11 Literacy Assessments

Researchers have determined that formative assessments have consistently solid and positive effects on learning, particularly literacy learning.  “Assessment for learning plays a critical role in informing and driving instruction” (Malcom, n.d.).  Literacy assessment at the pre-k to second-grade levels can take many forms. Standardized assessments are used for progress monitoring throughout the school year (at the beginning, middle, and end of the year), and informal assessments are used more regularly to inform and modify instruction. Individual informal assessments may examine a child’s concepts about print, letter/sound recognition, phonemic awareness, phonological awareness, reading fluency, reading accuracy, writing skills, and spelling skills (Readng Rockets, 2024a). Additionally, it is critical to assess a child’s comprehension and vocabulary. Assessments are meant to give the teacher a starting point for instruction and the information needed to modify instruction.

Assessing Concept About Print

Concepts about print (CAP) assessments are typically performed on kindergarten students twice a year (beginning and middle) (Reading Rockets, 2024b.) when they are considered pre-readers or early readers. CAP assessments examine a student’s understanding of print, differences between a letter and word, differences between words and sentences, awareness of punctuation, how we read text, parts of a book, and parts of a story. Some students will enter school with these skills, while others should master them during the first half of kindergarten. Teachers should model and use a think-aloud to identify concepts about print for students during read-alouds. Sample questions to ask when assessing CAP can be found here.

Assessing CAP can be done with any children’s book, is relatively simple to implement, and should feel like sharing a book with the student (North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, n.d.).

Assessing Letter/Sound Recognition

Letter/sound recognition is one side of the Simple View of Reading (Lindsey, 2022). Assessing letter/sound recognition is typically done in kindergarten and first grade or when encountering a student struggling to read. With strong letter/sound recognition skills, students will have strong reading comprehension skills. Assessing letter/sound recognition can be as simple as showing a letter, asking the student to identify it, and then asking them to identify its sound. Assessing letter/sound recognition can be done with magnet letters, slips of paper with letters written on them, or even digital images of the letters. Letters and sounds can be taught concurrently and should be taught clearly and sequentially (Kemeny, 2023). There is not a consensus on the order in which letters/sounds should be taught, but there is a consensus that instruction should focus first on simple skills and move to complex skills as students demonstrate mastery (Kemeny, 2023). Learning at the Primary Pond offers this reading specialist’s suggestions for teaching letters and sounds.

Some suggested order of letters and sounds:

While the suggested order of letters is similar, it is not identical. The goal should be to teach letters that allow students to make a simple CV, VC, and CVC word by manipulating the letters and sounds they have learned.

Assessing Phonological Awareness

Phonological awareness skills include recognizing several elements of literacy, including words in a sentence, rhymes, syllables, and understanding onset-rime. Instruction in phonological awareness skills is considered a foundational skill, and it has been shown to improve reading skills in pre-kindergarten and early elementary (Lindsey, 2022). Typically assessed in kindergarten and early first grade, students may master some skills as young as three (Reading Rockets, 2024e). Phonological awareness skills are also auditory and can be assessed with minimal materials. Taking apart a nursery rhyme or familiar song children have learned and asking them to identify the specific phonological elements of the words/sentences in the song/rhyme is a simple way to assess their knowledge of the skills.

Assessing Phonemic Awareness

Phonemic awareness assessments focus on matching, isolating, blending, segmenting, and manipulating phonemes (Reading Rockets, 2024d). A student with effective phonemic awareness skills is on their way to becoming a proficient reader (Kemeny, 2023). Phonemic awareness skills are auditory, meaning only the teacher needs access to materials (lists of words, sentences, and phrases) for assessment. They also develop an overlapping sequence of skills, including hearing, generating, isolating, blending, segmenting, and manipulating phonemes (Lindsey, 2020). Most students master most skills by the end of first grade with exposure to explicit, systematic instruction.

