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This is an informative video that will help you understand all five areas of reading.

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What Is Phonemic Awareness? | Reading Lessons

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Basics: Phonological and Phonemic Awareness

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Before children learn to read print, they need to become aware of how the sounds in words work. They must understand that words are made up of individual speech sounds, or phonemes. A child's skill in phonological and phonemic awareness is a good predictor of later reading success or difficulty.

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5 Quick, Easy, and Fun Phonemic Awareness Activities

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5 Quick, Easy, and Fun Phonemic Awareness Activities

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Learning to read can be quite an overwhelming task for small children. In fact, if you think about it, it's astounding that children are even capable of learning to read in such a short amount of time. However, before they begin to read print, they must have an adequate foundational understanding of how sounds in words work. That is where phonemic awareness comes into play.

What is phonemic awareness?

In easy-to-understand terms, phonemic awareness is the ability to identify, think about, and manipulate sounds in spoken speech. This is NOT the same as phonics. Phonemic awareness is actually a critical skill that is a precursor to reading letters. That's why phonemic awareness instruction should NEVER involve print. If you find yourself working with letters or printed words, then you have skipped a step and crossed the line into phonics. This is a very important point. Research tells us that it's essential to focus on phonemic awareness in the classroom before reading can begin. We want to ensure that children have a solid understanding of the sounds of speech before we start phonics instruction.

Nowadays, we are facing an added difficulty, though. In today's early-childhood classrooms, teachers are feeling an ever-increasing pressure to get their students reading. It is easy to lose sight of the developmental process and try to skip steps in order to get our kids reading books as soon as possible. There is just one problem: skipping steps is not going to work. Children's progress in reading will be limited if they haven't learned to think about the sounds in words.

As early childhood teachers, we need to remember that we can't skip past phonemic awareness skills. We can't just barge ahead in the hope that all of our students have arrived in our classroom complete with the full-blown skills of thinking about and manipulating sounds in their minds. On the other hand, we also can't afford to spend a lot of time doing phonemic-awareness instruction. I am happy to tell you the good news that we don't have to! Phonemic awareness instruction can and should be done in small pockets of time throughout the school day. In fact, oral language and phonemic awareness can often be taught and reinforced in as little as five to ten minutes per day.

Here are five quick, easy, and fun phonemic awareness activities that are perfect for the beginning of the school year in any early childhood classroom. Yes, you heard me correctly - that word was F-U-N. I know fun has become an undesirable notion in many schools today. But I assure you that these activities will be fun and that your students really will learn about our amazing language! I have also included activities that require little or no preparation - things you can do on the fly! Although these activities don't cover the full range of phonemic awareness skills needed to produce great readers, they are still fantastic activities to begin any school year!

Listening

The ability to listen closely is a key ingredient of phonemic awareness. This is the part of instruction that is skipped most often, because teachers assume that young children know how to listen. They may not! Furthermore, if they don't, they're not ignoring you. It's just that they don't understand what "listen closely" means. They have to be taught.

The Listening Game.

One of the first phonemic-awareness activities I do with my students, even as soon as the first day, is to bring their attention to noises. After lunch, we come back to the classroom and all the children lie quietly on the floor. It's not naptime, but it's a great time to unwind, which is important for young children. As we lie there quietly for five to ten minutes, we listen for sounds. We all stay perfectly still and quiet. We become "sound spotters." We don't use our eyes - we use our ears. There are always sounds and weird noises you can hear in a school building. We may hear the air conditioner, doors closing, teachers talking, stomachs growling. The possibilities are endless! Your part is to talk about the sounds you and the children hear. Use a little teacher enthusiasm and exaggeration to get the kids interested in this activity. The key phrase is, "Who can spot a sound with their ears?"

"Moo-Moo," Where Are You?

I love playing this game with my class. The kids have a ball, too. In fact, they simply think we are playing.

How to play: All the children sit in a circle. One child lies down in the middle of the circle and covers his or her eyes. The teacher chooses another child to go somewhere in the room and pretend to be a cow by making a "moo-moo" sound. The child in the middle of the circle - with eyes still covered - points in the direction of the animal sound. This game is great because it gets children to listen closely for sounds and for where the sounds are coming from. It also prepares their ears to listen more closely to sounds in words. When the child in the middle correctly identifies the sound and direction, he or she gets to go next and make a different animal sound.

Rhyming

Rhyming is such a great phonemic awareness activity! Most children easily grasp the concept of rhyme. Some need a little help, though. Using word-play with rhyming helps children notice that sounds in our language have meaning and follow certain patterns. Again, this is a precursor skill to seeing sound patterns reproduced in print - as a phonemic awareness practice, it is purely auditory.

The absolute best way to introduce rhyming to your students is by reading lots of fun rhyming books, poems, and songs. Act silly and have fun! The more fun you have with the rhymes, the more the kids will notice the rhymes and enjoy the activities. Exaggerate the silliness of the rhyme. The poem "Down By the Bay" and the book "Silly Sally" are perfect examples of how rhyme can be super fun!

In My Box

This game is great to use after your students have at least some understanding of how rhyming works. That means you have already read lots of rhyming books, poems, and songs and played with those rhyming words.

How to play: Get a small box and place some pictures in it with pairs of familiar words that rhyme (like box/socks, cat/hat, or chair/bear). Use enough pictures so that everyone in your class has a turn. Sit in a circle with your students. Start with a child you know is strong in rhyming. Hold the box and choose a picture. If the picture shows a cat, say "In my box, there's a cat". Call on him or her to come up with a rhyming word. The child might say, "In my box, there's a hat" (or some other rhyming word). After he or she answers with a rhyming word, hand him or her the box. Now he or she gets to choose a card and continue the play.

Syllables

Working with and noticing syllables within words is important, because it makes students aware of how words can be split up into smaller parts, according to their sounds. Our ultimate goal is to work on individual phonemes (vowels or consonants), but children must first learn the concept of "parts of words." It's easier for young children to start with larger parts of words and then work their way down to the smaller, discrete individual sounds of phonemes. We are building a bridge from hearing words to hearing phonemes.

Bippity Boppity Bumble Bee

This is such a fun game. You get the kids clapping out names, first. As they get used to the game, you can start using other words with more syllables.

How to play: Sit in a circle with your students. I have a little stuffed bee that the kids love to hold. You could also use a printable bumble bee. The teacher begins the chant and walks around to a child:

Teacher: "Bippity Boppity Bumble Bee, Will You Say Your Name For Me?"

The child responds, "Jennifer."

Teacher: " Let's all say it." And the class says her name out loud, while clapping once for each syllable.

Teacher: "Let's all whisper it." And the class whispers her name, while quiet-clapping the syllables again, once per syllable.

Teacher and class: "Bippity Boppity Bumble Bee, Thank You For Saying Your Name For Me!"

Repeat with another student and his/her name. As students become familiar with the game, you can allow students to take on the "teacher" role.

Old MacDonald

Here is another great game that you can use to give the students practice in listening to syllables and putting them together into words. It follows the pattern of the song, Old MacDonald. By the time I use this activity with my class, we have read and sung Old MacDonald hundreds of times, so the song is well-known to the students.

How to play: The teacher begins by telling the students they are going to learn a new game - it's a different version of Old MacDonald, and it's kind of a silly version. The teacher begins singing, "Old MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O. And on that farm he had a /ti/ /ger/, E-I-E-I-O". Of course, the kids think the introduction of the tiger is wildly funny, but notice what they have actually done: Without being told, they have mentally combined the syllables /ti/ and /ger/ to realize what the animal was! It's huge! Then I show the children a picture of a tiger and they feel proud that they figured out the animal - and they think it's too funny! Again it's lots of fun, and they really think we are just playing a game.

The most important thing to keep in mind as an early childhood teacher is that phonemic awareness can be such a fun time! It shouldn't be long drawn-out lessons. All you need is five-to-ten-minute pockets of time each day. Phonemic awareness activities are also great to use during transition times throughout the day. I often use the ten minutes before lunch, and sometimes during group restroom breaks, to practice and reinforce listening and oral language skills. And the payoff is big! If you give phonemic awareness the attention it deserves, your students will be richly rewarded when it's time for them to start reading!

So now you know some of my secrets - the teaching games I use myself! I've had success with them, so I'm sure that if you make them your own, not only will you have fun with them in your classroom, but your students, too, will have an easier time with reading and go further faster!

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5 Quick, Easy, and Fun Phonemic Awareness Activities

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Learning to read can be quite an overwhelming task for small children. In fact, if you think about it, it's astounding that children are even capable of learning to read in such a short amount of time. However, before they begin to read print, they must have an adequate foundational understanding of how sounds in words work.

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Teaching Tools | Resources for Teachers from Scholastic

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9 Ways to Build Phonological Awareness in Pre-K and Kindergarten

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9 Ways to Build Phonological Awareness in Pre-K and Kindergarten

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Kids in pre-K and kindergarten can play with words, rhymes, and syllables they hear in everyday speech to prepare for reading. This is called phonological awareness.

Parents and caregivers can introduce phonological awareness during reading, singing, or play activities.

Kids who struggle with these kinds of activities may be showing early signs of reading issues.

There are a few ways kids in pre-K and kindergarten can get ready to read. One way is by noticing and playing with the words, rhymes, and syllables they hear in everyday speech. This called phonological awareness .

Kids also start to tune in to the individual sounds or phonemes in words. This is called phonemic awareness. The more you can build on these early "pre-reading" skills, the more prepared your child will be for the challenge of learning to read.

Good phonological awareness starts with kids picking up on sounds, syllables and rhymes in the words they hear. Read aloud to your child frequently. Choose books that rhyme or repeat the same sound. Draw your child's attention to rhymes: "Fox, socks, box! Those words all rhyme. Do you hear how they almost sound the same?"

