Embedded Files
ELA Assessments
ELA Assessments
Standard #6: Assessment
The teacher understands and uses multiple methods of assessment to engage learners in their own growth, to monitor learner progress, and to guide the teacher’s and learner’s decision making.
Introduction
Introduction
I use a wide variety of assessments to track student progress in English Language Arts (ELA), including ones which focus on phonics, comprehension, writing, or a combination of skills. Some of these assessments connect to our curriculums and others relate directly to the Common Core Standards we are trying to master by the end of the year. Paying close attention to how students perform on these assessments affects my daily instruction in phonics, writing, and guided reading as I adjust my instruction to make sure that my learners are making as much progress as possible.
The District Diagnostic and Benchmark tests are both administered on paper periodically throughout the year to track students' progress with a variety of writing, phonics, and comprehension goals. The Benchmark test remains the same as it is administered throughout the year and monitors student progress towards end of year goals. The Diagnostic changes each quarter to reflect student progress towards current learning goals.
ESGI and iSteep are both computer-based programs which are used to track students' progress in concrete skills such as recognizing letter names and sounds, or verbally identifying the beginning sound in a word. ESGI can be administered as a formative assessment at any point throughout the year. iSteep is given at distinct intervals as a diagnostic and then summative assessment.
Guided reading notes, Fundations curriculum activities, and written responses are all weekly informal assessments which allow me to track students' individual progress towards personal and class wide goals.
All of these assessments work together to help myself and my students understand how they are progressing individually and as a class towards our end of year goals. Please click the links below to learn more about each of these assessments and how I use them to inform my teaching.
The District Diagnostic is given at the beginning of the year and administered in the same state multiple times throughout the year to gage students' progress towards end of year goals. This assessment covers a wider variety of Common Core aligned kindergarten ELA standards than a specific skill based assessment such as iSteep and ESGI.
iSTEEP is a computer administered verbal diagnostic which is administered three times throughout the year to assess student progress towards end of year phonemic awareness goals. This information, in tandem with the diagnostic, helps me create intentional grouping early in the year that informs small group skill instruction.
ESGI is a program used to track student data on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. In this section I detail how I use this program to track student letter names and sound recognition progress and how I use this data to inform daily phonics and small group instruction.
Guided reading notes act as formative assessments that I use to ensure students are in accurately leveled reading groups, as well as to monitor what skills each group masters week by week and what skills may require remediation. These notes directly inform my daily small group instruction.
Daily Fundations curriculum activities allow me to monitor student progress towards weekly phonics goals through direct observation of student application of skills. Observing these activities helps me understand what students are mastering and what they are struggling with during whole group phonics instruction and affects how I lead this part of the class.
Bi-weekly written responses act as formative assessments to see how students are combining phonemic and comprehension skills to create meaningful pieces of written work progressing towards "Fluent" skill levels which will prepare them for first grade.
The District Benchmark is updated each time it is given throughout the year to reflect current ELA learning goals. It covers kindergarten standards which teachers are expected to have taught in the intervening quarter, and helps myself and my students see how they are progressing compared to students throughout our district.
Conclusion
Conclusion
Each step of our ELA data collection is necessary to assess students on a wide list of skills. Since ELA covers many different topics, many of our overarching kindergarten goals are covered through ELA instruction and assessments. Communicating personal progress on so different skills can be complicated for a five or six-year-old to understand, so I use a pictographic "My Kindergarten Goals" sheet to help explain some of these goals to my students after we complete assessments.
Our ELA related goals include writing first and last names, knowing all letter names and sounds, knowing all vowels and their sounds, reading consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words, reading and writing all (Kindergarten Dolch) sight words, rhyming, and segmenting CVC words. After assessments are given, if a child has proven master of this goal they can circle it on their personal My Kindergarten Goals sheet as we discuss what actions they took to achieve that goal, and focus on how they can apply those skills to reach their next goal.
Another outcome we hope for is for students to read level D books independently by the end of the year. In our classroom we have a chart starting with pre-reading at the bottom and going from A-F raising upward to indicate Fountas & Pinnell independent reading levels. Each child has a clip on this chart indicating where they are currently at in relation to this goal so that they can independently track their own reading progress, which we talk about often during guided reading instruction.
So many ELA skills directly connect to each other - for example, my students need to master phonics skills such as letter names and sounds, and blending and segmenting, before they can fluently read and write. Once they can read and write to some degree, they can express a wider variety of ideas and increase their comprehension through communicating ideas using evidence.
Summative and diagnostic tests such as the District Benchmark, District Diagnostic, and iSteep are some of the ways that I track students continual progress towards our end of year goals so that I can adjust instruction as necessary the following term. Less formal formative assessments such as ESGI, Guided Reading Notes, Fundations, and Written Responses are also vital for me to use as a daily pulse to see how students are doing on fundamental early learning skills. I use all of these assessments to monitor learner progress and inform my instruction as necessary to make sure that all of my students have an opportunity to finish the year well-prepared for first grade.
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