These students described in the assessors' observation notes all experienced difficulty during the first assessment. They were all reading well below their assigned grade four level. The assessors' comments focused on the students' reading behaviors. The behaviors noted indicate the students' frustrations with the task of reading at the both the word level and the text level. The word level includes letter recognition, phonemic awareness, and knowledge of sight words. The text level requires a student to make meaning at the sentence level and have some familiarity with story structure. All four students did improve in the third assessment but were still reading below grade level.

Students A, B, and C continued to struggle to make meaning at the word level in the third assessment and were still reading below grade level. For example, during the first assessment, Student A said, "I don't know a lot of words." By the third assessment, it was noted that this student felt more confident about his reading but still said, "Sometimes I don't understand what I read". In the third assessment, the assessor noted that Student B was still trying extremely hard to sound out words. Student C appears to be trying harder to make sense out of words that he meets. The assessor noted that he tries to use context to figure out words. This context could come from a picture clue, the title, his background knowledge, and his experiences with literacy. Student D appears to make meaning at the text level. In the first assessment, the assessor's notes suggested that this student relied on background knowledge because she could make up logical answers for questions. By the third assessment, she was very confident in answering questions and more relaxed when reading stories.

The next two sets of observations represent examples of students whose reading levels were estimated to be close to the grade level on the first and third assessments. The assessor's observation notes from the assessments are in Table 16.