It also helps to point out repeated sounds. For example, if you're reading One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, ask your child to listen to the /fffff/ sound in fish. (Really stretch the sounds out at first.) Outside of story time, try pointing out other words that start with the /fffff/ sound, just like in the book.

Ask your child to pick out the rhyming words in books without your help. Ask, "Did you hear a word that rhymes with fox?" Teach your child nursery rhymes and practice saying them together. Or say four short words, like log, cat, hog, frog. See if your child can pick out the word that doesn't rhyme.

Make syllables easier to understand by clapping the "beats" your child hears in words. Let's say you choose the word elephant. Pause as you say each syllable - e-le-phant - and clap out each syllable together. You can also get your child up and moving by having your child stomp or jump with each syllable.

Guessing games such as "I spy" can be used to work on almost any phonological skill. Want to practice noticing what sounds word begin with? Try "I spy something red that starts with /s/." Want to work on rhymes? "I'm wearing something warm that rhymes with boat."

Singing in general is a great way to get kids rhyming. There are also good songs teachers use to focus on other kinds of phonological and phonemic awareness skills. "Apples and Bananas" is a fun one. You can search online for more songs about phonemic awareness or ask your child's teacher for recommendations.

Sound blending is an important skill for early readers. They need to put sound units - phonemes - together to be able to read a word smoothly. You can help your child start working on this by putting together sounds of different words. Ask your child to connect the beginning sound with the rest of a word. For example, say, "Start with /p/ and add /ig/. What do word do you hear if you put them together?"

Have your child work on hearing a word and taking it apart. Start by using compound words such as cowboy, baseball or firefly. Tell your child, "Say the word cowboy. Now take away boy. What word is left?"

You can also use LEGO bricks to make this point. Give your child two attached LEGO bricks to represent parts of the word. Then have your child physically take the LEGO pieces apart while removing part of the word.

8. Get creative with crafts.

Kids respond to hands-on learning. Try making a collage of items that start with the same sound using pictures from magazines. Sock puppets can be another fun way to work on these skills. Make one that likes to munch on words that start with a certain sound. Let your child have fun "feeding" the puppet different objects or pictures that start with that sound.

There are many resources and ideas online to work on phonological and phonemic awareness skills. Check out YouTube for teaching videos, Pinterest for games and crafts, or the app store for nursery rhymes, sound games, and songs.

Whatever you do, keep the activities short and fun. If your child finds one activity too difficult or boring, try something different. If you find that activities of this type are too hard, talk to your classroom teacher . Your district's early childhood department may also be able to help you get extra help.

There are many ways to include sound play in your daily routine with your child.

Kids who play with sounds, syllables and rhymes when they are young are gaining important reading readiness skills.

If these skills are really difficult for your child, you may want to seek extra support in this area.

About the Author

About the Author

Kelli Johnson, MA is an educational speech-language pathologist, working with students from early childhood through 12th grade.

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9 ways to build phonological awareness in pre-K and kindergarten

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Kids in pre-K and kindergarten can play with words, rhymes, and syllables they hear in everyday speech to prepare for reading. This is called phonological awareness. Parents and caregivers can introduce phonological awareness during reading, singing, or play activities. Kids who struggle with these kinds of activities may be showing early signs of reading issues.

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Here is a list of 20 books!

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Phonemic awareness is the understanding that words are made of discrete sounds. If children cannot distinguish individual sounds, or phonemes, within words, they have difficulty learning to read and write. The books on this list help pre-readers focus on the sounds in words.

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10 Inviting Phonemic Awareness Books Your Students Will Love

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10 Inviting Phonemic Awareness Books Your Students Will Love

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Last updated on August 25, 2020

I love using books to practice building phonological and phonemic awareness skills. These books provide fun and engaging auditory practice in the form of an entertaining read aloud!

There are so many great opportunities to practice phonemic awareness skills during the school day, but we often pass by them because we are focused on other things.

You can use most books to practice a phonemic awareness skill or two but some are just perfect for adding that teachable moment into your day. 👩🏽‍🏫

These phonemic awareness books are fun for you to read, and engaging for your students! I have listed the skills I practice when we read them in my room but many of them lend themselves to more than one type of practice.

Have fun reading them and take advantage of all of those practice opportunities! #doubleduty
This post contains affiliate links. By purchasing through this link, we get a small commission. Rest assured - we only share links to products that we know and love!
10 Inviting Phonemic Awareness Books Your Students Will Love

Do you know the difference between phonological awareness and phonemic awareness? I used these terms interchangeably for years, but they're actually quite different. Read this post to learn the difference phonological awareness VS phonemic awareness.

Phonological Awareness Books

Since phonological awareness and phonemic awareness activities build on each other, I like to practice a few phonological awareness skills first.

Even if some of your kiddos have mastered hearing and manipulating words, syllables, and onset and rime, it never hurts to use these phonological awareness books as extra practice!

Sound Discrimination

The marvelous monsters love to show off their skills in a silly talent show. For example, purple Pete wears a plaid pullover and performs a puppet show.

Kids will love listening to the silly alliterations in this book! They practice sound discrimination as they listen for each monster's special beginning sound.

It's important for readers to practice sound discrimination at the end of words, too. Fox in Socks is the perfect book to practice end of word sound discrimination.

Kids are captivated by the fun story and will get plenty of practice with this classic Dr. Seuss book.

Warning: these tongue twisters are no joke! Get ready for lots of giggles as you read them! ☺️

Rhyming

These sheep in a jeep get into some deep (muddy) trouble as they travel. Simple rhymes finish each page in a pattern that is easy for students to anticipate.

This beloved book is a great option when practice rhyming because the story is engaging and the rhymes are easily completed by listeners.

In this classic book, a baby llama walks around asking other animals about their mamas. Each page has a riddle that leads to the name of baby animal. The riddles are rhythmic and include wonderful vocabulary as well.

Kids love to "guess" the animal by completing the rhyme. There are a few tricky ones in there which makes it extra fun!

Mrs. Millie is always getting things mixed up. She mixes up similar sounding words by changing the sounds. It's easy to figure out what she's really trying to say if you can find the rhyme.

Kids love trying to figure out which word she's trying to say. There is a ton of phoneme and syllable manipulation in this book which makes it perfect for practice phonemic awareness skills as well.

Note: This is a whole series so if your kids can't get enough of Silly Mrs. Millie, don't worry! There are more books! 👏

Syllables

Some people collect stamps, but Jerome collects words. He likes all kinds: short and sweet words, two syllable treats and multisyllable words that sound like songs. That is why I love using this book to practice syllables.

We can categorize Jerome's favorite words by the number of syllables and make our own list of favorite words that we have collected, too!

This fun (and silly!) book is perfect for practicing syllables. It tells kids to keep a beat as they hear the different words in the book. There are all sorts of animals sounds to practice on. They will love counting the syllables.

The fun rhythm of this book will have kids begging to hear it again and again. (I can tell you this from experience. 😉) You probably won't mind reading it, either, because it is such excellent practice!

Phonemic Awareness Books

Phoneme Manipulation

This billy sook...I mean SILLY BOOK switches around all sorts of sounds. Shel Silverstein uses common phrases and switches beginning phonemes and syllables around.

Kids will have fun catching the mix ups and correcting them. They also may get a kick out of watching you read it. It can be super tricky to get all of the words out! 😂

The Hungry Thing is...you guessed it! HUNGRY! He points at a sign that says "Feed Me" and asks for shmanckases, but no one quite knows what those are. A little boy figures it out. He wants pancakes!

Kids will love telling you what Hungry Thing wants to eat next as they practice changing the phoneme in the word. It's a win-win!

I like to extend this activity with a turn and talk activity. I ask the kids to change their favorite food into a "Hungry Thing" word. This gives them the chance to practice changing phonemes on their own, too!

One day a rooster on a farm wakes up with laryngitis. He needs to find someone else to wake up the farm. He asks Cow for help. Cow tries to say cock-a-doodle-doo correctly but really has trouble with those phonemes!

This adorable book follows Cow as he switches around the phonemes in that tricky phrase. Kids have fun switching them back to help Cow wake the farm up in the morning. 🐄

These phonemic awareness books are not just my favorites. They're my students' favorite books, too! They love the engaging stories, fun rhythm and questions and answers. I love that they are loving books and we are getting extra practice in such important skills. You just can't go wrong with these read alouds!

What other books are perfect to teach phonological and phonemic awareness? Let me know below! 👇

If you're looking for more opportunities to practice phonemic awareness, check out these excellent phonemic awareness videos!

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10 Inviting Phonemic Awareness Books Your Students Will Love

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I love using books to practice phonemic awareness skills. These books provide fun and engaging auditory practice in the form of an entertaining read aloud!

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Beginning Blends Word Work Centers Bundle (L-blends, R-blends, S-blends) [Video] [Video] in 2020 | Blends word work, Blend words, Word work centers

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Feb 6, 2020 - These beginning blends word work centers and activities are great for literacy centers in kindergarten, first grade, and 2nd grade classrooms. Students love the blends word sorts, puzzles, task cards, and spelling activities. They are great to use while teachers are meeting with small groups, and these phonics activities will keep your students having fun while working on phonemic awareness. Great for struggling readers and striving readers alike

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Your young learners will love this set of simple board games that build phonemic awareness!
Phonemic awareness.
What does it mean, anyway?

It's a scary-sounding phrase, but it's really not that complicated. It has to do with hearing and manipulating sounds in words. While some phonemic awareness activities may be used alongside letters, most of them don't.

If you ask a child to tell you the beginning sound of sandwich, and s/he says sssss, that's great! Isolating beginning sounds is one key component of phonemic awareness - and it's exactly what we're going to focus on with this set of games.

