Tanya Looking for an effective elementary literacy assessment guide with free screeners school-wide? I have searched (and found) an effective way to assess every student in school for reading. Screen for tier 1, tier 2 and tier 3 reading challenges. My criteria: a systematic, accurate and realistic recipe. If you are new to my blog, I am an elementary resource teacher from Quebec, Canada and have I like to share my insights on my day-to-day teaching.
Why Assess Every Student for Literacy?
There are so many components to reading that if left undetected, can be detrimental to student success. Using a reading assessment school-wide can provide you with concrete data for all areas of reading including student strengths and weaknesses. I use the information from these tests to create small focused groups for tier 2 and tier 3 intervention. Of course, also to congratulate tier 1 students.
How to Assess Reading School Wide Recipe
1. DIBELS
Become familiar with the free online DIBELS program. This is the first screener to weed out the students who are doing well and those who potentially need extra support. These testing materials range from beginning of kindergarten to grade 8. Based on the results of the various sub-tests (specific to each grade), you can then classify the students into groups using this DIBELS grouping document (if you find the digital version, please let me know). This graphic organizer is effective to create targeted groups. Just like that, you have data on which students can be considered tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3. Example subtests generally consist of letter recognition, nonsense word fluency, oral reading fluency and word reading fluency. The MAZE is used for reading comprehension.
2. CORE Phonics Survey
I then assess students from group 2-4 (with professional judgement of course if you have many) using this free CORE Phonics Survey. The results of this test can help guide me more specifically on the area in phonics that I need to start intervention with if necessary. This assessment tests reading of words and nonsense words starting from short vowel words to multisyllabic words. I then use this free guide to help align my intervention (if using UFLI for phonics). I like to place all students materials in a binder in sheet protectors like in the photo.
3. Spelling Inventory
This is a quick spelling test that can be administered to the whole class at once. This checks for written spelling patterns the student is able to do. I like to cross reference this test with the CORE test and it provides me with so much information of what the student difficulties are in phonics and where to begin my intervention.
I then gather all information from these tests, and I have a good idea of which students need extra interventions.
Once I make my groups, I also like to administer a leveled reading assessment such as the RAZ kids or DRA. My school has RAZ Plus for kids, so we send access to levelled books at home. I then do periodic progress monitoring using the DIBELS to monitor progress.
A tip that may save you a lot of headache- digitize all data to allow for easy and fast retrieval, comparison and use.
Here are some parent friendly letters to send home to relay student difficulties (quick assessments also included if desired).
