation of words and the student wrote the words on the line as she sounded them out to create a sentence.
March Writing Sample
Student Writing Sample
Parent Rubric
Student Rubric
Student B received a three out of four on the parent and student rubric. This student is currently writing proficiently and is meeting the kindergarten Common Core writing standards. Student B now has clear spacing between words. This demonstrates a solid grasp of the concept of words and sentence structure. She has also used punctuation and varies her use of capital and lowercase letters. Her spelling is correct for most sight words and word bank words.
Next Steps:
This student needs to gain a better understanding of how and when to use capital letters. To do this, she will participate in a mini-unit on capitalization during in small group instruction.