We have six children, and our oldest four developed phonemic awareness without a lot of intentionality on my part. I read to them often, and we did a variety of early learning activities - but I didn't have to explicitly teach phonemic awareness. For all of them (now 10, 9, 7, and 5) phonemic awareness just cam e.

This hasn't been true of my Three (almost four). Thankfully, she's catching on with the playful activities and games that I've been sharing over the past few months.

Print and cut apart the dot cards at the end of the file.

Grab playing pieces.

Take turns moving along the board by drawing a dot card and moving that number of spaces.

When you land on a space, say the picture's name and its beginning sound.

How to play the games
When my Three landed on a picture, she often stretched that initial sound instead of isolating it. For example, "Milk. Mmmmmilk." Or "Sandwich. Ssssandwich." Fine by me! My goal was for her to hear and identify that beginning sound - and she was doing it!

Sometimes she was frustrated and didn't want to try. Tiger was hard for her. Can you guess why?

It's because /t/ is not a continuous sound. Mmmmmmm and Sssssss were the other two sounds featured in the first game and were much easier.

When she hit a roadblock, she told me to do it. So I did.

"Hmm... is it /m/? Mmm, mmm, miger! No? Is it /g/? /G/, /g/, geiger?" After I was a little silly she was ready to get back in the game.

I chose to use those dot cards because my Three isn't real quick at knowing the dots on a die yet. Another reason is that it's a short game board. If your learner rolls a six three times, the game is over!

The dot cards gave her just enough turns without a single game overwhelming her.

After we played one game, she was willing to play one more. Each game adds a new letter's sound and bumps one sound off. So for example, the first game featured the sounds of m, s, and t. The second game features the sounds of s, t, and a.

I would say that she isolated (or stretched) the beginning sound correctly about 75% of the time. By the time we were finishing (after about 5-10 minutes), she was tired and gave up quickly. Ax (pictured above) was too hard.

So what do you think? Will these work for your learners? I hope you enjoy the 25 free games you can get in the download. These games come in color, but feel free to print in grayscale if you'd like.

BUILD A STRONG READING FOUNDATION

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If you have learners who struggle to isolate beginning sounds, these free phonemic awareness games are the perfect fit! Use them in preschool or kindergarten. Use them in literacy centers or small groups. #phonemicawareness #preschool #kindergarten

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Phonemic Awareness is a foundational skill necessary for reading. Using apps to teach phonemic awareness is a fun way to sneak some learning in while you and your kids are having fun.

What is Phonemic Awareness?

Phonemic awareness is a foundational skill for reading. It is the ability to hear and manipulate phonemes (sounds) in words. Almost all kids who struggle with reading will have weak phonemic awareness skills. Phonemic Awareness skills develop naturally in traditional learners but kids with language-based learning differences need explicit instruction in phonemic awareness to develop these skills.

Here are a few posts I've written on Phonemic Awareness if you want ore information:

Both of these posts contain printed resources for teaching phonemic awareness.

Best Apps for Teaching Phonemic Awareness

The following 11 apps are some of the highest rated apps available.

(4.99 each or purchase the Simplex Spelling School Literacy Curriculum Bundle of 4 apps for 13.99)

A highly regarding teaching tool, Simplex Spelling teaches high frequency spelling words organized by spelling patterns. Every word is broken down into its syllables both visually and auditorily to help students build phonological awareness skills. The Simplex spelling 'reverse phonics' hint feature breaks each word down further into individual phonemes to improve phonemic awareness, a critical skill and achieving literacy. Visit the developer web site to see word lists for each level and determine the best level for your kids.

(free)

The What's Changed Skill Builder app has been specifically designed to develop students' phonemic awareness. What's Changed? focuses on developing phonemic awareness with vowel sounds and consonant blends through exercises that require students to listen to two non-words and identify what changed between the two words. It also helps to develop segmentation and blending skills.

Students develop the core foundational skills that make up phonemic awareness by identifying the type of change that occurred, including:
- identifying the sound that changed ('zat' to 'zad')
- substituting a new letter for the sound that changed ('feld' to 'fald')
- specifying the letter for a sound that was added or omitted ('strek' to 'stek')
- switching two letters for sounds that were switched ('blist' to 'blits')

(3.99)

This interactive app helps individuals learn phonemes in a fun and engaging way. Four activities include:
- Breaking up words - Segmenting
- What word? - Blending
- How many sounds? (drag and drop)
- Identify the number of sounds with the number of letters and syllables provided

(3.99)

Practice early and basic phonemic awareness skills with this interactive app that helps individuals identify the different sounds that make up words in a fun and engaging way.

Four activities include:
- Do these two rhyme?
- Find the picture that rhymes with the word
- Word families - drag and drop
- Identifying the rhyming pair from 6 pictures

Teach Speech Apps also has a variety of bundles that can be purchased:

Teach Speech Apps Bundle 1: Prepositions, Rhyming Words, and Pronouns (8.99)

Teach Speech Apps Bundel 2: Following Directions, Wh Questions, Rhyming Words (8.99)

(free)

Assessments for Phonological Awareness with Progress monitoring. GAAP allows teachers to assess a student, track their learning objectives, while providing instructional aids. It can be used for accommodations all while trending student's growth through years, teachers, and classrooms.

* Assessments: Letter Recognition, Letter Sounds, Rhyming, Blending, Segmenting/Chopping, High frequency words
* Ability to monitor classroom progress
* Ability to monitor student progress
* Ability to assess effectiveness of intervention activities
* Instant feedback on students grasp of concepts taught
* Standard measurement for skills assessment
* Ability to monitor student through classrooms and grades
* Data to trend students growth, identify areas of support for teachers

(24.99)

Targeting phonemic (sound) awareness, phonics, and speech production, the three unique teaching activities are based on the key techniques of the world-renowned, research-based program, Lively Letters, created by speech language pathologist, Nancy Telian.

Flashing: This activity introduces, drills, and tests the letter sound associations for the 44 English speech sounds, using the multisensory cueing methods that Lively Letters is so famous for. As the chosen letters flash in, students can hear the associated sound, the song, and the story.

Tracking: In this activity, students engage in the powerful Lively Letters manipulative word play, (tracking) activities. Here you simultaneously train phonemic awareness and phonics, while further practicing letter sounds and speech production. Students have fun building the critical phonemic awareness skills of sound blending, segmenting, and manipulation while learning how to sound out words of increasing length and difficulty for reading and spelling.

Matching: Here's a playful way to practice letter sound associations and speech production skills. This activity also offers opportunities to associate uppercase to lowercase letters and to transition from Lively Letters pictures to plain letters. Students have fun playing the classic Match Game, now using the letters and letter types chosen.

(9.99)

Sound Literacy is a large, well-organized collection of electronic "tiles." It includes blank tiles for phonemic awareness activities; graphemes-individual letters and consonant and vowel clusters such as sh, ng, igh, aw for phonics activities; and morphemes-prefixes, suffixes, Latin roots, and Greek combining forms-for advanced word study activities. It also includes sound charts for consonant and vowel phonemes. This would be a fun way to teach phonemic awareness with any curriculum.

(21.99)

Phonological Awareness Lab (PAL) is a fun, multi-level game specifically designed to improve phonological awareness in children. Designed by a certified speech-language pathologist, PAL incorporates a fun science lab theme to encourage children to demonstrate their phonological awareness.
Created to help teach phonological awareness, PAL incorporates four (4) "labs" to target the essential phonological awareness skills needed for reading.
* The Sentence Experiment Lab
* The Decoding Room
* The Rhyming Compound
* The Syllable X-Ray
Inside the Decoding Room and Rhyming Compound are multiple levels of activities including blending syllables, blending sounds, rhyming identification, rhyming selection, and rhyming match.

Hearbuilder Phonological Awareness

(free with membership to their online program at Super Duper Publications)

Program Features:
* Targets nine phonological awareness skills: Sentence Segmentation, Syllable Blending, Syllable Segmentation, Rhyming, Phoneme Blending, Phoneme Segmentation & Identification, Phoneme Deletion, Phoneme Addition, Phoneme Manipulation
* Multi-level program gradually increases in difficulty
* Teaches children important listening and sound awareness for reading
* Monitors progress and provides frequent feedback

With a subscription to HearBuilder Online you can:
* Access all four HearBuilder programs - Following Directions, Phonological Awareness, Auditory Memory and Sequencing
* Monitor progress and track student data
* Individualize each student's program settings
* Set levels of difficulty for each activity
* Customize and print reports

Lots of rhyming apps

Rhyming is a basic component of phonemic awareness. Reading strategies that use rhyming as part of their phonemic awareness program help foster the best literacy rates among children and help to create children that really know how to read well.

(free)

(free)

Teaching phonemic awareness doesn't have to be a chore. Have fun teaching with these award-winning apps.

How about you? How are you teaching your kids phonemic awareness?

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Apps for Teaching Phonemic Awareness | Homeschooling with Dyslexia

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Phonemic Awareness is a foundational skill necessary for reading. Using apps to teach phonemic awareness is a fun way to sneak some learning in while you and your kids are having fun. Phonemic awareness is a foundational skill for reading. It is the ability to hear and manipulate phonemes (sounds) in words.

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Develop Phonemic Awareness with These Educational Apps

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Develop Phonemic Awareness with These Educational Apps

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As parents, we all want our children to be successful in the process of learning to read. There are many things parents can do prior to that point in order to set their children up for success. One of the most important is to develop your child's phonemic awareness. Research shows that phonemic awareness is the number one predictor of a child's success at reading. It makes sense to approach the development of this skill in many different ways, including apps! Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify and manipulate individual sounds (phonemes) in words. This is done through activities that help the child break those sounds apart, identify the individual sounds, and then change a sound in a word ( cat to bat). Check out these apps that help your child develop phonemic awareness.

