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Informal Decoding Inventory
Strengths:
This was great for giving a quick analysis of what deficits a student has with their phonics skills.  I have not been a fan of using nonsense words, but in this case it made the students stop and look and really use their skills - or not!  It was great!
Limitations:
As I said it was quick and short, so not exhaustive.  I think if a student really struggled with this inventory, I would look for a more in depth one to uncover more specific information.
Student View:
The students really liked this inventory.  They both laughed at some of the nonsense words.  I explained why we were using those words and they rose to the challenge!
Suggestions for use:
I would use this for elementary - there are 2 versions.  My middle school students struggled with fluency so I used it to see if I could pinpoint some of his struggles, but for most middle schoolers it would not have any benefits.

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Sylvia Greene's Informal Word Analysis Inventory
Strengths:
This was a quick tool for checking students encoding if you use the spelling check portion.  I used this with a 8th grade student and right away it identified areas of phonics needs such as homophones, vowel diphthongs, word endings, and greek or latin roots.
Limitations:
This test has 45 words that students need to spell and gets long.  The assessor would need to follow up with another tool to see if some miscues are a fluke or an actual deficiency.
Student View
The student that I gave this to seemed fine with the length, at the same time, she has a longer attention span than many.
Suggestions for Use:
I would give this to students 3-8th to get a quick look at their phonics skills/needs. You could give this to the whole class and then work with small groups on particular skills.

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Words Their Way Upper Spelling Inventory
Strengths:
This tool is great for finding out what a student already knows and what they need to learn, or practice. It does a great job of breaking things down by spelling pattern and feature to help the teacher learn where there are any "holes" in a child's spelling knowledge allowing for more focused instruction.
Limitations:
This test gets long, and it definitely feels like a test! The scoring takes a considerable amount of time and when administering it to a whole class, hours could be spent on analyzing the data.
Student View:
My student was happy to do the assessment. His attention span is rather short, and I think he began to get impatient and bored, but he tried hard, and was rather successful.
Suggestions for Use:
I would use this as a way to learn what skills my students need, and don't need, and teach accordingly. I'd give the assessment at the beginning of the year and at the end of every quarter, but maybe give it in small groups, and only give it on the select words that had patterns that were a focus of lessons.

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SOURCE: McKenna & Stahl, 2015
STRENGTH: I appreciated how this tool had an even mix of commonly used phonemes/digraphs (and words where they appear) as well as not so commonly used ones.
LIMITATION: As Wendy L articulates well elsewhere on the Padlet, some of these words were definitely former sight words for my student, which didn't really help in identifying his phonics skills.
STUDENT VIEW: The student understood that no matter how many word sounds he could or could not figure out, it was okay. Nevertheless, he was proud when he was able to sound out a word sound and it sounded familiar to him and he also got frustrated when he couldn't figure out how certain consonant sounds blended together or when a letter was silent.
SUGGESTION FOR USE: This assessment does give a fairly accurate overall view of a student's skill levels identifying a number of phonemes, digraphs, and more. It may not be the most ideal compilation of words, but it still seems like a valuable tool to get a solid overview of a child's abilities at the beginning or ending of an academic marking period.

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Bethany P.              Words Their Way Upper Snelling Inventory

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Bethany P.              Words Their Way Upper Snelling Inventory

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Source: http://readingandwritingproject.com/public/resources/assessments/spelling/spelling_upper.pdf
Strengths:
This tool can be administrered to the entire class to preassess spelling patterns and knowledge. It could be used to create spelling groups. The assessment covers a range of word patterns to begin to determine what students understand of various word groups.

Limitations: This test is a bit long. I could see students becoming frustraste with the length of the preassessment.

Student View:
My nephew grew weary at about word 19 and comented it was too long.

Suggestions:
If I were to use this, I may perhaps assess in chunks of 10 words. Then assess spelling groups and teach these groups. Then assess the next ten and repeat.

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Words Their Way Upper Spelling Inventory
Strengths:
This tool can be used with a whole class to learn about strengths and weakness with spelling word patterns.  It has a great break down of word features, is organized tool that gives credit for word parts known as well as correct spelling of whole words. It can be used as a benchmark tool to measure growth.
Limitations: With 31 words, the test is a bit lengthy.  The words are unfamiliar to some so could be a daunting task for students who get anxious.
Student View:
I emphasized with my student that he would get credit for parts of words that he spelled correctly.  This seemed to reassure him and he continued to stay engaged throughout the test session. He did state that he did not know all the words at the completion of the test.
Suggestions for Use:   I would use intitally for all students to see what kind of word work is needed.  Then I would use every 8-10 weeks to measure progress and tweak my word work plan for students.

