Phonics Pitfall #1: Not Leading With Assessment

Phonics Pitfalls Series

Dear Reader,

Welcome to our Phonics Pitfalls series. As we countdown to (or begin) the school year, we’ve decided to write this simple series so that you can ensure you’re on track with your phonics work and avoid pitfalls. We hope you find it useful. (Please let us know!) So, here’s our first installment…

Phonics Pitfall #1: Not Leading With Assessment

Do you dive in and continue forward with your whole group reading and phonics curriculum without any particular phonics assessments? If so, you’re not leading with assessment.  

Leading with assessment means utilizing assessment for instruction (Walpole, McKenna 2017). When we assess for instruction, we gather information in order to make decisions about instructional next steps.

Many of our schools are currently making, reviewing, and or revising assessment calendars and making decisions about assessments, including screening assessments and others. We want to make a distinction between types of assessment. A screener is a (hopefully— quick) assessment that allows you to determine students who may need extra support in an area. You might think about this as a temperature check. A temperature check may allow you to know when someone’s not feeling well. But, it won’t tell you what to do next. You need to diagnose using additional information. That’s the next type of assessment: diagnostic. A diagnostic assessment allows you to pinpoint a child’s next step. 

For phonics instruction, you need straightforward diagnostic assessments to help you understand what students already know and what they are ready for next. You can use this data to inform your whole class phonics instruction and small group reading (and sometimes writing) instruction. If you want to know how well students can read words then you want to make sure you do a word reading (phonic decoding) assessment as opposed to a spelling assessment.

For example, to lead with assessment, you’ll likely:

In Kindergarten:

• Start with: Letter Names and Letter Sounds

• If passed try: CVC Decoding and High Frequency Word List

• If CVC word reading is passed try: Additional Phonic Decoding Inventory (CCVC, Silent E, Vowel Team, R Controlled Vowel)

In First and Second Grade:

• Start with: Phonic Decoding Inventory (CVC, CCVC, Silent E, Vowel Team, R-Controlled Vowel, Multisyllabic Words) and High Frequency Word List

• If no section is passed try: Letter Names and Letter Sounds

Also:

• Conduct a quick whole class spelling inventory periodically:

  • Beginning of first grade

  • Late fall/winter of kindergarten

You can simply use 2-3 words from each category on your decoding inventory.

So, you aren’t leading with assessment in phonics if you:

• Neglect to conduct phonics assessments at the beginning of the year.

• Follow your phonics curriculum’s content as it’s written without making adjustments. (You start at the beginning and keep going.)

• Rely on running records to make assumptions about students’ phonics knowledge.

• Only use spelling assessments to drive phonics and reading instruction.

• Conduct phonics assessments at the beginning of the year, but do not use them to make instructional plans.

You are leading with assessment in phonics if you:

• Conduct phonics assessments early on and use these assessments to decide on the best course of action for whole group and small group instruction. (This likely means that you begin the year with the recommended phonics review from your curriculum and then make informed decisions about where to go next.)

You may be wondering where you can find particular assessments. If you don’t already have assessments like these, we love this list of free assessments, compiled by Duke, Lindsey, and Brown. From the Phonics and Word Reading Out of Context section, we recommend the Informal Decoding Inventory.

As you know, we’re still learning. So this doesn’t mean we always did this well. But when you know better, you do better, right?

Onward. Avoid Phonics Pitfall #1: Not Leading With Assessment!

Until next time, readers-

Lizzie & Marie