Is your phonics program or intervention working? Do you have students struggling with particular alternate spellings? Are there areas you need to reteach to everyone? There’s one way to find out—assessments.
You don’t need a phonics program specific assessment. Solid assessments will give you all the information you need and work with any program. That means if you have recently switched phonics programs or use a blend of programs, you can still easily monitor phonics progress.
3 alternate spelling assessment types
You’ll need different kinds of assessments to see how well students understand and can appropriately use the alternate spellings.
Oral assessments
You’ll want to assess how students hear, say, and work with different sounds. To do so, assess that students can:
- Identify individual sounds
- Identify syllables
- Blend sounds
- Segment sounds
- Manipulate sounds
- Identify the spellings of the focus sound
Spelling assessments
Hearing and understanding the sounds is one piece. Recognizing alternate spellings for those sounds and being able to use the correct one is important too. Monitor progress in this area by having students manipulate words in a process like tap it, map it, zap it in which students tap a square as they say each sound in the word, then write the spellings for each sound as they say it, and write the whole word. You can also have students spell specific two- or three-syllable words and have them write down dictation sentences.
Reading assessments
Have students read aloud one-, two-, and three-syllable words.
All three types of assessments give you the information you can use to monitor student progress in phonics and make decisions about additional teaching and practice.
What you need for alternate spelling assessments
Assessments don’t require a lot of materials, but you will need a few things.
First, a score sheet helps you keep track of how each student performed. You’ll use it to score specific tasks and to identify any areas where students need additional practice or support.
You’ll also need word lists, recording sheets for students to complete certain activities, prepared dictation sentences and spelling words, and reading cards for students to read from for reading assessments.
Phonics Progress Monitoring Tracking Sheets for Alternative Spellings brings it all together for you. This pack includes 17 sets of progress monitoring assessments to help you monitor students phonological and phonemic awareness, reading and spelling with a variety of alternate spelling sounds.
Each set includes an assessment cover sheet to help you score individual tasks and identify areas of weakness. The summary is split into oral activities, spelling activities and reading activities to help you narrow down where the gaps are. There is room to record data for three students in each set. The sets include 1-, 2-, and 3- syllable words so you can differentiate for student abilities and determine students’ level of progression. The Appendices provides a student recording sheet where your students can record the tasks from the spelling section of the assessment.
Make phonics progress monitoring easier on yourself. Get your alternate spelling assessment pack today: Phonics Progress Monitoring Tracking Sheets for Alternative Spellings.
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