Whole GrouP assessment
Formative Phonics Assessment
My school uses the Wonders curriculum for literacy instruction. As a first grade team, we reorganize the sequencing of the phonics skills in a way that supported student learning and built on student prior knowledge. The Wonders curriculum does not have integrated phonics assessments. While we teach phonics skills such as letter sounds, digraphs, and blends, we had no formal way to assess student mastery of these skills. As a first grade team, we created short phonics assessments to be administered every two weeks to align with our new sequence.
Creating phonics assessments with the first grade team has been a critical component in ensuring our instruction is responsive to student needs. Of my 22 students this year, all 22 started the year reading below grade-level according to the Diagnostic Reading Assessment. Assessing students' phonics skills is vital in understanding what foundational skills my students are lacking that is limiting their reading skills. I use these assessments to both assess my students understanding of a topic as well as my own instructional strategies. These short assessments also allow me to show students the skills they are skill working on as we review their answers together. If the majority of my students are not showing mastery of a previously taught skill, it shows I need to reevaluate my instructional strategy and make adjustments before re-teaching the skill. The assessments, which we have called "Fun-ics assessments," are aligned with the common core phonics standards. They are sequenced to align with the resequenced Wonders Curriculum I use for literacy instruction planning.
Formative Dictation Assessment
One portion of the DRA assessment we administer three times a year is dictation. This is the students’ ability to write the words they hear. This is not a skill that is incorporated in our curriculum. In partnership with a fellow first grade teacher, we integrated one dictation sentence every morning before our morning meeting. We pick a target skill that we have focused on during whole group instruction and ask students to use that skill by writing a sentence. I individually check each students’ journal, underlining mistakes for them to fix, and noting their successes. We then review the words or sentence together as a whole class, focusing on the target skill. This informal assessment provides students with an important opportunity to practice their segmenting skills, as well as provides an opportunity to directly address students’ mistakes in the moment, and provide them a chance to fix it.
I begin each morning at 7:57am with a dictation sentence. Students write the date on a new line, then listen for the words or sentence of the day. The pictures below show examples of the dictation words and sentences I use throughout the year. At the start of the year, I begin with letter sounds and names. I then progress to basic CVC words focusing on the vowel or letter sound I am targeting that day or week, such as map and cat to target the letter a. Once my students show they have mastered the routine and are showing progress in their segmenting skills, I will begin to include target first grade sight words along with CVCs. After the first quarter, I increase the difficulty of the task by dictating full sentences. These sentences include sight words as well as target phonics skills. When I first check students' journals, I underline any mistakes and see if students are able to make the change by themselves. When I come to check for the second time, if they are still struggling, I give them additional support to help them find success. The example below about a bumblebee includes the sight word 'because,' which is often a challenging word for students to master. It is also targeting contractions as a skill. After students have completed their writing, we gather on the carpet and review the sentence. This whole activity takes about 5 minutes.
C
B
A
Fun-ics Assessments
Answer key:
1. G, T, Q, U, M, J.
2. E, G, R, A, Y, J
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Student A has shown mastery of letter names and letter sounds as she was able to write the appropriate letters to match the letter name and sounds.
Student B shows mastery of letter names, however is still struggling with some letter sounds. The child mistook the letter Y sound for the letter V, and the letter J sound for the letter G.
Student C is showing she needs significant remediation for letter sounds and names. Whiles he was able to correctly identify the letter A sound, she was unable to identify any other letter names or sounds on this assessment.
The digraph fun-ics assessment shown the right (D) shows the student assessed is still struggling to master the th, ch, sh, blends. I used this data to guide my planning for small group instruction. In order to address this gap in skills, I integrated blends into his group's guided reading follow up work. The student completed the word work assignment shown here during guided reading to reinforce his understanding of the digraph sounds. The student was able to use his book to find words that have the th and sh blends, as well as think of words on his own. The student successfully identified words with the th and sh blend.
B
Informal Observational Assessment
My whole group lesson plans are all done through Google Slides. The power point format of my lessons allow for frequent student participation. Students participate in learning activities on the board such as identifying sight words, blending words, and segmenting words. I informally assess students’ ability to participate in the learning activities on the carpet to identify students who are struggling with certain skills. I then follow up with these students during guided reading. Some activities require all students to participate as a group, others have individual students come to the board to complete a task. The phonics skills I most heavily emphasize are letter sounds, consonant blends, inflectional endings, consonant digraphs. The phonemic awareness skills I most heavily emphasize are blending and segmenting. These foundational skills are the building blocks upon which strong readers are built. These skills cycle throughout the year and scaffolded to increase in the complexity of skill needed to accomplish a task. Continuously assessing students' participation in these skills allows me to track student success through their participation in tasks such as whole group blending of a word. I am also able to track student success through their willingness and ability to attempt an individual task on the board.
My whole group instruction is designed to maximize opportunities for assessing student skills. By projecting my lessons through Google Slides I am able to include visual aids as well as interactive activities into all componentes of my daily lessons. The lessons shown below show how I am able to assess student learning through these lessons. The first two slides show blending activities. The next two slides show segmenting activities. I observe student success with simple CVC blends, and increase the difficulty as students begin to show mastery. Students are able to show what they know through whole group practice as well as individually by coming to the board to complete a task independently. This allows me to track student progress as well as gives students an opportunity to learn from their peers and encourage each other to push through new tasks.
Student A is showing a typical b, d mistake. I underlined the incorrect letter without telling the student why it was wrong. This gave the student an opportunity to self-correct based on my feedback. This indicates to me that I need to review the difference between the letters with this child.
Student B has shown mastery of many segmenting skills. She shows mastery of the target skill by correctly writing "couldn't" and wrote the sight word "because" without mistake. The erasure marks show that she is also able to self-correct without my intervention.
A
The pictures here show students coming to the board to complete segmenting tasks. Without support, students clap out the syllables they hear, then tap out the individual sounds they hear. They explain their thinking to the class as they work to both practice the metacognition Habit of Mind as well as help their classmates also find success in the task. I am able to ask specific students to come to the board to assess their knowledge of the task. This informal assessment indicates if skills need to be re-taught or if students are ready for more challenging tasks.
