ASSESSING PHONICS
Phonics instruction plays a key role in helping students comprehend text. For a student to become a skilled, fluent reader, they need to have a range of strategies to draw on. Most struggling readers rely on just one reading strategy, such as the use of picture clues. These readers rely on this one strategy so heavily that they exclude other strategies that might be more appropriate. Some more suitable strategies include using knowledge of sound-spelling relationships that an understanding of phonics provides. Phonics helps a student map sound into spellings, thus eventually enabling them to decode words. Decoding words assistances in the development of word recognition, which in turn increases reading fluency.
Phonics instruction is taught explicitly in my classroom. Students practice letter sounds, sounding words out, and sound spelling. Phonics lessons in my classroom focus on applying learned sound-spelling relationships to actual reading.
Many students enter kindergarten with the ability to recognize most of the 26 letters in the English language. Fewer students recognize the letter sounds. A formative assessment of letter/sound recognition, assess a student's ability to recognize letters and sounds. Students also begin to practice spelling. Students first attempt this with nonsense words and inventive spelling and then move on to real spelling.
Formative assessments in phonics include a variety of informal assessments, such as checklists on sound recognition, letter formation, and letter identification. My informal assessments provide a snapshot of information that I use to adjust instructional plans and provide intervention strategies for the following day. These assessments also provide me with an opportunity to give students immediate feedback. I also use a formative assessment to track student growth and to address developmental issues. These formative assessment help provide me valuable information that I can share with parents and administration.
Sound dictation
One formative assessment that I use frequently in my classroom is a sound dictation exercise that students complete on whiteboards. Students will listen to a series of letter sounds and use the fundations writing lines try and depict the correct letters. This exercise helps me to quickly identify students who are struggling with particular sounds or phonics concepts. The notes I take from these activities gives me an idea of which students need more time to grasp the ideas. When I notice a student who is struggling during this time consistently I am able to provide them with one on one teaching during resource time.
The pictures below show students' work who are practicing letter/sound correspondence with CVC words during one of the sound dictations. Not only do these write board provides me with the letter/sound knowledge student posses but also with letter formation that students are capable of.
Cruising Clipboard Checklist
Each week I create a checklist of all the skills that I will be addressing during the phonics portion of our literacy block. This clipboard provides me with anecdotal findings of observation I make while observing my classroom. This information is used to shape instruction just like other formative assessments.
The photo shows a typical cruising clipboard checklist that I use in my weekly phonics lessons. In the left column, I have all of my students' names. Then I have five or six objectives that we will be working on throughout the week. The last column is reserved for notes. Students receive a check if they mastered a skill and an x if they are struggling with a skill.
Homework
The last type of formative assessment that I use during phonics instruction is a homework packet that is comprehensive of the unit’s objectives.
Parents receive a fundations homework packet so that they can continue to coach their child in the same way as the teacher does after school. Parents receive a unit’s homework one week at a time. At the beginning of each unit, they will have a parent letter notifying them of all these skills that students will be practicing.
When students return to school on Monday with their homework packet, I am able to view the progress they made with their family. This also provides me with information on who is helping coach my students at home. Many students have older siblings that help with homework. This makes it easy to address issues with siblings who are around the school.
Summative Assessment: Phonics
I use unit tests as my summative assessments in phonics. Unit tests make an easy measure of students' ability to show mastery of concepts that were focused on throughout the unit. Students take a one-on-one assessment with me. They use the same materials such as the whiteboard and magnet board to perform unit tests.
The unit tests start with a basic understanding of phonics in unit 1 such as identification of lower case letters and sound to using the correct formation of lower case letters. The structure of the test changes on every unit test. The teacher is also recording unit test scores on a record page to provide for analysis for the test tracker.
The unit tests increase difficulty throughout the school year. By the end of unit 5, students must be able to correctly write a sentence and correctly read a sentence to receive points. This follows the same path a student should be using to becoming a fluent reader. Students who are struggling are retaught concepts.
Data-Driven Instruction: Phonics
Formal Assessments are only valuable if an educator examines the data and uses it to address struggling students and plan for future instruction. Fundation provides educators with unit test trackers to analyze the data.
Students' total points are calculated and struggling students are identified in red. Struggling students receive individual support and additional instruction through lunchtime literacy intervention, small group reading, and push in from classroom volunteers. The tracker also will identify areas that the whole class is deficient in. This information tells me that as a whole, students didn’t understand a category and I need to readdress the skill through homework, morning message, and group activities.
Students who were highlighted in red and received re-teaching of concepts will have to be retested. This will help gauge their ability to retain information and how effective the interventions and re-teaching was. In this picture, you will see that a majority of the students improved their scores significantly and are now above the 80% mastery mark. These gains in phonics skills will help students towards out big goal of becoming better readers