This app was designed by a speech language pathologist and covers the different parts of phonemic awareness through activities in a room that looks like a science lab. The activities cover skills such as rhyming, blending sounds, and counting syllables; however, the app does not provide any type of reward or entertainment value. Even when children successfully complete the activities, there are no rewards or free play. The app would be great as an assessment tool for parents or teachers, and the app does record your child's scores and progress. The app also allows for tracking of multiple students. The app costs $19.99 and is appropriate for children ages 3-6.

Dora ABCs Vol 3 takes your child to a frog fiesta while helping them blend and change sounds to make words. The phonics games have your child blend simple three-letter words together by themselves or with the support of tapping the letters to hear the sounds. Drag and drop the matching picture next to the word. Then the app gives you a new word, and you have to change the initial sound to build the new word; for example, change car to jar. The frog games that your child can play after the phonics practice keep children interested in the app. This app is not very long but practices important early pre-reading skills. The app costs $1.99 and is appropriate for children ages 4-6.

Monkey Word School Adventure uses mini-games to help kids get started on the road to reading. Games include spelling, letter identification, rhyming, and much more. Kids love the fast-paced and engaging activities. Children are rewarded with special pieces to add to their own terrarium. Parents get so much value out of the descriptive settings page that break down the learning in each mini-game. The app auto-adjusts based on your child's play or gives the controls to the adults for customizing the app. Either way, you will know what your child is working on! The app costs $1.99 and is appropriate for children ages 4-6.

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Develop Phonemic Awareness with These Educational Apps

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As parents, we all want our children to be successful in the process of learning to read. There are many things parents can do prior to that point in order to set their children up for success. One of the most important is to develop your child's phonemic awareness.

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Reading Doctor | Apps for teaching kids to read and spell

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Easily teach children the links between the letters of the alphabet and speech sounds for reading and spelling with phonics.

Teaches single letter-sound relationships

Developed by a reading specialist

Fun, effective, scientifically based

Unique, patent pending teaching tool

Complements any phonics program

Fully customisable

App Available on iPad, Android and Mac

Letter Sounds™ 1 Pro is available as an iPad, Mac or Android app. To view it in the app store or to buy and download it, click on one of the buttons below:

"Oh boy! Have I found a great app! ...Letter Sounds 1 has made learning this skill utterly fun, engaging, and meaningful! I love the self-adjusting teaching method and teaching until a student masters the targets in session. My favorite feature is the ability to create my own custom remediation activities for the specific sounds a student needs to master....highly recommended!"

- Melissa Harris, M.S., CCC-SLP

Letter Sounds™ 1 is a fun, effective and scientifically based teaching tool which makes it easy to teach children the links between the letters of the alphabet and the speech sounds they typically represent in written English. Letter Sounds™ 1 is based on research into reading acquisition and was developed by reading specialist and speech-language pathologist Dr. Bartek Rajkowski, PhD. Anybody with an interest in teaching children to read through phonics can use Letter Sounds™ 1 to help children learn common letter-sound relationships!

The past several decades of research have provided conclusive evidence that children who are strong readers are skilled in using letter-sound knowledge to learn new words when reading. Skilled readers are good at understanding that words are made up of speech sounds (a skill called phonemic awareness) and they are also good at understanding how these speech sounds are represented by letters. This knowledge helps children to decode written language and teach themselves new words. Difficulties with these skills are hallmarks of the struggling reader. Furthermore, teaching methods that begin by teaching students letter-sound relationships (called 'synthetic phonics' methods) have been shown through research to be more effective than other approaches in teaching reading, regardless of whether students do or do not have reading difficulties. The evidence is clear: letter-sound knowledge is crucial in learning to read and spell since it helps students to teach themselves new words.

Understanding that letters typically represent certain speech sounds poses a challenge to beginning readers since there is no meaningful relationship between the way that letters look and the speech sounds they typically represent. For example, there is no reason why the squiggle "s" represents the sound /s/ as in "sun". Children must also learn to distinguish between similar letters and sounds (e.g. "b" vs "d") when learning letter-sound patterns.

Letter Sounds™ 1 uses a patent pending, self-adjusting, multisensory teaching method to help teach beginning and struggling readers to rapidly, automatically and accurately recognise and discriminate between the most common letter-sound patterns in English. Children are taught meaningful associations between the way that letters look and the speech sounds they typically represent through a unique system of visual, auditory and articulatory (speech sound) memory aids, or mnemonics. The teaching system in the app automatically identifies what a child knows, what the child does not know, and which letter-sound patterns the child confuses. Letter Sounds™ 1 teaches children to discriminate between confusing patterns, and strengthens weaknesses in letter-sound understanding.

Letter Sounds™ 1 is ideal for helping beginning readers, students with reading difficulties and students learning English as a second language. It is a perfect complement to any phonics program and is fully customisable, making it easy to set up custom activities to teach students specific letter-sound patterns. We are confident it will quickly become a favourite tool for teachers, parents, reading specialists and anybody else with an interest in the teaching of reading and spelling!

Created by a reading specialist

Includes US, UK and Australian accents

Scientifically-based

Fun, intuitive and powerful teaching tool

Perfect for beginning readers (from the age of 4 years), older students with reading difficulties or students of English as a second language (ESL)

Helps teach basic letter-sound knowledge (single letters and their corresponding speech sounds) and phonemic awareness skills

Patent-pending, adjustable memory-aid system helps students remember letter-sound patterns

Create and save custom letter-sound sets to complement any synthetic phonics approach

Includes preset letter-sound tile sets for popular synthetic phonics programs Jolly Phonics and MULTILIT

Letter Sounds™ 1 is available as an iPad, Mac or Android app. To view it in the app store or to buy and download it, click on one of the buttons below:

To view our App Privacy Policy click HERE.

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Letter Sounds 1 - Reading Doctor | Apps for teaching kids to read and spell

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Easily teach children the links between the letters of the alphabet and speech sounds for reading and spelling with phonics. Teaches single letter-sound relationships Developed by a reading specialist Fun, effective, scientifically based Unique, patent pending teaching tool Complements any phonics program Fully customisable App Available on iPad, Android and Mac Letter Sounds™ 1 Pro is available as an iPad, Mac or Android app.

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アイレ英会話学校 ｜岩出市

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Abstract

This chapter focuses on key ideas for understanding literacy assessment to assist with educational decisions. Included is an overview of different literacy assessments, along with common assessment procedures used in schools and applications of assessment practices to support effective teaching. Readers of the chapter will gain an understanding of different types of assessments, how assessment techniques are used in schools, and how assessment results can inform teaching.

Learning Objectives

After reading this chapter, readers will be able to

1. explain how testing fits into the larger category of assessment;

2. describe different literacy assessments and how they are commonly used in schools;

3. discuss why assessment findings are judged based on their validity for answering educational questions and making decisions;

4. explain the importance of reliability and validity of test scores and why psychometric properties are important for interpreting certain types of assessment results;

5. critique literacy assessments in terms of how they can be used or misused.

Introduction

When the topic of educational assessment is brought up, most educators immediately think of high-stakes tests used to gauge students' progress in meeting a set of educational standards. It makes sense that much of the dialogue concerning educational assessment centers on high-stakes testing because it is this kind of assessment that is most controversial in the American education system, particularly since the vast majority of states have adopted the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects ( CCSS; National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers [NGA & CCSSO], 2010), along with high stakes tests intended to assess students' proficiency in meeting them. But high-stakes tests are actually just a fraction of assessment procedures used in schools, and many other assessments are as important in influencing instructional decisions. This chapter discusses a wide scope of literacy assessments commonly used in kindergarten through twelfth grade classrooms, along with ways to use results to make educational decisions.

Literacy Assessment

To understand literacy assessment, we first need to think about the term "literacy," which is discussed throughout the chapters in this textbook. Literacy has traditionally been regarded as having to do with the ability to read and write. More recently, literacy has evolved to encompass multidimensional abilities such as listening, speaking, viewing, and performing (NGA & CCSSO, 2010), along with cultural and societal factors ( Snow, 2002) that can facilitate or constrain literacy development. This multidimensional definition of literacy requires educators and policy makers to conceptualize literacy in complex ways. Controversies arise when the richness of literacy is overly simplified by assessments that are not multidimensional or authentic, such as the overuse of multiple-choice questions. Educators may find the lack of authenticity of these assessments frustrating when results do not appear to represent what their students know and can do. On the other hand, more authentic assessment methods, such as observing students who are deliberating the meaning of texts during group discussions, do not precisely measure literacy skills, which can limit the kinds of decisions that can be made.

Even though the assessment of literacy using multiple choice items versus more authentic procedures seems like opposites, they do have an important feature in common: they both can provide answers to educational questions. Whether one approach is more valuable than the other, or whether both are needed, depends entirely on the kind of questions being asked. So if someone asks you if a multiple choice test is a good test or if observing a student's reading is a better assessment procedure, your answer will depend on many different factors, such as the purpose of the assessment, along with the quality of the assessment tool, the skills of the person who is using it, and the educational decisions needing to be made. This chapter will help you learn more about how to make decisions about using literacy assessments and how to use them to improve teaching and learning.

Taxonomy of Literacy Assessments

To understand the purposes of different types of literacy assessment, it is helpful to categorize them based on their purposes. It should be noted that there is much more research on the assessment of reading compared to assessment of other literacy skills, making examples in the chapter somewhat weighted toward reading assessments. Examples of assessments not limited to reading have also been included, where appropriate, as a reminder that literacy includes reading, writing, listening, speaking, viewing, and performing, consistent with the definition of literacy provided in Chapter 1 of this textbook.