Phonemic awareness instruction is typically a small part of instructional time (5-10 minutes a day) (National Reading Panel, 2000), and assessment is meant to be quick and done on individual students. Phonemic awareness instruction should be explicit (be intentional about what is being taught), and students should be on task and engaged during instruction (Kemeny, 2023). Phonemic awareness instruction still occurs in second grade as students continue to review and learn phonemes.

Here is an example of a phonemic awareness lesson in a second-grade classroom.

Assessing Phonics

Phonics instruction is a cornerstone of early literacy development, with its efficacy well-established in research (Adams, 1990). To ensure effective teaching, teachers must possess a comprehensive understanding of how to assess students’ phonics skills.

Types of Phonics Assessments

• Screening Assessments: These are typically administered at the beginning of the school year to identify students who may need additional support. Screening tools like the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) assess phonemic awareness, letter knowledge, and initial sound fluency. 
• Diagnostic Assessments: These are more detailed and help pinpoint specific phonics skills that students struggle with. Tools such as the Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening (PALS) provide insights into students’ abilities to recognize and manipulate sounds in words. 
• Progress Monitoring: Regular assessments are conducted to track students’ progress over time. Teachers use tools like oral reading fluency and informal reading inventories to monitor how well students apply phonics skills in reading. These assessments help teachers adjust instruction based on students’ ongoing needs.

• • Often called Curriculum-based assessments (CBAs), these on-going assessments play a crucial role in monitoring phonics progress. CBAs involve assessing students’ performance on tasks directly related to classroom instruction (Fuchs & Fuchs, 2011). By regularly administering CBAs, teachers can track students’ growth in decoding skills and adjust instruction accordingly.  
• Summative Assessments: These are administered at the end of a unit or school year to evaluate overall phonics proficiency. Standardized tests, such as the Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA), measure students’ ability to decode words and read fluently.

Methods of Assessment

1. Letter-Sound Correspondence: Teachers assess students’ ability to match letters with their corresponding sounds. This can be done through flashcards, letter-sound matching games, or digital tools. 
2. Blending and Segmenting: These skills are essential for decoding and encoding words. Teachers might ask students to blend sounds to form words or segment words into individual sounds. Activities like Elkonin boxes, where students push counters into boxes as they say each sound, are commonly used.
3. Word Recognition: Assessing students’ ability to recognize high-frequency words, or sight words, is crucial. Teachers use word lists and flashcards to evaluate how quickly and accurately students can read these words.
4. Decodable Texts: Students read texts that are specifically designed to practice phonics skills. Teachers observe and record students’ reading behaviors, noting errors and self-corrections to assess their phonics knowledge.
5. Spelling Inventories: These assessments involve having students spell a list of words that increase in difficulty. Analyzing students’ spelling patterns helps teachers understand their grasp of phonics rules and patterns.

Assessing Reading Fluency and Accuracy

Researchers know that fluency supports reading comprehension (Blevins, 2017; Lindsey, 2022; Kemeny, 2023), including automatic and accurate word reading (National Reading Panel, 2000). Prosody (reading with expression) is an essential component of fluency, and reading with prosody should be modeled by teachers in read-alouds and shared reading experiences (Lindsey, 2022). Calculating a student’s correct words per minute (WCPM) of reading will allow you to compare their score to fluency norms to see if they are on target for reading (Kemeny, 2023). WCPM is a component of Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) and is assessed in the following manner. This video breaks down how to do this.

Ask the student to read a text or selected passage for a minute, keeping track of errors the student makes while reading. Repetitions and self-corrections of words while reading do not count as mistakes. This common rubric assesses a student for fluency and prosody while reading. When selecting text for children to read, focus on texts that students can be appropriately challenged by but also find success with while reading (Lindsey, 2022).

Watch this video for an example of a teacher administering an ORF assessment.