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CORE Phonics Survey

Source: Consortium on Reading Excellence.  (Found in one of the "additional resources" folders on our Moodle)

Strength: This is an individually administered phonics survey that takes about 10-15 minutes and is appropriate for students in grades K-12. This is great for middle school teachers and is quick. It is a "survey" in the sense that it includes a look at alphabet skills and letter sounds (consonant and vowels), and also includes seven subtests of single syllable words of 15 items each, divided by type of vowel or syllable. There is also a 24 item look at multisyllabic words. Scoring and recording is straightforward. 2/3 of the words in each subtest are real words, and 1/3 are nonsense, giving teachers a sense of if phonics rules are internalized. Guidelines are provided for teachers as to how many of the subtests to administer based on the age of the student.

Limitation: For older students, 24 items of multisyllabic words is pretty brief and teachers may appreciate a more extensive look at a students' ability to decode multisyllabic words.

Student View: My student had no difficulties with the format of this assessment and completed all activities with a positive attitude.

Suggestion for Use: I will likely use this assessment again as a middle school teacher when I want a quick look at a students' decoding skills as well as their consonant and vowel sound knowledge. It is helpful for identifying if decoding is a possible area of difficulty for a student.

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Assessment Tool: Words Their Way Upper Spelling Inventory

Source: Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton, and Johnston (as cited in McKenna & Stahl, 2015)

Strength: One strength of this tool is the ability to identify exactly what spelling stage the student is in and understand what features the student already has knowledge of and can use independently. The upper inventory allows the teacher to determine what developmental spelling stage the student is in to determine further instruction.

Limitation: A limitation of this inventory is that some of the words are too difficult for students in the upper grades, meaning that the elementary spelling inventory may need to be used instead. This inventory assumes that most students in the upper grades will be at least in the within word pattern stage. The word list is also very long and if students misspell more than eight words the assessor should stop the test to limit student frustration.

Student View: As I used this assessment with my student they thought that some of the words were too difficult, but they tried their best to spell them. They felt that the assessment was long and they rushed towards the end to try to finish it.

Suggestion for Use: I would use this assessment at the beginning of the year with my entire class to gain a better understanding of their developmental spelling stage. I would then group students together based on their needs and provide word work activities that would allow them to develop the skills that they need additional support with. Students should be reassessed in the middle of the school year and again at the end to adjust instruction as needed and show student growth.

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Informal Phonics Inventory

I already posted about an assessment I used, but my concerns about the IPI compelled me to post about its limitations:

The first three subtests are fine; it is the final six that trouble me.  If the words are part of a student’s sight vocabulary, merely being able to read the word does not indicate whether the child would be able to apply phonic knowledge of those word features to other words.  The results could present a false assumption of what the child really knows.  It is dangerous for a teacher to assume that if a student can read a word, he understands the word features of that word.  The only information gathered from the final six subtests is whether or not the student can read the words, nothing else.  The student who cannot read the words will benefit from possible additional screening, while the student who can read the words (but don’t have the phonic knowledge) are doomed to slip through the cracks.

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Assessment Tool: Word Identification Assessment TCRWP
Strength: This is a quick and easy test to do with young readers. I administered it to a 2nd grader and he worked through it very quickly. It is very easy to score because it is divided into high frequency word lists 20-30 words and you score the student on each page.
Limitations: I did not know what the words were based on or taken from so it may not be the words students are working with in their classrooms.
Student View: The student I assessed started at the level recommended by the test. The words were so easy for him he just zoomed through them without thinking. It was hard for him to slow down and I felt he missed a few higher level words because he was into the fast pace rather than reading the words well.
Suggestions for Use: This would be a good test to use to assess a student's high frequency knowledge at the beginning of the school year. It is a test that can be taken quarterly and would show growth throughout the school year.

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Assessment Tool:
Fountas & Pinnell Word Features Test, grade 6

Strength:
Very quick assessment that provides information about the students' automaticity reading words with prefixes and suffixes.

Limitation:
Assessment is administered individually, so may be a challenge for teachers to meet with all students.

Student view:
The student I assessed liked that it was quick.  She thought some of the words were challenging, but not too many.