Formal Assessments

One way to categorize literacy assessments is whether they are formal or informal. Formal literacy assessments usually involve the use of some kind of standardized procedures that require administering and scoring the assessment in the same way for all students. An example of formal assessments is state tests, which evaluate proficiency in one or more literacy domains, such as reading, writing, and listening. During the administration of state tests, students are all given the same test at their given grade levels, teachers read the same directions in the same way to all students, the students are given the same amount of time to complete the test (unless the student received test accommodations due to a disability), and the tests are scored and reported using the same procedures. Standardization allows control over factors that can unintentionally influence students' scores, such as how directions are given, how teachers respond to students' questions, and how teachers score students' responses. Certain state test scores are also usually classified as criterion-referenced because they measure how students achieve in reference to "a fixed set of predetermined criteria or learning standards" ( edglossary.org, 2014). Each state specifies standards students should meet at each grade level, and state test scores reflect how well students achieved in relation to these standards. For example, on a scale of 1 to 4, if a student achieved a score of "2" this score would typically reflect that the student is not yet meeting the standards for their grade, and he or she may be eligible for extra help toward meeting them.

Another example of a criterion-referenced score is the score achieved on a permit test to drive a car. A predetermined cut score is used to decide who is ready to get behind the wheel of a car, and it is possible for all test takers to meet the criterion (e.g., 80% items correct or higher). Criterion-referenced test scores are contrasted with normatively referenced (i.e., norm-referenced) test scores, such as an SAT score. How a student does depends on how other students score who take the test, so there is no criterion score to meet or exceed. To score high, all a student has to do is do better than most everyone else. Norm-referenced scores are often associated with diagnostic tests, which will be described in further detail in the section of this chapter under the heading "Diagnostic Literacy Assessments."

Informal Assessments

Informal literacy assessments are more flexible than formal assessments because they can be adjusted according to the student being assessed or a particular assessment context. Teachers make decisions regarding with whom informal assessments are used, how the assessments are done, and how to interpret findings. Informal literacy assessments can easily incorporate all areas of literacy such as speaking, listening, viewing, and performing rather than focusing more exclusively on reading and writing. For example, a teacher who observes and records behaviors of a group of students who view and discuss a video is likely engaging in informal assessment of the student's reading, writing, speaking, listening, and/or performing behaviors.

Teachers engage in a multitude of informal assessments each time they interact with their students. Asking students to write down something they learned during an English language arts (ELA) class or something they are confused about is a form of informal assessment. Observing students engaging in cooperative learning group discussions, taking notes while they plan a project, and even observing the expressions on students' faces during a group activity are all types of informal assessment. Likewise, observing students' level of engagement during literacy tasks is informal assessment when procedures are flexible and individualized. Informal classroom-based self-assessments and student inventories used to determine students' attitudes about reading may be useful toward planning and adjusting instruction as well (Afflerbach & Cho, 2011).

Methods for assessing literacy that fall somewhere between informal and formal include reading inventories, such as the Qualitative Reading Inventory-5(QRI-5; Leslie & Caldwell, 2010). Reading inventories require students to read word lists, passages, and answer questions, and although there are specific directions for how to administer and score them, they offer flexibility in observing how students engage in literacy tasks. Reading inventories are often used to record observations of reading behaviors rather than to simply measure reading achievement.

Formative Assessments

Another useful way to categorize literacy assessments is whether they are formative or summative. Formative assessments are used to "form" a plan to improve learning. An example of formative literacy assessment might involve a classroom teacher checking how many letters and sounds her students know as she plans decoding lessons. Students knowing only a few letter sounds could be given texts that do not include letters and words they cannot decode to prevent them from guessing at words. Students who know most of their letter sounds could be given texts that contain more letters and letter combinations that they can practice sounding out (e.g., the words in their texts might include all the short vowels and some digraphs they have learned, such as sh, th, ck). In this example, using a formative letter-sound assessment helped the teacher to select what to teach rather than simply evaluate what the student knows. Formative assessment is intended to provide teachers with information to improve students' learning, based on what students need.

Summative Assessments

Summative assessments are used to "sum up" if students have met a specified level of proficiency or learning objective. State tests fall under the category of summative assessments because they are generally given to see which students have met a critical level of proficiency, as defined by standards adopted by a particular state. Unit tests are also summative when they sum up how students did in meeting particular literacy objectives by using their knowledge related to reading, writing, listening, speaking, viewing, and performing. A spelling test can be both formative and summative. It is formative when the teacher is using the information to plan lessons such as what to reteach, and it is summative if used to determine whether students showed mastery of a spelling rule such as "dropping the 'e' and adding '-ing'." So the goal of formative assessment is mostly to in form teaching, whereas the goal of summative assessment is to sum marize the extent to which students surpass a certain level of proficiency at an end-point of instruction, such as at the end of an instructional unit or at the end of a school year.

Literacy Screenings

Another way to categorize assessments is whether they are used for screening or diagnostic purposes. Literacy screenings share characteristics with medical screenings, such as hearing and vision checks in the nurse's office or when a patients' blood pressure is checked at the beginning of a visit to the physician's office. Screenings are typically quick and given to all members of a population (e.g., all students, all patients) to identify potential problems that may not be recognized during day-to-day interactions. See Table 1 for examples of commonly used universal literacy screeners, along with links to information about their use.

Among the most popular literacy screeners used in schools are the Dynamic Indic a tors of B asic Early Literacy Skills-Next Edition (DIBELS Next; Good & Kaminski, 2011) and AIMSweb (Pearson, 2012). These screeners include sets of items administered to all children at certain grade levels (which is why they are often called "universal" literacy screeners) to do quick checks of their literacy development and identify potential problems that may not be visible using less formal means. Literacy screenings require young children to complete one-minute tasks such as naming sounds they hear in spoken words (e.g., "cat" has the sounds /c/ /a/ /t/), naming the sounds of letters they see (e.g., letter "p" says /p/), and starting in first grade, reading words in brief passages. Universal literacy screenings such as DIBELS Next and AIMSweb are often characterized as "fluency" assessments because they measure both accuracy and efficiency in completing tasks. For these assessments, the correct number of sounds, letters, or words is recorded and compared to a research-established cut point (i.e., benchmark) to decide which students are not likely to be successful in developing literacy skills without extra help. If a student scores below the benchmark, it indicates that the task was too difficult, and detection of this difficulty can signal a need for intervention to prevent future academic problems. Intervention typically involves more intensive ways of teaching, such as extra instruction delivered to small groups of students.

To learn more about commercially available screenings such as DIBELS Next and AIMSweb, or to learn about how to create your own personalized screenings, please visit http://interventioncentral.org. This site enables teachers to create their own individualized screening probes to assess a variety of basic literacy skills, such as identifying letters and sounds, segmenting sounds in spoken words, sounding out nonsense words, reading real words in connected text, and filling in blanks in reading passages (called "maze" procedures). Teachers can select the letters, words, and passages to be included on these individualized assessments. Probes to assess students' math and writing skills can also be created; however, any customized screening probes should be used with caution, since they do not share the same measurement properties as well-researched screenings such as DIBELS Next and AIMSweb.

Diagnostic Literacy Assessments

The purposes of universal literacy screenings can be contrasted with those of diagnostic literacy assessments. Unlike literacy screeners, diagnostic tests are generally not administered to all students but are reserved for students whose learning needs continue to be unmet, despite their receiving intensive intervention. Diagnostic literacy assessments typically involve the use of standardized tests administered individually to students by highly trained educational specialists, such as reading teachers, special educators, speech and language pathologists, and school psychologists. Diagnostic literacy assessments include subtests focusing on specific components of literacy, such as word recognition, decoding, reading comprehension, and both spoken and written language. Results from diagnostic assessments may be used formatively to help plan more targeted interventions for students who do not appear to be responding adequately, or results can be combined with those from other assessments to determine whether students may have an educational disability requiring special education services.

An example of a widely used diagnostic literacy test is the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test-Third Edition (WIAT-III; Wechsler, 2009). The WIAT-III is typically used to assess the achievement of students experiencing academic difficulties who have not responded to research-based interventions. The WIAT-III includes reading, math, and language items administered according to the age of the student and his or her current skill level. The number of items the student gets correct (the raw score) is converted to a standard score, which is then interpreted according to where the student's score falls on a bell curve (see Figure 1) among other students the same age and grade level who took the same test (e.g., the normative or "norm" sample).

Most students will score in the middle of the distribution, but some students will achieve extreme scores-either higher or lower than most other students. This is why the "tails" at either side of the bell curve slope downward from the big hump in the middle-this illustrates the decreasing frequency of scores that are especially low or high. In other words, the more extreme the score, the fewer students are likely to achieve it. When students achieve at either extreme, it can signal the need for more specialized instruction related to the individual needs of the student (e.g., intervention or gifted services).

Diagnostic achievement tests are frequently referred to as "norm-referenced" ( edglossary.org, 2013) because their scores are compared to scores of students from a norm sample. A norm sample is a group of individuals who were administered the same test items in the same way (i.e., using standardized procedures) while the test was being developed. Students who take the test have their performance compared to that of students from the norm sample to make meaning of the score. For example, if a student were given a diagnostic assessment and the score fell within the same range as most of the students in the norm sample, then his or her score would be considered "average." If the student's score fell much higher or lower than other students in the norm sample, then the score would not be considered average or typical because most of the other students did not score at either of these extremes.

Comparing students' scores to a norm sample helps identify strengths and needs. Then again, just knowing where students' scores fall on a bell curve does nothing to explain why they scored that way. An extremely low score may indicate a learning problem, or, it may signal a lack of motivation on the part of the student while taking the test. Perhaps a low score could even be due to a scoring error made by the tester. Even though a score from a diagnostic assessment may be quite precise, understanding why a student scored at a particular level requires additional information. Did observations during testing show that the student was distracted, uncooperative, or was squinting at items? It is often a combination of assessment information that helps identify why a student may have scored a certain way and is why testers often use their observations during testing to interpret the meaning of scores.

