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Assessment and tracking

Assessment types explained with examples

Assessments for different reading profiles

Assessment types explained with examples

With any assessment always ask yourself, what question am I trying to answer, how will I use the information and is the assessment the least intrusive for my need? Also, remember that an assessment result is one data point in time, so always use your professional judgement and other data to support your analsyis of the data.

SCREENERS

Screeners

Screening assessments help teachers to identify students who are at risk of not achieving year level learning goals. These assessments are quick and are administered to all students. They do not diagnose learning challenges.

Answers the question: “Who might need extra support?”

Examples

Liz Kane Phonemic Awareness Assessment - Liz Kane Literacy website

ToPALL Little Learners test of phonological awareness website
Gough-Kastler-Roper (GKR) phonemic awareness test Link
David Kilpatrick PAST test website
Sound Foundations Phonological awareness skills check website
Heggerty Phonological assessments website
DIBELS - University of Oregon website (use the Australasian version)
Sound Foundation Emma Nanha (has information linking Dibels to NZ Year levels) website

DIAGNOSTIC

Diagnostic assessments provide teachers with detailed information about students skills and strategies. These lengthier assessments are usually administered one-to-one or in groups. They are administered before you commence teaching and guide instruction.

These assessments must be valid (measures what you want it to) and reliable (easily replicated).

Answers the question: “According to this data, what do I do next for this student / group of students.”

Examples

Sunshine decodable suite of assessments website
Little Learners suite of assessments website
Phonics Plus (alphabet test, phonemic awareness, adapted Byrant test) Literacy online TKI
MOTIF spelling test non-words website
MOTIF spelling tests irregular words website
The Code spelling assessments Liz Kane Literacy website
For older ‘at risk’ learners. If assess an older students at early level 2 and if they don’t get 95% at level 2 you can use UK Phonics assessment (for use with the UK phonics decodable books). Website

PROGRESS MONITORING

Progress monitoring is a standardised process of evaluating students progress evaluated on a regular basis to provide useful feedback to both the teacher and the learner.

Jan Hasbrouck suggests that you conduct 5 progress monitoring assessments before making adjustments to the teaching programme.

Answers the question: “Is my teaching working? Is the student responding to my instruction?”

Examples

DIBELS - University of Oregon website (use the Australasian version)
Sound Foundation Emma Nanha (has information linking Dibels to NZ Year levels) website
Learning Matters Reading Skills Record website
Assessment of oral reading fluency, comprehension and other aspects of fluency: phrasing, expression/volume/ smoothness and pace.
The Reading Skills Record has text you can use up to level 4. (4 examples of text at each curriculum level) Unseen texts and blank templates (good for progress monitoring. You can use the Readworks website to find age appropriate texts to use).

OUTCOME ASSESSMENT

Outcome Assessment (often known as summative assessments).

Outcome Assessment seeks to determine the benefits or changes in knowledge, skills and strategies that benefits the learner.

Answers the question: “Is my Tier 1 instruction effective? Are enough of my students progressing as expected? How many students are on track to continue achieving at expected levels?”

Examples

Learning Matters Reading Skills Record website
The Code spelling assessments Liz Kane Literacy website
Progressive achievement tests (PATs) website

Spotlight on some common assessments

e-asTTle

e-asTTle is an online assessment tool, developed to assess students’ achievement and progress in reading, mathematics, writing, and in pānui, pāngarau, and tuhituhi. It is the first bilingual (English and te reo Māori) assessment tool to be developed in New Zealand. Visit the Tahurangi to find out more. This can be used as a screening tool, progress monitoring, or for outcome assessment.

DIBELS

DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills). This is a suite of procedures and measures for assessing the acquisition of literacy skills. It is produced by the University of Oregon and has produced Australasian assessment materials. This assessment can be used as a screener, progress monitoring.

The assessment suite includes:

Letter naming fluency
Maze
Nonsense word fluency
Oral reading fluency
Phoneme segmentation fluency
Word reading fluency

Watch the introduction to DIBELS followed by Unpacking DIBELS data to support you on your journey.

Please access these folders and their content to support your understanding.

Introduction

Unpacking DIBELS data - reference to Yeet Cards

Reading skills record

The iDeaL Reading Skills Record (iRSR) assesses reading accuracy, reading rate (words per minute), fluency, and comprehension.

It is specifically designed to help teachers in Aotearoa assess, monitor, and track their students' reading progress. The iRSR assists teachers in determining the next steps in their classroom programs. The components assessed in the iRSR align with the Building Blocks of Reading Success (iDeal).

Each iRSR kit contains a:

webinar to guide you through using the kit and scoring and analysing an iRSR.
blank iRSR to use with a text of your choice.
a relevant contents page.
a selection of prefilled iRSRs.

There are three different kits available:

iRSR Kit 1: Intended for younger students aged 5-7 years who are reading early decodable texts and working within Curriculum Level 1. It is designed to be used alongside the iDeaL Stage 1 Scope and Sequence.
iRSR Kit 2: Designed for older students reading decodable texts. It includes a variety of decodable readers from the UK Phonic Books text series.
iRSR Kit 3: Intended for students working within Levels 2 - 4 of the curriculum. It is designed for use with authentic texts and features excerpts taken from stories and articles found in Junior and School Journals.

Assessments for different reading profiles

This video brings together a lot of our learning to date and helps us understand the different reading profiles that we may see from our screening data.

Assessment Types and Next Steps for ALL readers.docx.pdf

Use this chart to (left):

Help identify what assessments would be appropriate to provide more insight into how best to support each student.
Investigate next steps for learning for each student.

Time to break up with running records

Jocelyn Seamer (Trainer - Australia) article

(30 minute read)

Blog post from Jocelyn Seamer Education in Australia, about using benchmarking kits to measure reading levels and how it's not quite hitting the mark in the education system, just like here in New Zealand.

The post highlights some key problems with the current system, e.g., the lack of effective measurement of reading progress, the encouragement of guessing words and relying too much on sight words, and the fact that this method has been around for so long that it's become the norm in schools.

There is a compelling call to action, emphasising the need for a different approach to measuring reading progress.

Screening for Early Literacy Milestones and Reading Disabilities

Gaab, Nadine Gaab &, Yaacov Petscher. (2022). Link

(20 minute read)

In Figure 1, you see how screening at the beginning of the year is followed by RTI (Response to Intervention) components within a general MTSS (Multi-tiered Systems of Support) framework. Students with dyslexia and other reading difficulties require structured, explicit, high-frequency intervention. The core components of instruction are the same for all children, whether they experience reading failure or not. High-quality reading instruction in Tier 1 benefits all children and is the crucial first step in implementing a preventive model in an educational setting. It is important to remember that children may receive high-quality intervention in Tiers 2 and 3; however, if Tier 1 instruction is flawed and ineffective, the outcomes of these intervention efforts are diminished.

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