My phonics prep kit is large and broad. It includes things like word wall cards and posters to liven up my classroom and keep phonics ideas in front of kids day by day. It includes a well-designed spelling center that incorporates the three-story intellect. It’s full of a wide mix of phonics activities including:
- worksheets that serve for independent work or homework
- fluency boards
- games
- puzzles
- cootie catchers (one of my students’ favorites)
- playdough mats
- writing prompts
And in addition to the activities I use to engage students and provide practice, I also have a monitoring system to assess student phonics progress.
Assess student phonics progress
You can have the most creative and engaging activities. Students can love them, but if student phonics progress isn’t happening, something needs to change. Data is essential to understand if your phonics program or intervention is working. A systematic approach helps you keep track of phonics progress for each student.
A good phonics progress monitoring system allows you to:
- Collect data and information about all the students in your class or particular students.
- Identify students who are struggling with phonological and phonemic awareness, reading, and spelling.
- Figure out if your program or intervention is working.
- Decide if you need to re-teach some areas.
To gather this data, I’ve found these to be the key pieces in monitoring student phonics progress:
- A score sheet to track student phonics progress
- Word lists for students to read, write, and manipulate
- Dictation sentences
- Reading cards
- Recording sheets for students to complete assessment activities
A good phonics progress monitoring system allows you to check student progress in multiple ways.
For example, you’ll want to check student phonics progress in oral activities (the ways students hear, say, and work with different sounds). That means students should be able to identify individual sounds and syllables and the spellings of a focus sound. They should also be able to blend, segment, and manipulate sounds. One way to assess these skills is by asking questions like “How many sounds do you hear in the word bake?” Another is to segment the sounds in a word and ask students to tell you the word. Then give the student a word and ask them to segment out the sounds like you were doing.
You’ll also want to assess student phonics progress with reading and writing. Tools to help with monitoring progress in these areas include word lists, dictation sentences, reading cards, and recording sheets for each sound you want to assess students for.
Done for you student phonics progress monitoring pack
If you need a new way to monitor student phonics progress, this pack is for you. The specific assessment activities include
Oral assessments
- Identify individual sounds.
- Identify syllables.
- Blend sounds.
- Segment sounds.
- Phoneme manipulation.
- Identify the spellings of the focus sound.
Spelling assessments
- Tap it, map it, zap it – one-syllable words.
- Review spellings – two and three-syllable words.
- Dictation sentences.
Reading assessments
- Reading one-syllable words.
- Reading two and three-syllable words.
The phonics knowledge covered in this pack includes
- Set 1: sound /ae/, spellings < a, ai, ay, ea, a-e >
- Set 2: sound /ee/, spellings < e, ea, ee, y, ey >
- Set 3: sound /oe/, spellings < o, oa, ow, o-e, oe >
- Set 4: sound /er/, spellings < er, ir, or, ur, ear >
- Set 5: sound /e/, spellings < e, ea, ai >
- Set 6: sound /ow/, spellings < ou, ow >
- Set 7: sound m/oo/n, spellings < oo, ew, ue, u-e, o, ou >
- Set 8: sound /ie/, spellings < i, ie, y, i-g, igh >
- Set 9: sound b/oo/k, spellings < oo, u, oul >
- Set 10: sound /u/, spellings < o, oo, ou, u >
- Set 11: sound /s/, spellings < s, ss, st, c, ce, se, sc >
- Set 12: sound /l/, spellings < l, ll, al, el, il, le, ol >
- Set 13: sound /or/, spellings < or, aw, a, ar, au, al, ore >
- Set 14: sound /air/, spellings < air, are, ear, ere, eir, ayer, ayor >
- Set 15: sound /ue/, spellings < ue, ew, u, u-e >
- Set 16: sound /oy/, spellings < oi, oy >
- Set 17: sound /ar/, spellings < ar, a, al, au >
Included in each set are the following
- Assessment summary sheet to score individual items.
- Teacher recording sheet for oral activities.
- Teacher recording sheet for spelling and reading activities.
- Student reading card.
- Student recording sheet for spelling activities.
Get the Student Phonics Progress Tracking Sheets here (or read on to get the tracking sheets and a whole lot more!)
Assess student phonics progress and more
The student phonics progress tracking sheets are just one of the many done-for-you tools available in the Top Notch Teaching Members Club.
If you are focused on phonics, you’ll find resources like a bundle of CVC products including print and play games, cootie catchers, activities and worksheets, spelling activities that you can adapt to any set of words you are teaching, and long vowel sounds games and worksheets.
But it’s not all phonics and literacy. You’ll also find math games and activities, science experiments and reports, PE and health lessons, along with classroom management tools and support for teacher self-care.
Every month, new resources are added. Everything is ready to download and print to save you time. You can get your student phonics progress tracking sheets and so much more right here >> Top Notch Teaching Members Club.
This post has so much great information on assessing a student’s phonics progress. My daughter is learning how to read and I’ve been wanting to do more with her at home so this is a great resource. The oral assessment I think is especially helpful in seeing if a student is really grasping phonics.