Real Life Inquiry Project

     For my real life inquiry project, I chose to give these two girls that I babysit, Jenna and Meredith, a spelling inventory test to determine which stage of reading they were at.  Then, I did an activity with them that went along with their reading level to see if the test was a good method in determining their reading level, and to see how they reacted to the reading activity that I did with them.
     I decided that I would give each girl the test separately so that they could take as much time as they needed without feeling pressure from the other one.  So, I started off by giving Jenna, who is six, the spelling inventory test.  The test had 26 words on it and they were fan, pet, dig, rob, hope, wait, gum, sled, stick, shine, dream, blade, coach, fright, chewed, crawl, wishes, thorn, shouted, spoil, growl, third, camped, tries, clapping, and riding.  Before starting the test I told her that I wasn't going to grade it or anything so she didn't have to worry about getting them all right, and I think that made her feel better and not feel as much pressure while writing her words.  For every word that I would give her, I would also give her a sentence to go along with it.  As the test went on, she started to help me made up the sentences to go along with the words.  I also noticed that she would sound out some of the words when she was struggling with the spelling, and she would also get more distracted when she did not know the word and start to look at something else or talk about something else.
     After I gave Jenna her test, I gave Meredith, who is eight, the test of the same 26 words.  Giving her the test was completely different than giving Jenna the test.  She went very quickly through the test, and she would say "next" when she was done with each word and was ready to move on.  Sometimes she would even finish the word before I could finish giving her the sentence to go along with the word.  As we got to the harder words, she slowed down a little bit, but she did not struggle with them.  Another thing that was different about giving Meredith the test was that she wanted me to grade it.  She wanted to know how many of them she got right, because she didn't think that she got any of them wrong.
     When they were both done with the test, I went through their lists and checked them to determine which reading level they were each on.  Jenna was only able to get 7 of the 26 words completely correct ,and I determined that she was in the alphabetic level of reading.  Meredith got all 26 of the words correct ,and I determined that she was in the derivational level of reading.
     The activity that I did with Jenna was one about onsets and rimes.  I gave her cards with different onsets on them, and I then gave her a rime and she would have to tell me which onsets could make words with that rime.  At first she struggled a little bit, but once she caught on to how it worked then she really liked the activity.  She would go through the cards of onsets and read it with the rime to see if it made a word and if it didn't then she would just laugh at the made up word.  I eventually had to tell her that we had to stop playing because I needed to get started on Meredith's activity with her, and she was sad that we had to stop because she wanted to keep going.
     The activity that I did with Meredith was one that involved her using smaller words and patterns to make up bigger words.  I gave her cards that had things such as dis, stand, trust, re, etc. on them and she made up words.  I gave her two minutes to read the cards I gave her and see how many words she could make.  She was only able to get eight words, but after I said time was up she asked if we could keep going because she could make more words.  So, I went through and showed her more of the words that she could make.
      Through doing this project, I found that the spelling inventory test was a good method of determining which level of reading a child is in.  However, it can be hard to determine which stage a child should be put in if they are on the line between stages with this test.  I also found that children really respond to different activities based on their reading level.  The girls loved getting to do the activities that I gave them and they looked at them as if they were a game.  They wanted to show me what they knew and they both wanted to get better.