Suggestion for use:
This would be a useful tool when planning word analysis lessons to determine which students may need additional support fluently reading prefixes and suffixes.

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Assessment Tool: Words Their Way Upper-Level Spelling Inventory

Strength:
The feature guide used for analyzing this assessment helps you to see what patterns a student has down and what patterns the student still needs to work on.

Limitation:
Some of the words towards the end expect that a child has a very large vocabulary, the student I assessed does and still had not heard of a few of the words.

Student view:
The student I assessed said he liked spelling so he didn't mind doing this.  He did say at the end that it was long (I would probably break it up into two sessions in the future).

Suggestion for use:
This spelling inventory really breaks down each word into specific skills to help guide the teacher to what a student still needs to work on.

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Assessment Tool: Words Their Way Upper- Level Spelling Inventory

Strength: There are 31 words that students need to spell and each word comes with a sentence that teachers can read to help the student hear the word in context.

Limitation: Some of the words may not be part of a student's vocabulary, so it may present a challenge when they are trying to spell the words, even with the sentences teachers can read.

Student View: The student I assessed responded well to the assessment. He at first seemed a little worried about spelling the words, but I assured him to try his best and he then seemed comfortable. There were a few words that he hesitate to spell and asked me to repeat.

Suggestion for Use: This is a tool that is useful and provides a wide variety of features that can be helpful to better understand students' spelling and phonics knowledge. It would provide valuable information about students' intervention needs. I would suggest using this tool to start and the end of the year, to track student progress.

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Assessment Tool: Informal Decoding Inventory (McKenna & Stahl, 2015)

Strength: Assessor can see patterns of errors that suggest focus of instruction, and then can be administered again in segments as a post-test.

Limitation: Individual administration provides important information, but may present a challenge to classroom teachers.

Student View: The student with whom I worked found the nonsense words a little ridiculous, laughing a little and kind of shrugging as he tried the words, which may have affected his performance.

Suggestions for Use: If a student is believed to have difficulty with fluency and automaticity as observed on an IRI, a teacher could use this tool to dive deeper to assess the student's process of decoding and reading certain patterns of syllables.

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Assessment Tool: Advanced Decoding Survey Plus (www.ReallyGreatReading.com, also included in our class materials in moodle).
Strength: Detailed scoring sheet gives insight into errors so teachers can find specific areas of trouble for students.
Limitation: Requires individual time with student which could be difficult for a classroom teacher
Student View: The student I assessed seemed to respond well to the tool once she was comfortable with the idea of nonsense words.  The first few times she had to read a nonsense word she was very hesitant.
Suggestion for use: This is a useful tool for a student that struggles with fluency and automaticity. A teacher could use this assessment to see if phonics instruction is needed to support decoding.

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Words Their Way Primary Spelling Inventory
Strength:  This assessment tool can be used individually or with a group.  It is a set of 26 words and you can give all 26 or stop if you have a student who is struggling.  This tool allows the instructor to identify the specific sounds and patterns the student knows and still needs to learn.
Limitation:  Some students may not fall nicely within the levels identified by the assessment.  The student I gave the test to can't be placed at a specific level according to the directions.  (This also gives good information)
Student View:
The student I gave this to enjoyed taking this test and wanted to continue even when the words were difficult.
Suggestions for Use:
I would use this at the beginning and the middle of the year to see my students developmental stages.  It would help me group students according to their needs.

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Assessment Tool:  Words Their Way Upper-Level Spelling Inventory (USI)

Strength:  There are 31 words that include features of the within word pattern, syllables and affixes and derivational relations spelling stages.  They are ordered from least to most difficult. Each word is paired with a sentence to provide context during administration.  A detailed scoring sheet identifies a student's skill level at the early, middle or late stage of one of the spelling stages listed above.

Limitation:  Some of the words are unfamiliar to students, especially EL students, which may make them more difficult to spell correctly.  Scoring assessments for a class or classes of students could be tedious.

Student View:  The student I assessed responded well to the assessment, and he took time to sound out more challenging words in order to accurately spell them.  He asked for clarification when needed.

Suggestion for Use:  This tool provides valuable information about each student's phonetic skills. The feature guide helps to isolate a student's exact spelling stage and areas of specific need. I would use it at the beginning of the year to place students in spelling groups, mid-year to assess progress and formally regroup students, and end-of-year to assess growth.  It would also provide valuable information about new students.