Assessing Writing and Spelling

In A Fresh Look at Phonics (2017), Wiley Blevins makes the case for using dictation regularly with phonics instruction, allowing students to practice and develop their writing and spelling skills. Dictation means the teacher says a letter, a word, or a sentence depending on the level of the students, and the students write what they hear. Starting as young as kindergarten, students can write the letter they hear the teacher say. Dictation can transition to words and then sentences as students learn more. Dictation is not an assessment tool per se, but the information gained from a student’s writing sample during dictation can inform future instruction. Students may still use inventive or estimated spelling (Kemeny, 2023) for words for which they have not learned the spelling pattern—more on the importance of how teachers use inventive spelling to assess their student’s writing.

Dictation can also work in conjunction with spelling practice for students. Students should be asked to spell words with already-learned spelling patterns (Kemeny, 2023). Avoid spelling lists of words that do not have a spelling connection (Blevins, 2017). For example, if a teacher has been working on teaching ar, they can ask students to spell words that contain that pattern, such as car, bar, and jar (Lindsey, 2022).  Assessing spelling patterns that students have learned allows the teacher to identify gaps in learning, adjust instruction, and differentiate when necessary. Assessment should focus on the spelling patterns students have learned (Kemeny, 2023). Dictation may start as soon as children start learning about letter-sound relationships. Starting early increases their exposure to writing and provides more opportunities for students to write (Blevins, 2017). Teachers may also use student writing samples from activities like journal writing, stories, or response prompts to assess their spelling.

Two common assessments take a developmental approach to spelling and understanding where a student might need support. Words Their Way includes spelling inventories for use with students in kindergarten through sixth grade. Teachers can analyze students’ errors and determine what they need to teach next. The MONSTER spelling assessment, designed by Dr. J. Richard Gentry, is another developmental spelling assessment that identifies where students fall in the five developmental stages: pre-communicative, semiphonetic, phonetic, transitional, and conventional.

Assessing Comprehension

Assessing a student’s comprehension should fit seamlessly into the lesson with the text. Behring and Laitusis (2022) suggest five ways to do this: make connections, think-pair-share, summarize the story, draw the story, and make predictions. Making connections is a strategy to help students understand and comprehend what they are reading; text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-to-world are the three connections students can make. Think-pair-share encourages students to think about a question the teacher has asked about the story/text, pair up with a partner to discuss the question, and then share their thinking with their partner and/or the class. When asking students to summarize the text, teachers can provide graphic organizers to help students think. Visualizing what they are reading aids in comprehension and building a strong reader. Ask students to draw the images that come to mind as they read. While reading, teachers can ask students to predict what a character might do in the story and why they might choose to take that particular action or make that particular choice. Vocabulary and background knowledge are critical to reading comprehension (Kemeny, 2023).

Assessing Vocabulary

Comprehension of a text is improved when students understand the vocabulary used in the text; they need to be able to read the words accurately and fluently to understand what they are reading (Kemeny, 2023). Introducing and teaching tier 2 and tier 3 words before reading a text is crucial for building background knowledge and aids in the comprehension of that text (Kemeny, 2023). Students can self-assess using the Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS), consistent with Dale’s (1965) incremental stages of word learning, to help teachers identify the gaps in their learning and understand where they need to focus their teaching.

Using a graphic organizer such as the Frayer Model helps students clarify and understand the meaning of words they encounter in their texts (Plankers, n.d.). The Frayer Model can be completed individually or in small groups. It taps into students’ higher-order thinking skills and can be used to introduce new words or review words (Plankers, n.d.).

A Semantic Feature Analysis, discussed in more detail here, may also be used by classroom teachers to assess their students’ understanding of vocabulary in the text they will be using.

Assessing Handwriting

Teachers should monitor their students’ handwriting efforts informally. Students learn how to properly hold writing utensils to form letters in pre-kindergarten and kindergarten. Up through third grade, instructional time may be spent on handwriting toward a goal of fluent handwriting. Fluent handwriting frees the students to focus on the content of their writing, and the quality of their handwriting can impact future evaluations of their writing (Sedita & Hasbrouck, 2022). Formal handwriting assessments can be completed by an occupational therapist (Beck, 2023) after a referral from a teacher.

