The Oral Narrative Task - assessing vocabulary and comprehension through the Better Start Literacy Approach.

 So, with all this focus on phonological awareness, I find myself asking 'How can I still assess vocabulary development and comprehension through the BSLA programme?'

The answer seems to be the Oral Narrative Task!

The Year 3's are given the story: A Mystery to Solve. 

They listen to the narrator tell the story, page by page, while they get to see the pictures. There is no text to read. Then, on completion of the story, it is their turn to retell what happened, page by page, with the pictures to use as prompts to guide their retell. There are some more traditional comprehension questions to conclude the assessment task.

I have been so concerned with getting my teaching up and running that this assessment task (which provides valuable insights but does not directly affect groupings,) has been put on the back burner. Now that I am getting underway with it however, I am excited about the data I am gathering and the ability to hear back what the children have said. You really get a feel for their confidence and ability at the task. I am finding myself surprised by the results of a few who I thought would be more confident and others who I thought would've been less confident.

I'm going to relook at who my target students are based on this data as I believe there are students who I previously thought were stronger at this than they are proving to be.

Here is an example of the data I can gather from this task:

This is of course a summary of the retell, but it is an easy way to compare between children and look for gaps! I also have access to the comprehension questions and answers as well as a transcript of this student's retell.

I look forward to collating this information when all assessments are done, and planning how to address these gaps purposefully - probably in their independent tasks but also in the whole class Storybook teaching, for next term.