Group achievement tests such as The Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS; Hoover Dunbar, & Frisbie, 2003) that include literacy subtests have properties that make them function somewhat like a screening and somewhat like a diagnostic test. Like screeners, they are administered to all students at a particular grade level, but unlike most screeners, they take more time to complete and are administered to entire classrooms rather than having at least some sections administered individually. Like diagnostic tests, they tend to produce scores that are norm-referenced. Students' performance is compared to a norm group to see how they compare among peers, but unlike diagnostic tests, the tester is not able to discern how well scores represent students' abilities because testers are not able to observe all of the students' testing behaviors that may impact the interpretation of scores (e.g., levels of engagement, motivation).

For many diagnostic literacy tests, reviews are available through sources such as the Mental Measurements Yearbook(MMY). Versions of the MMY are available in hard copy at many libraries, as well as online for free for students at colleges and universities whose libraries pay a fee for access. Reviews are typically completed by experts in various fields, including literacy and measurement experts. Reviews also include complete descriptions of the test or assessment procedure, who publishes it, how long it takes to administer and score, a review of psychometric properties, and a critique of the test in reference to decisions people plan to make based on findings. It is important for teachers and other educators who use tests to understand the benefits and problems associated with selecting one test over another, and resources such as the MMY offer reviews that are quick to locate, relatively easy to comprehend (when one has some background knowledge in assessment), and are written by people who do not profit from the publication and sale of the assessment.

Single Point Estimates

Literacy assessments that are completed only one time provide a single point estimate of a student's abilities. An example of a single point estimate is a student's word identification score from a diagnostic achievement test. If the student's score is far below what is expected for his or her age or grade level, then the score signals a need to determine what is at the root of low performance. Alternatively, a single low score does not necessarily signal a lack of ability to learn, since with a change in instruction, the student might begin to progress much faster and eventually catch up to his or her typical age-based peers. To assess a student's rate of learning, progress-monitoring assessments are needed.

Progress-Monitoring Literacy Assessments

To monitor a student's progress in literacy, assessments are needed that actually measure growth. Rather than just taking a snapshot of the student's achievement at a single point in time, progress-monitoring assessments provide a baseline (i.e., the starting point) of a student's achievement, along with periodic reassessment as he or she is progressing toward learning outcomes. Such outcomes might include achieving a benchmark score of correctly reading 52 words per minute on oral reading fluency passages or a goal of learning to " ask and answer key details in a text" ( CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.1.2) when prompted, with 85% accuracy. The first outcome of correctly reading 52 words per minute would likely be measured using progress-monitoring assessments, such as DIBELS Next and AIMSweb. These screeners are not only designed to measure the extent to which students are at risk for future literacy-related problems at the beginning of the school year but also to monitor changes in progress over time, sometimes as often as every one or two weeks, depending on individual student factors. The second outcome of being able to "ask and answer key details in a text" could be monitored over time using assessments such as state tests or responses on a qualitative reading inventory. Being able to work with key details in a text could also be informally assessed by observing students engaged in classroom activities where this task is practiced.

Unlike assessments that are completed only one time, progress-monitoring assessments such as DIBELS Next and AIMSweb feature multiple, equivalent versions of the same tasks, such as having 20 oral reading fluency passages that can be used for reassessments. Using different but equivalent passages prevents artificial increases in scores that would result from students rereading the same passage. Progress-monitoring assessments can be contrasted with diagnostic assessments, which are not designed to be administered frequently. Administering the same subtests repeatedly would not be an effective way to monitor progress. Some diagnostic tests have two equivalent versions of subtests to monitor progress infrequently-perhaps on a yearly basis-but they are simply not designed for frequent reassessments. This limitation of diagnostic assessments is one reason why screeners like DIBELS Next and AIMSweb are so useful for determining how students respond to intervention and why diagnostic tests are often reserved for making other educational decisions, such as whether a student may have an educational disability.

Progress-monitoring assessments have transformed how schools determine how a student is responding to intervention. For example, consider the hypothetical example of Jaime's progress-monitoring assessment results in second grade, shown in Figure 2. Jaime was given oral reading fluency passages from a universal literacy screener, and then his progress was monitored to determine his response to a small group literacy intervention started in mid-October. Data points show the number of words Jaime read correctly on each of the one-minute reading passages. Notice how at the beginning of the school year, his baseline scores were extremely low, and when compared to the beginning of the year second grade benchmark ( Dynamic Measurement Group, 2010) of 52 words per minute (Good & Kaminski, 2011), they signaled he was "at risk" of not reaching later benchmarks without receiving intensive intervention. Based on Jaime's baseline scores, intervention team members decided that he should receive a research-based literacy intervention to help him read words more easily so that his oral reading fluency would increase at least one word per week. This learning goal is represented by the "target slope" seen in Figure 2. During the intervention phase, progress-monitoring data points show that Jaime began making improvements toward this goal, and the line labeled "slope during intervention" shows that he was gaining at a rate slightly faster than his one word per week goal.

When looking at Jaime's baseline data, notice how the data points form a plateau. If his progress continued at this same rate, by the end of the school year, he would be even farther behind his peers and be at even greater risk for future reading problems. When interpreting the graph in Figure 2, it becomes clear that intensive reading intervention was needed. Notice after the intervention began how Jaime's growth began to climb steeply. Although he appeared to be responding positively to intervention, in reality, by the end of second grade, students whose reading ability progresses adequately should be reading approximately 90 words correctly per minute (Good & Kaminski, 2011). Based on this information, Jaime is not likely to reach the level of reading 90 words correctly by the end of second grade and will probably only reach the benchmark expected for a student at the beginning of second grade. These assessment data suggest that Jaime's intervention should be intensified for the remainder of second grade to accelerate his progress further. It is also likely that Jaime will need to continue receiving intervention into third grade, and progress monitoring can determine, along with other assessment information, when his oral reading fluency improves to the point where intervention may be changed, reduced, or even discontinued. You may wonder how the intervention team would determine whether Jaime is progressing at an adequate pace when he is in third grade. Team members would continue to monitor Jaime's progress and check to make sure his growth line shows that he will meet benchmark at the end of third grade (i.e., correctly reading approximately 100 words per minute; Good & Kaminski, 2011). If his slope shows a lack of adequate progress, his teachers can revisit the need for intervention to ensure that Jaime does not fall behind again.

Some schools monitor their students' progress using computer-adapted assessments, which involve students responding to test items delivered on a computer. Computer-adapted assessments are designed to deliver specific test items to students, and then adapt the number and difficulty of items administered according to how students respond (Mitchell, Truckenmiller, & Petscher, 2015). Computer-adapted assessments are increasing in popularity in schools, in part, because they do not require a lot of time or effort to administer and score, but they do require schools to have an adequate technology infrastructure. The reasoning behind using these assessments is similar to other literacy screeners and progress-monitoring assessments-to provide effective instruction and intervention to meet all students' needs (Mitchell et al., 2014).

Although many literacy screening and progress-monitoring assessment scores have been shown to be well-correlated with a variety of measures of reading comprehension (see, for example, Goffreda & DiPerna, 2010) and serve as reasonably good indicators of which students are at risk for reading difficulties, a persistent problem with these assessments is that they provide little guidance to teachers about what kind of literacy instruction and/or intervention a student actually needs. A student who scores low at baseline and makes inadequate progress on oral reading fluency tasks may need an intervention designed to increase reading fluency, but there is also a chance that the student lacks the ability to decode words and really needs a decoding intervention (Murray, Munger, & Clonan, 2012). Or it could be that the student does not know the meaning of many vocabulary words and needs to build background knowledge to read fluently (Adams, 2010-2011), which would require the use of different assessment procedures specifically designed to assess and monitor progress related to these skills. Even more vexing is when low oral reading fluency scores are caused by multiple, intermingling factors that need to be identified before intervention begins. When the problem is more complex, more specialized assessments are needed to disentangle the factors contributing to it.

A final note related to progress-monitoring procedures is the emergence of studies suggesting that there may be better ways to measure students' progress on instruments such as DIBELS Next compared to using slope ( Good, Powell-Smith, & Dewey, 2015), which was depicted in the example using Jaime's data. In a recent conference presentation, Good (2015) argued that the slope of a student's progress may be too inconsistent to monitor and adjust instruction, and he suggested a new (and somewhat mathematically complex) alternative using an index called a student growth percentile. A student growth percentile compares the rate at which a student's achievement is improving in reference to how other students with the same baseline score are improving. For example, a student reading 10 correct words per minute on an oral reading fluency measure whose growth is at the 5th percentile is improving much more slowly compared to the other children who also started out reading only 10 words correctly per minute. In this case, a growth percentile of five means that the student is progressing only as well as or better than five percent of peers who started at the same score, and also means that the current instruction is not meeting the student's needs. Preliminary research shows some promise in using growth percentiles to measure progress as an alternative to slope, and teachers should be on the lookout for more research related to improving ways to monitor student progress.

Linking Assessment to Intervention

How can teachers figure out the details of what a student needs in terms of intervention? They would likely use a variety of informal and formal assessment techniques to determine the student's strengths and needs. The situation might require the use of diagnostic assessments, a reading or writing inventory, the use of observations to determine whether the student is engaged during instruction, and/or the use of assessments to better understand the student's problem-solving and other thinking skills. It may be a combination of assessment techniques that are needed to match research-based interventions to the student's needs.

You may be starting to recognize some overlap among different types of assessments across categories. For example, state tests are usually both formal and summative. Literacy screeners and progress-monitoring assessments are often formal and formative. And some assessments, such as portfolio assessments, have many overlapping qualities across the various assessment categories (e.g., portfolios can be used formatively to guide teaching and used summatively to determine if students met an academic outcome).

