Writing and Reading Assessment Profile (WRAP) Infants (Years P 2) Reading The table below provides teaching suggestions for a variety of behaviours and instructional needs. The list is not exhaustive, but will provide a good starting point. You can use the suggestions in conjunction with your assessment notes to plan the next teaching steps for your children. Cannot identify all letters of the alphabet. During shared reading and writing, use opportunities to highlight specific letters within words and ask the children to locate them in other places, for example, this is a capital E. Can anyone find a lower case e for me on this page? Provide activities that support letter identification, such as sorting upper case letters from lower case letters, making letters with buttons or dough and then placing them on a letter template, making and breaking words with magnetic letters, and playing games such as letter bingo. Have a variety of ABC books and accompanying song tapes available, which the children can use independently or as a group activity. Letter-sound relationships not secure. Regular practise singing alphabet songs, which link letters to the sounds they make, will reinforce these links in an enjoyable way. During shared writing, model how you use sounds to help spell some words. For example, How do I write the word boat? What does it start with? What can you hear in the middle? What can you hear at the end? Have a copy of the alphabet on display as you do this to reinforce the letter-sound links. Provide activities that help children practise using letters and sounds, such as matching the first letter of the children s names with a picture card that represents a letter of the alphabet and matching picture cards with different letters of the alphabet. Share-read a variety of poems and songs with a strong rhyming component. Talk about the relationships between the rhyming words and the sounds they make and record some of these on a chart for the children
to refer to again. During shared reading, mask beginning and ending sounds of words, for example, ed, br, st, ing and ask the children to tell you the sounds. Confused about directionality and one-to-one correspondence. Provide regular shared reading and writing sessions and models pointing to each word as you read aloud. In this way you will reinforce the behaviours expected of your children then they read independently. Poems and songs are particularly useful as the rhythm provides support. Provide opportunities within these sessions for children to help you point to the words (using a pointer) as you read. Provide opportunities for children to work together independently to read a variety of enlarged texts, including those on an overhead projector. Model writing as often as possible to explicitly teach the difference between letters and words, spacing and directionality. This could include using a masking device to isolate individual words. Provide daily opportunities for children to write independently and reinforce the use of spacing and directionality. Use sentence strip activities to make a variety of texts that can then be displayed in the classroom and reread independently. High frequency words not read automatically. Select texts for shared and guided reading that build on the use of high-frequency words and give children opportunities to recognise them in different contexts. During regular shared writing sessions, encourage the children to participate by spelling the high-frequency words in a text. Reinforce this by rereading the text. Include a variety of different word games as a regular activity during your literacy programme. Provide magnetic letters for children to take turns making a list of high-frequency words. Make a game of isolating words Find me the the on this page. Can you find another one?
Is not monitoring for accuracy and meaning. Model by thinking aloud to show how good readers use meaning, language structure and visual information to confirm accuracy and meaning. Explain that when you are uncertain about a word, you can check it against other sources of information. Does it look right? Does it sound right? Does it make sense? Demonstrate, by modelling, that it s quite normal for readers to sometimes lose meaning and that it s all right to reread to re-establish meaning. Encourage the children to practise monitoring for meaning and accuracy during guided reading. Does not respond to or talk confidently about text. Engage children in conversations about plot, characters, sequence of events and high/sad/funny points during shared reading and aloud reading. Ensure you spend time during guided reading talking about the meaning of the text. Ask the children to think about and predict what is happening as they read. Setting a purpose for reading can help focus children to read for meaning. For example, I want you to read to the end of page 6 and find out why the girl was so wet. Help the children to see that different interpretations of a text are acceptable by talking time to make inferences, connections, summaries and evaluations during conversations. Reads slowly and hesitantly. Because fluency affects comprehension, it s important to help the children to read smoothly and with appropriate phrasing. You can do this by modelling during read aloud and shared reading. Help the children to: Choose texts that are familiar or easy to read Access prior knowledge about the text they are going to read
Recognise words without slowing down Teach the children how to recognise the features of words and to build a large sight vocabulary. Model how to use punctuation to aid fluency in shared and guided reading sessions. Provide opportunities for supportive buddy reading. Use audio-assisted reading books. Relies too heavily on visual information or phonics to solve unknown words. Provide texts that are easier to read. Cover every tenth or fifteenth word in part of a text used during shared reading to illustrate how the sentence structure and the sense of the text will provide valuable clues to the missing word. Remind the children that what they read must make sense. Try to use interesting and exciting texts that are loaded with meaning. Does not use visual information and makes inaccurate substitutions. Provide texts that are easier to read. Help the children to focus on the shape and spelling of a word. Use a word mask during shared reading to highlight words and their structure. Draw attention to the way words are spelt, particularly beginnings and endings. When a child makes an inaccurate substitution, ask what would you expect to see at the beginning/end? Examine the different sounds a spelling pattern makes, for example ch. Does not make connections between own experiences and the text. Use texts that allow the children to use prior knowledge. When introducing a text for guided reading, help the children to think and talk about what they know about the topic.
