I was doing a prospective student interview yesterday at work, with a 2nd grade elementary student. My task in these interviews is to try to decide which class to place the student in, based on current level, but where the kids are too young or too low-level to be able to do a typical Korean-style diagnostic test.
I had the student attempt to read from one of our elementary readers, then we tested a few random flashcards from our phonics series. Finally, I tried out our "phonics diagnostic," which is a kind of graded set of sheets where we attempt to gauge how well the students can sound out unfamiliar words.
The boy really wasn't very good at any of this, but he was pretty good at catching my meaning and understanding my directions, in spoken form. We get a lot of students like this, who've attended some kind of pre-literacy "immersion" (in quotes because it's often not very immersive) kindergarten – they have some rudiments of English in spoken form but are very weak on alphabet and reading/writing.
Anyway, I always conclude these interviews with a very short writing test. I have the kids draw a picture of their favorite animal, then have them try to write something about their animal. At his level, I didn't expect much, but in yesterday's case, the result was a bit odd.
The boy drew a picture of a very implausible dog (at right), then smiled and confidently wrote, "Thia bag hippe."
"What's that say?" I asked.
"This dog happy," he said.
Hm: not strong on phonics or sight-words, then, and maybe not even completely clear on the whole alphabet concept, but, for all that, apparently confident.
[daily log: walking, 7km]