In bringing up portfolio assessments, this takes us back to points raised at the beginning of this chapter related to the authenticity of literacy assessments. So why do multiple choice tests exist if options such as portfolio assessment, which are so much more authentic, are an option? High-quality multiple choice tests tend to have stronger psychometric properties (discussed in the next section) than performance assessments like portfolios, which make multiple choice tests desirable when assessment time is limited and scores need to have strong measurement properties. Multiple choice test items are often easy to score and do not require a great deal of inference to interpret (i.e., they are "objective"), which are some of the reasons why they are popularly used. Portfolio assessments often take longer to do but also reflect the use of many important literacy skills that multiple choice items simply cannot assess. Based on this discussion, you may wonder if portfolio assessments are superior to multiple choice tests, or if the reverse is true. As always, an answer about a preferred format depends on the purpose of the assessment and what kinds of decisions will be made based on findings.

Psychometric Principles of Literacy Assessment

A chapter about literacy assessment would not be complete without some discussion about psychometric properties of assessment scores, such as reliability and validity (Trochim, 2006). Reliable assessment means that the information gathered is consistent and dependable-that the same or similar results would be obtained if the student were assessed on a different day, by a different person, or using a similar version of the same assessment (Trochim, 2006). To think about reliability in practice, imagine you were observing a student's reading behaviors and determined that the student was struggling with paying attention to punctuation marks used in a storybook. You rate the student's proficiency as being a one on a one to four scale, meaning he or she reads as though no punctuation marks were noticed. Your colleague observed the student reading the same book at the same time you were observing, and he rated the student's proficiency as a "three," meaning that the student was paying attention to most of the punctuation in the story, but not all. The difference between your rating and your colleague's rating signals a lack of reliability among raters using that scale. If these same inconsistencies in ratings arose across other items on the reading behavior scale or with other students, you would conclude that the scale has problems. These problems could include that the scale is poorly constructed, or that there may simply be inter-rater reliability problems related to a lack of training or experience with the people doing the ratings.

Reliability of formal assessment instruments, such as tests, inventories, or surveys, is usually investigated through research that is published in academic journal articles or test manuals. This kind of research involves administering the instrument to a sample of individuals, and findings are reported based on how those individuals scored. These findings provide "estimates" of the test's reliability, since indexes of reliability will vary to a certain degree, depending on the sample used in the research. The more stable reliability estimates are across multiple diverse samples, the more teachers can count on scores or ratings being reliable for their students. When reliability is unknown, then decisions made based on assessment information may not be trustworthy. The need for strong reliability versus the need for authenticity (i.e., how well the assessment matches real life literacy situations) is a rivalry that underlies many testing debates.

In addition to assessments needing to be reliable, information gathered from assessments must also be valid for making decisions. A test has evidence of validity when research shows that it measures what it is supposed to measure (Trochim, 2006). For example, when a test that is supposed to identify students at risk for writing problems identifies students with actual writing problems, then this is evidence of the test's validity. A weekly spelling test score may lack evidence of validity for applied spelling ability because some students may just be good memorizers and not be able to spell the same words accurately or use the words in their writing. When assessment information is not reliable, then it cannot be valid, so reliability is a keystone for the evaluation of assessments.

Sometimes, a test that seems to test what it is supposed to test will have issues with validity that are not apparent. For example, if students are tested on math applications problems to see who may need math intervention, a problem could arise if the children may not be able to read the words in the problems. In this case, the students may get many items incorrect, making the math test more like a reading test for these students. It is research on validity and observations by astute educators that help uncover these sorts of problems and prevent the delivery of a math intervention when what may actually be needed is a reading intervention.

The validity issue described above is one reason why some students may receive accommodations (e.g., reading a test to students) because accommodations can actually increase the validity of a test score for certain students. If students with reading disabilities had the above math test read to them, then their resulting scores would likely be a truer indicator of math ability because the accommodation ruled out their reading difficulties. This same logic applies to English language learners (ELLs) who can understand spoken English much better than they can read it. If a high school exam assessing knowledge of biology is administered and ELL students are unable to pass it, is it because they do not know biology or is it because they do not know how to read English? If the goal is to assess their knowledge of biology, then the test scores may not be valid.

Another example of a validity issue occurs if a student with visual impairment were assessed using a reading task featuring print in 12-point font. If the student scored poorly, would you refer him or her for reading intervention? Hopefully, not. The student might actually need reading intervention, but there is a validity problem with the assessment results, so that in reality, you would need more information before making any decisions. Consider that when you reassess the student's reading using large print that the student's score increases dramatically. You then know that it was a print size problem and not a reading problem that impacted the student's initial score. On the other hand, if the student still scored low even with appropriately enlarged print, you would conclude that the student may have a visual impairment and a reading problem, in which case providing reading intervention, along with the accommodation of large print material, would be needed.

Some Controversies in Literacy Assessment

While there is little controversy surrounding literacy assessments that are informal and part of normal classroom practices, formal assessments activate huge controversy in schools, in research communities, on Internet discussion boards, and in textbooks like this. When considering the scope of educational assessment, one thing is clear: many school districts give far too many tests to far too many students and waste far too many hours of instruction gathering data that may or may not prove to have any value ( Nelson, 2013). The over testing problem is especially problematic when so much time and effort go into gathering data that do not even end up being used. Whether a school is overwhelmed with testing is not universal. School districts have a great deal of influence over the use of assessments, but all too often when new assessments are adopted, they are added to a collection of previously adopted assessments, and the district becomes unsure about which assessments are still needed and which should be eliminated. Assessments also are added based on policy changes at federal and state levels. For example, the passing of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001( NCLB, 2002) expanded state testing to occur in all grades three through eight, compared to previous mandates which were much less stringent.

Some tests are mandated for schools to receive funding, such as state tests; however, the use of other assessments is largely up to school districts. It is important for educators and school leaders to periodically inventory procedures being used, discuss the extent to which they are needed, and make decisions that will provide answers without over testing students. In other words, the validity of assessments is not only limited to how they are used with individual students but must be evaluated at a larger system level in which benefits to the whole student body are also considered. When assessments provide data that are helpful in making instructional decisions but also take away weeks of instructional time, educators and school leaders must work toward solutions that maximize the value of assessments while minimizing potential negative effects. Not liking test findings is a different issue than test findings not being valid. For example if a test designed to identify students behind in reading is used to change instruction, then it may be quite valuable, even if it is unpleasant to find out that many students are having difficulty.

As a society, we tend to want indicators of student accountability, such as that a minimum standard has been met for students to earn a high school diploma. Often, earning a diploma requires students to pass high-stakes exit exams; however, this seemingly straightforward use of test scores can easily lead to social injustice, particularly for students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Because high-stakes tests may be inadequate at providing complete information about what many students know and can do, the International Reading Association (IRA, 2014) released a position statement that included the following recommendation:

High school graduation decisions must be based on a more complete picture of a student's literacy performance, obtained from a variety of systematic assessments, including informal observations, formative assessments of schoolwork, and consideration of out-of-school literacies, as well as results on standardized formal measures. (p. 2)

The IRA recommends that "teacher professional judgment, results from formative assessments, and student and family input, as well as results from standardized literacy assessments" (p. 5) serve as adequate additions in making graduation decisions. There is no easy answer for how to use assessments to precisely communicate how well students are prepared for college, careers, and life, and we are likely many reform movements away from designing a suitable plan. Nevertheless, the more educators, families, and policy-makers know about assessments-including the inherent benefits and problems that accompany their use-the more progress can be made in refining techniques to make informed decisions designed to enhance students' futures. Literacy assessments can only be used to improve outcomes for students if educators have deep knowledge of research-based instruction, assessment, and intervention and can use that knowledge in their classrooms. For this reason, information from this chapter should be combined with other chapters from this book and other texts outlining the use of effective literacy strategies, including students who are at risk for developing reading problems or who are English language learners.

Summary

Although literacy assessment is often associated with high-stakes standardized tests, in reality, literacy assessments encompass an array of procedures to help teachers make instructional decisions. This chapter highlighted how teachers can use literacy assessments to improve instruction, but in reality, assessment results are frequently used to communicate about literacy with a variety of individuals, including teams of educators, specialists, and family and/or community members. Knowing about the different kinds of assessments and their purposes will allow you to be a valuable addition to these important conversations.

Literacy assessments can be informal or formal, formative or summative, screenings or diagnostic tests. They can provide data at single points in time or to monitor progress over time. Regardless of their intended purpose, it is important that assessment information be trustworthy. It is also important that teachers who use assessments understand associated benefits and difficulties of different procedures. An assessment that is ideal for use in one circumstance may be inappropriate in another. For this reason, teachers who have background in assessment will be better equipped to select appropriate assessments which have the potential to benefit their students, and they also will be able to critique the use of assessments in ways that can improve assessment practices that are more system-wide. Literacy assessments are an important part of educational decision making, and therefore, it is essential that teachers gain a thorough understanding of their uses and misuses, gain experience interpreting information obtained through assessment, and actively participate in reform movements designed not just to eliminate testing but to use assessments in thoughtful and meaningful ways.

Questions and Activities

1. Using some of the terms learned from this chapter, discuss some commonly used high-stakes literacy assessments, such as state-mandated tests or other tests used in schools.

2. Explain ways in which some forms of literacy assessment are more controversial than others and how the more controversial assessments are impacting teachers, students, and the education system.

3. What are the differences between formative and summative assessments? List some examples of each and how you currently use, or plan to use these assessments in your teaching.