Ask the children to use sticky notes to mark connections as they read. Provide time for them to talk about the connections they have made. Has trouble inferring or reading between the lines Use picture books to help the children gain confidence inferring. Use a chart to record inferences made as a result of events or ideas in a story. For example, the cat licked her lips implies that the cat wanted to eat the mouse. Practise inferring during guided reading, using a chart to record inferences and asking questions such as Why? and How did you know? Does not use the text to support a point of view or interpretation During shared reading, model how the text can be used to support a point of view, for example, I think because it says in the text that During guided reading discussion, get the children to support their arguments and interpretations by referring back to the text. Ask questions that require the children to refer to a text to support their answer.
Writing and Reading Assessment Profile (WRAP) Infants (Years P 2) Writing The table below provides teaching suggestions for a variety of instructional needs. The list is not exhaustive, but will provide a good starting point. Use this with your assessment notes to plan the next steps for the child s growth as a writer. Still unsure about directionality and spacing between words. Through shared and independent writing sessions, the teacher can ask children questions, such as Where do we need to begin writing? How do you know and Which way do we go now? To acknowledge the spacing between words, the teacher would mark them with a tick to reinforce the correct writing behaviours. Include an item on a checklist of simple things to remember when writing. - I am learning to leave a space between each word when I write. Is confused about upper and lower case letters and punctuation. Include the use of capital letters and punctuation on the checklist above and refer to this regularly during shared and independent writing sessions. Points to cover could include: - I am learning to use a capital letter for the names of people and places - I am learning to begin every sentence with a capital letter - I am learning to use a period at the end of every sentence Include alphabet games using upper and lower case letters during the literacy programme. Needs help with hearing and recording sounds in words. Use regular (daily) modelling sessions to demonstrate writing, showing how to identify and sequence the sounds in words as you write. For example, tell the children that you are going to write a story about a visitor to the class. Tell them the first sentence yesterday we had a visitor to our class. How am I going to start the word yesterday? It begins like some other words we know such as yellow, yes and you. Continue in this way until the word is spelt. Having a large alphabet card with pictures linked to each letter will be a helpful
reference point during these sessions. Have regular practise singing alphabet songs that reinforce the letter-sound relationships and give the children a base from which to relate new sounds to letters. The child has difficulty getting started or is not sure what to write about. Help the children build up lists of topics in their journals. Occasionally, narrow the focus, such as writing a thank-you letter, a report, a recount of a class trip or using a story starter. At the early stage of writing development, encourage the children to draw a picture about their story idea and tell you about it before they begin to write. This will help them clarify what they want to say and allow you the opportunity to support them to develop a sentence structure before they attempt to write independently. Read lots of examples of effective writing to give the children good models from which they can innovate in their own writing. Use picture books the children are familiar with. Draw story webs to show what the author s main ideas are and how they have developed their ideas into a story. Model how to brainstorm ideas for writing around a topic. Show how these ideas can then be narrowed down and developed into a piece of writing. Link the ideas for writing to content-area topics. This reinforces the learning in other areas and gives children a meaningful purpose for writing. Writing does not make sense. During shares writing, model how to check that your writing is meaningful by rereading it and asking questions aloud, for example, Does that make sense? Does that sound right? Encourage the children to give you their opinions about whether they think it makes sense. Is that how we say it in English? Writing does not match the child s spoken words. During conferencing time, have children point to the words as they read their word aloud so that they can see that spoken words need to match what they have written. Model this matching when you write in front of the class.
Organisation / sequence not clear. Encourage the children to read their pieces to others to get feedback about order and meaning. Using graphic organisers for planning and structuring content will show children how to link their ideas. For example, divide a sheet of chart paper into columns headed beginning, middle and ending. Model how different parts of a piece of writing fit under each heading and then have the children practise writing independently using the template. Prepare a piece of text that is not clear and model how to make it more readable. Encourage the children to contribute their ideas as you do this. Model asking strategic questions about the writing to enhance its clarity, for example How can I make this part more clear? What information is missing here? Is not willing to revise by adding details or improving parts of writing. During shared writing sessions, demonstrate how writing can be improved after the first draft by asking questions. Write out the words who where when and why and what on individual cards and distribute them to some members of the class. Ask one child to share their piece and then invite the card holders to ask a question based on the word on their card (for example, where were you when it happened?). Record the question on the board and discuss how the answer could be incorporated into the writing. Through modelling of this process on a regular basis, children will be able to internalise and use it when they write independently. Ask the children to read their writing to each other and encourage them to ask questions in order to add more interesting details. Needs help with spelling accurately. Beginning spellers need practice hearing and recording the beginning and ending sounds of words before they can begin to isolate the medial sounds. Once children have progressed beyond this stage, developing their knowledge of onsets and rhymes (look, cook, book, hook), blends (th, ch, sh, cr) and chunks (oy, ow, ere) will support them to record and spell more complex words. Record high-frequency and content words on word walls and charts around the classroom and refer to them often. Make personal dictionaries for each child to use when writing independently. Help children to use resources such as the word wall, reading books, dictionaries and each other.