Summary

While standardized assessments monitor students’ progress in developing literacy skills at specified times during the school year, regular, ongoing informal assessments help inform explicit and systematic instruction. Reading Rockets (Reading Rockets, 2024a) provides an overview of informal reading assessments. A reminder that the assessments should be administered one-on-one. With the data gathered from the assessments, teachers can differentiate their instruction (Lindsey, 2022) by forming small groups for focused skill instruction and/or pre-teaching or re-teaching the skills children need to be successful readers. Regular assessments allow teachers to be intentional about their teaching by focusing explicit and systematic instruction on skills children need to be successful readers.

References

ABC’s of Literacy. (2024, June 28). Order to teach letter recognition. https://abcsofliteracy.com/order-to-teach-letter-recognition/

Adams, M. J. (1990). Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print. MIT Press.

Beck, C. (2023).  Handwriting assessment: Occupational therapy. The OT Toolbox. https://www.theottoolbox.com/handwriting-analysis-observations/

Behring, R. & Laitusis, V. (2022, November 5). 5 reading comprehension assessment strategies. HMH Education Company. https://www.hmhco.com/blog/reading-comprehension-assessment-strategies.

Blevins, W. (2017). A fresh look at phonics Common causes for failure and 7 ingredients for success. Corwin Literacy.

Dale, E. (1965). Vocabulary measurement: Techniques and major findings. Elementary English, 42(8), 895–901.

Geiger, A. (n.d.) What’s the best order to teach letters? The Measured Mom. https://www.themeasuredmom.com/whats-the-best-order-to-teach-letters/.

Fuchs, L. S., & Fuchs, D. (2011). Using CBM for progress monitoring in reading. National Center on Student Progress Monitoring. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED519252.pdf 

Kemeny, L. (2023). 7 mighty moves research-backed, classroom-tested strategies to ensure k-to-3 reading success. Scholastic.

Light, J. & McNaughton, D. (n.d.). Letter-sound correspondences. Literacy instruction for individuals with autism, cerebral palsy, down syndrome, and other developmental disabilities. Penn State. https://aacliteracy.psu.edu/index.php/page/show/id/6/index.html

Lindsey, J. B. (2022). Reading above the fray: Reliable research-based routines for developing decoding skills. Scholastic.

Malcolm, U. (n.d.). Evidence-based assessment in the science of reading. LD@school. https://www.ldatschool.ca/evidence-based-assessment-reading/.

National Reading Panel (2000). Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research on reading and its implications for reading instruction. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. (n.d.). Print awareness for pre-k. https://www.dpi.nc.gov/students-families/parents-corner/literacy-home-digital-childrens-reading-initiative/pre-kindergarten/print-awareness-pre-k

Plankers, M. (n.d.). Language and literacy: The Frayer model. n2y. https://www.n2y.com/blog/language-and-literacy-frayer-model/.

Reading Rockets. (2024a). Basics: Informal classroom-based assessment. Greater Washington Educational Telecommunications Association (WETA). https://www.readingrockets.org/reading-101/reading-and-writing-basics/informal-classroom-based-assessment.

Reading Rockets. (2024b). Concepts of print assessment. Greater Washington Educational Telecommunications Association (WETA). https://www.readingrockets.org/topics/assessment-and-evaluation/articles/concepts-print-assessment.  

Reading Rockets. (2024c). Letter/sound (alphabet) recognition. Greater Washington Educational Telecommunications Association (WETA). https://www.readingrockets.org/topics/assessment-and-evaluation/articles/lettersound-alphabet-recognition-assessment.

Reading Rockets. (2024d). Phonemic awareness assessment. Greater Washington Educational Telecommunications Association (WETA). https://www.readingrockets.org/topics/assessment-and-evaluation/articles/phonemic-awareness-assessment.

Reading Rockets. (2024e). Phonological awareness assessment. Greater Washington Educational Telecommunications Association (WETA). https://www.readingrockets.org/topics/assessment-and-evaluation/articles/phonological-awareness-assessment.

Sedita, J., & Hasbrouck, J. (2022). The writing rope: A framework for explicit writing instruction in all subjects. Brookes Publishing.