4. A colleague of yours decides that she would like to use a diagnostic literacy test to assess all students in her middle school to see who has reading, spelling, and/or writing problems. The test must be administered individually and will take approximately 45 minutes per student. Although there is only one form of the assessment, your colleague would like to administer the test three times per year. After listening carefully to your colleague's ideas, what other ideas do you have that might help meet your colleague's goal besides the use of a diagnostic literacy test?

References

Adams, M. J. (2010-2011, Winter). Advancing our students' language and literacy: The challenge of complex texts. American Educator, 34, 3-11, 53. Retrieved from http://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/Adams.pdf

Afflerbach, P., & Cho, B. Y. (2011). The classroom assessment of reading. In M. J. Kamil, P. D. Pearson, E. B. Moje, & P. P. Afflerbach (Eds.), Handbook of reading research (Vol. 4, pp. 487-514). New York, NY: Routledge.

Dynamic Measurement Group (2010, December 1). DIBELS Next benchmark goals and composite scores. Retrieved from https://dibels.uoregon.edu/docs/DIBELSNextFormerBenchmarkGoals.pdf

Edglossary (2013, August 29). Norm-referenced test [online]. Retrieved from http://edglossary.org/norm-referenced-test/

Edglossary (2014, April 30). Criterion-referenced test [online]. Retrieved from http://edglossary.org/criterion-referenced-test/

Goffreda, C. T., & DiPerna, J. C. (2010). An empirical review of psychometric evidence for the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills. School Psychology Review, 39, 463-483. Available at http://www.nasponline.org/publications/periodicals/spr/volume-39/volume-39-issue-3/an-empirical-review-of-psychometric-evidence-for-the-dynamic-indicators-of-basic-early-literacy-skills

Good, R. H. (2015, May 19). Improving the efficiency and effectiveness of instruction with progress monitoring and formative evaluation in the outcomes driven model. Invited presentation at the International Conference on Cognitive and Neurocognitive Aspects of Learning: Abilities and Disabilities, Haifa, Israel. Retrieved from https://dibels.org/papers/Roland_Good_Haifa_Israel_2015_Handout.pdf

Good, R. H., & Kaminski, R. A. (Eds.). (2011). DIBELS Next assessment manual.Eugene, OG: Dynamic Measurement Group, Inc. Retrieved from http://www.d11.org/edss/assessment/DIBELS%20NextAmplify%20Resources/DIBELSNext_AssessmentManual.pdf

Good, R. H., Powell-Smith, K. A., & Dewey, E. (2015, February). Making r eliable and s table p rogress decisions: Slope or pathways of p rogress? Poster presented at the Annual Pacific Coast Research Conference, Coronado, CA.

Hoover, H. D., Dunbar, S. B., & Frisbie, D. A. (2003). The Iowa Tests: Guide to research and development. Chicago, IL: Riverside Publishing.

International Reading Association. (2014). Using high-stakes assessments for grade retention and graduation decisions: A position statement of the International Reading Association. Retrieved from http://www.literacyworldwide.org/docs/default-source/where-we-stand/high-stakes-assessments-position-statement.pdf

Leslie, L., & Caldwell, J. S. (2010). Qualitative reading inventory-5. Boston, MA: Pearson.

Mitchell, A. M., Truckenmiller, A., & Petscher, Y. (2015, June). Computer-adapted assessments: Fundamentals and considerations. Communique, 43(8), 1, 22-24.

Murray, M. S., Munger, K. A., & Clonan, S. M. (2012). Assessment as a strategy to increase oral reading fluency. Intervention in Schools and Clinic, 4 7, 144-151. doi:10.1177/1053451211423812

National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers. (2010). Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects. Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved from http://www.corestandards.org/assets/CCSSI_ELA%20Standards.pdf

Nelson, H. (2013). Test ing more, teaching less: What American's obsession with student testing costs in money and lost instructional time. Retrieved from http://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/news/testingmore2013.pdf

No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, Pub. L. No. 107-110, 115 Stat. 1425 (2002).

Pearson. (2012). AIMS web technical manual (R-CBM and TEL). NCS Pearson, Inc. Retrieved from http://www.aimsweb.com/wp-content/uploads/aimsweb-Technical-Manual.pdf

Snow, C. (Chair). (2002). RAND reading study group: Reading for understanding, toward an R&D program in reading comprehension. Santa Monica, CA: RAND. Retrieved from http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monograph_reports/2005/MR1465.pdf

Trochim, W. K. (2006). Research methods knowledge base: Construct validity. Retrieved from http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/relandval.php

Wechsler, D. (2009). Wechsler Individual Achievement Test (3rd ed.). San Antonio, TX: Pearson.

Photo Credit

Endnotes

1: The benchmark of 52 words per minute is considered a "criterion-referenced" score because a student's performance is judged against a criterion-in this case, the benchmark. Recall that scores obtained on diagnostic literacy assessments are norm-referenced because they are judged against how others in a norm group scored. Some progress-monitoring assessments provide both criterion-referenced and norm-referenced scores to aid in decision-making when more than one type of score is needed. Return

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Steps to Success: Crossing the Bridge Between Literacy Research and Practice

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This chapter focuses on key ideas for understanding literacy assessment to assist with educational decisions. Included is an overview of different literacy assessments, along with common assessment procedures used in schools and applications of assessment practices to support effective teaching.

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CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.1.3
Describe characters, settings, and major events in a story, using key details.

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CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.1.2
Retell stories, including key details, and demonstrate understanding of their central message or lesson.

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Students will reflect on a story by identifying characters, settings, and major events.

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Classroom Setting

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First Grade Focus Lesson 1 ~ CCSS RL 1.3 (Key Details of Story Elements)

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Distance Learning Setting

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ESL Student Support Strategies (ELL, LEP  & Bilingual)

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Modifications vs. Accommodations - Special Education

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Student will be given additional time to work on worksheet.

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Students will be partnered with a non-ELL student.

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Student will be provided a version of the worksheet that is either translated or has pictures.

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First grade Lesson Characters and Setting With "Where The Wild Things Are"

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Best Practices for Remediation

Target students individually - use the data to determine which students need to improve on which skills or standards.

Use small groups or stations to let students work in teams based on similar needs.

Chunk skills into small tasks that can be done over time rather than giving one large review packet.

Use peer tutors to explain concepts in different words.

Take advantage of flipped remediation with videos and resources that have already been created.

Have students track results to see if their remediation led to improved performance on the next benchmark.

Use self-grading activities through Learn Study Island, Mastery Connect and other digital resources to give students immediate feedback.

Provide a little time each day to spiral review in addition to new content. Remediation should not be seen as punishment.

Have students reflect on their strengths and weaknesses, as well as the results of their class and home activities.

Create interesting graphic organizers to help students organize important information with more aesthetic appeal Sometimes all it takes is a simple stray-from-the-norm approach to help engage students. Check out these organizer ideas or these great mindmapping / organizing digital tools:

Bored with these? Check out Richard Byrne's of Free Tech For Teachers review of several mindmap digital tools.

Discovery Education SOS Strategies

Overview

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Target students individually - use the data to determine which students need to improve on which skills or standards. Use small groups or stations to let students work in teams based on similar needs. Chunk skills into small tasks that can be done over time rather than giving one large review packet.

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Have you ever had to use a district curriculum that doesn't really fit the levels or needs of your special needs student? It can be hard to make a purchased program work for our students, but it IS possible!

To do so, though, we need to be flexible and creative....We totally rock flexible and creative, right?!

Here is an example of how to modify & adapt a social studies program designed for regular first graders. All of my students are special education students with severe delays, but they still need to learn this information and they need a way to demonstrate what they have learned.

Here is the text book my students are using:

We work on reading, listening and following along in text books during small group time. Before closing the book, we also work on labeling and finding pictures, actions, text features such as title, bold text, illustrations, etc.

Many of my students are non-writers and have limited drawing skills. Without modifications my students would feel like failures and act out when I gave them this worksheet (above). To help them be successful we took the writing/drawing component out of it.

Here is an example of one of the outcomes...they all varied depending on the type and amount of adaptions specific students needed.

Let's all learn from each other...post and idea for modification in the comments!

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Modifying Curriculum For The Special Needs Student · Mrs. P's Specialties

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Have you ever had to use a district curriculum that doesn't really fit the levels or needs of your special needs student? It can be hard to make a purchased program work for our students, but it IS possible! To do so, though, we need to be flexible and creative....We totally rock flexible and creative, ...

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Character Traits and Character Development Lesson

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Students will be assessed on knowledge of different character traits.

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Character Traits Collection | Character trait lessons, Character trait, Character traits graphic organizer

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Mar 21, 2019 - Helping children understand character traits is an important part of helping children grow as readers. Free, big collection!

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A helpful rubric when assessing 1st grade student knowledge on characters, plot, and setting (ELA Common Core Standard RL.1.3)...

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Student will be given one-on-one time with the teacher to go over the retelling hand.

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Retelling stories and understanding the central message Anchor Chart (first grade) | Kindergarten anchor charts, Writing anchor charts, Reading anchor charts

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Jan 24, 2019 - Retelling stories and understanding the central message Anchor Chart (first grade)

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Example of worksheet students will be given additional time to complete.

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This is a simple story map for primary learners. As a kindergarten teacher, I had trouble finding story maps that were appropriate for primary students. I created this story map for use in my own classroom. It features graphic cues and primary writing lines. Please leave a comment telling me how you used this in your classroom!

View my TPT store for the full Story Elements Pack.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.K.3: With prompting and support, identify characters, setting, and major events in a story.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.1.3 Describe characters, settings, and major events in a story, using key details.

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This is a simple story map for primary learners. As a kindergarten teacher, I had trouble finding story maps that were appropriate for primary students. I created this story map for use in my own classroom. It features graphic cues and primary writing lines. Please leave a comment telling me how you...