Assessments are the critical starting point when planning a literacy lesson in the classroom, but it can be overwhelming to know just how to assess reading. The purpose of this blog post is to help clear up some confusion about how to assess reading in primary classrooms, with an added bonus to make it easier on you! Assessments help us to understand not only what our students know, but also what they don’t know. We use the results of our assessments to drive our instruction and form a plan for our whole group, small group, and intervention instruction. We’re going to dive into what types of assessments there are plus when and why to use each type.
Types of Assessments
Screener: These assessments are where were going to start at the beginning of the year. The purpose of a universal screener is to identify which students need extra help or intervention to stay on grade level. The purpose of these assessments is not to drive our instruction, but rather identify which students are at risk of experience reading difficulties because of gaps in their knowledge.
Diagnostic: These assessments are the assessments that will help guide our instruction. The purpose of a diagnostic assessment is to tell us what skills our at risk students are struggling with. Remember those students from the universal screener who did not meet the benchmark score? Those are the students were going to be giving a diagnostic assessment to.
To plan a diagnostic assessment, we’re going to identify their lowest skill defecit, which is the most simple foundational reading skill this student did not meet the benchmark score on. Phonemic awareness is the lowest skill, as this is the skill all other reading skills are built on. If a student does not meet benchmark in all skills on a universal screener, were going back to phonemic awareness and starting there. We wouldn’t start with decoding or phonics skills because there is a gap in phonemic awareness understanding and that skill must be fixed FIRST before moving up the staircase progression of skills.
This students would then receive a diagnostic assessment on phonological awareness skills to determine where their level of understanding is. This assessment will show us where we need to start our intervention for this student to help fill those gaps.
Students who share a skill deficit can be group together for small group intervention. The skills being worked on in small group will be geared towards filling that gap. If the screener and diagnostic testing show the majority of your class has a deficit in the same skill, this can be worked on in a whole group setting.
Progress Monitoring Assessments: These assessments help us determine if our intervention is working. We set our instructional goals based on the results of our diagnostic assessment and we see if we need to change or tweak our plans and goals based on the results of progress monitoring. How often you progress monitor can change depending on the students you see, but consider assessing as frequently as possible without burning your students out for students who are at risk or not meeting benchmark. We also use our universal screeners to progress monitor our on level students, typically 3 times a year, to make sure they are continuing to make progress and remain on grade level.
We also progress monitor any time we give an assessment in the classroom to see what students have learned thus far. That may be an end of unit assessment or a dictation assessment. These assessments help us to monitor our students progress of grade level content and make sure the learning that is taking place within the walls of our classroom is sticking!
What am I Assessing?
What skills you are assessing is going to depend on what grade level the student(s) is/are in and the type of assessment you’re giving. If you give a universal screener, they naturally change for each grade level, reflecting which skills students are expect to know and master. If we are looking at diagnostic assessments, were going to go to the lowest skill deficit as identified in the screener, which means you could be assessing a variety of skills.
Typically, however, in kindergarten and first grade, the focus of assessment and instruction is going to be on phonemic awareness and phonics knowledge. Most of our assessments are going to revolve around making sure phonemic awareness skills are mastered and that our phonics knowledge is allowing us to read and spell. In these grades, our assessments normally run from more specific to more broad.
Starting in second grade, students are going to be assessed on more broad skills first, as ideally students in second grade have been taught the majority of the code and have developed solid phonemic awareness skills that allow them to read a variety of texts and passages. If these students are unable to read those texts, we start to work backwards through the foundational skills and see where the gap in their knowledge is.
Below is a staircase diagraph showing what skills are being assessed and in what direction we move when assessing different grade levels. Don’t fret if you feel overwhelmed looking at it- by choosing the right assessments a lot of the work is done for you. The BOY (beginning of year) assessment for kindergarten will assess phonemic awareness and letter naming, while BOY first grade will add on decoding. BOY Third grade, however, will start with and only assess with an Oral Reading Fluency assessment.
I am also going to link three resources for you:
- These are sample pages from book “Assessing Reading: Multiple Measures”. This give you more information on assessments, plus a flow chart for grades 2 and up on what to assess when a student scores below the benchmark. Check them out here.
- This is an assessment flow chart from TXReads that is appropriate for kindergarten and first grade. Check it out here.
- This is a great assessment guide with an incredible amount of information for early grade students.
What Assessment do I Use?
There are SO many assessments available to educators, but it is hard to know which ones are worth our students time, which ones will give us the information we need, and which ones fall into each of the assessment categories.
To make things easier on you, I created a quick guide to assessments. This resource has assessments linked directly into the document for easy assess. Each assessment is also organized by which skill is being assessed and what category each assessment falls into.
Because there are so many assessments, please remember: you do not have to use them all! This resource is meant to help fill your toolbelt and give you resources at your fingertips. Find the ones you prefer, and keep the others handy because you never know when you’ll need them.
It’s also important to keep in mind that you may choose to assess students at various times in the year based on classroom observation and performance. A student who passed the universal screener, but is struggling with spelling may need a diagnostic encoding assessment to see if there are any gaps in their phonics knowledge preventing them from spelling proficiently.
Questions about assessments? You can comment them below or email me at megan@hughesheartforfirst.com
As a first grade teacher, I cannot and will not give specific information on assessing older students. I can give suggestions, but that is not my area of expertise and I will never pretend it is. My friend, Rachel, is the queen of assessments for any grade level. I am linking her blog here and her Instagram here. She offers 1-1 coaching calls to help you answer very specific questions about how to assess your students and how to move forward with instruction after assessments.
Sources:
Diamond, Linda, and B. J. Thorsnes. Assessing Reading: Multiple Measures. Arena Press, 2018.
Torgesen, J. K. (2006) A comprehensive K-3 reading assessment plan: Guidance for school leaders. Portsmouth, NH. RMC Research Corporation, Center on Instruction
