Progress Monitoring with the Science of Reading in Mind
When you read a blog post, listen to a podcast, or read an article about the science of reading, it’s almost always covering instruction. And for a good reason - instruction is where the heart science of reading happens. But do you know what drives and influences such great instruction? Assessments! We can’t have meaningful, effective instruction without assessments. If instruction is the sail of a boat, assessments are the winds that drive and guide it. Before we can teach effectively, we need to know the needs of our students as well as their capabilities. Today, we’re going to unpack the significance of assessments and the crucial role they play in instruction.
Why Are Assessments Important?
Assessments give us a guide on where to start our instruction. They tell us what our students already know and where we need to fill in the gaps. In short? They play a crucial role in instruction. Assessments do six things for us in the classroom: they identify strengths and weaknesses, inform instruction, track progress, guide intervention, support differentiation, and inform curriculum planning. Let’s chat about each one of these in more detail.
The Benefit of Assessments
Assessments identify strengths and weaknesses. Literacy assessments help us pinpoint a students’ strengths and weaknesses in reading, writing, phonics, vocabulary, comprehension, and other literacy-related areas. All aspects of literacy can be assessed. If we begin our instruction unaware of a student’s strengths and weaknesses, two things can happen. The first is that we risk teaching students something in-depth that they already know about and therefore we “waste” precious instruction time and the opportunity for them to learn something new. The second risk we take is that we potentially teach struggling students material that they are not yet ready for, or that they would need scaffolding to understand. We must identify strengths and weaknesses before we begin our instructional planning so we are making the most of our instructional time.
Assessments inform instruction. When we can understand where students excel and where they struggle, we can adjust their teaching strategies to provide targeted support and even enrichment. Assessments allow us to divide students into small and large groups based upon what they need to learn. This knowledge allows teachers to tailor instruction to meet each student’s specific needs. In short? Assessments help us differentiate! They allow us to instruct each student to his or her ability. If you’ve ever had a classroom full of differing abilities (and who hasn’t!?), you know how important assessments are to your instruction!
Assessments track progress. Assessments provide data on students’ progress over time, allowing educators to track growth and monitor the effectiveness of interventions. Progress monitoring is essential for evaluating the impact of instruction. It allows us to make data-driven decisions and tune our instruction to where it needs to be. As a literacy coach, when I meet with teachers, this progress monitoring is always at the forefront of our conversations. These assessments track students and ensure that the interventions they’re a part of are working for them. In Episode #37 of my podcast, I link the progress monitoring sheet that I use in my school - check out the link to it in the show notes!
Assessments guide intervention. All types of students - advanced or struggling, benefit from assessments. But it’s those struggling students who can receive the most benefit because we can use these assessments to guide what specific interventions they may need. When we address a weakness, we are then able to provide specific support for them so that they can succeed. Using assessments to guide instruction is simply best practice and helps ensure that we truly are meeting every student where they are.
Assessments support differentiation. Literacy assessments do this by identifying areas of need and guide the development of targeted interventions. When we address a weakness, we can provide additional support within the classroom. This support doesn’t always need explicit intervention, but rather, can be within the walls of our own classroom inside a lesson. We can tailor and “edit” our lessons to ensure that all students’ needs are being met in our classroom and that all of our diverse learners have the opportunity to succeed.
Assessments inform curriculum planning. Assessments also inform resource allocation by highlighting areas of the curriculum that may need adjusting or enhancing. Assessments give us results where we can identify areas of focus for instruction and curriculum development. Purchasing and choosing a curriculum for a school or classroom is a monumental task. We must come to it with solid research and assessments that support the purchase. Even in my own district, we are preparing to adopt a curriculum. We’ve had to intentionally look at our data, find the gaps, and choose a curriculum to fill in those gaps.
Where Do We Start?
Okay, want to hear something that may make you snooze, but I’m here to change your mind? I love assessments! There’s something gratifying and satisfying about diagnosing exactly what each student needs to grow as a reader. Remember that our job as teachers is to meet each student where they are. We can’t do this without knowing where each student is, right? Assessments should be our close friends, and we should be doing them often to ensure that our lessons are tailored to each student.
So, where do we start? It all begins by asking ourselves a simple question: What do my students need? It sounds simple, but trust me when I say it’s fairly easy to overlook. Every classroom is a mixed bag - full of differing skills and abilities. So before we dive into instruction, we need to understand our students’ baseline. We can only do this with assessments. Let’s talk about the three main types of assessments so you can have a better idea of which ones to use and when to use them. Each one serves a unique purpose, but they share one goal: driving our instruction forward in an effective way.
Types of Assessments:
Universal Screeners
This is where we start. These types of assessments are also known as benchmarks.
They help us identify which students are on track and which may need more support.
Think of these assessments as spotlights - shining down on struggling readers saying, “We see you, and we’re here to help!”
Diagnostic Assessments
These are assessments that happen after a universal screener.
These assessments require you to put on your detective hat and find your magnifying glass because they tell us exactly what each student needs.
Diagnostic tests are pre-tests that give us insight and “zoom in” on a student’s strengths and weaknesses, which guide us to our targeted instruction.
For example, if a universal screener tells us a student is struggling with comprehension, the diagnostic screener will really nail down their weakness. Is it really comprehension, or is it a lack of fluency or decoding skills? In order to know, I may check the following data points:
Listening comprehension
Oral reading fluency
Spelling and decoding
Phonemic awareness
Letter name and sound knowledge
If a student is struggling with decoding, assessing their letter name and sound knowledge, as well as their ability to blend and segment, will tell me exactly what the problem is. It all fits together like a puzzle!
Progress monitoring
This type of assessment happens after the universal and diagnostic screeners.
I love to think of this as a “GPS system” for learning. It helps us track students’ growth over time and tells us if our instruction and interventions are working.
Wiley Blevens reminds us that phonics instruction is an ongoing journey, not a one-time event.
Progress monitoring allows us to circle back, check-in, review, and ensure that our instruction is making a difference in the lives of our readers.
This type of monitoring also is data-driven and helps us with our instruction. When we regularly assess a student’s progress, we can adjust our teaching strategies and provide targeted support. Look at it as fine-tuning a recipe until it’s perfect.
The National Reading Panel’s Report highlighted the importance of systematic phonics instruction and ongoing assessment in improving reading skills. In short? Progress monitoring is an evidence-based practice that shapes the future of education.
Tools and Resources
If you’re wondering where to start, my Phonics Quick Checks are the place! They are easy to use and, yep, you guessed it - quick! One of the most important parts of assessments is to make them quick, easy, and accessible! If they aren’t these things, you’re not going to feel like pulling them out very often. These quick checks give a snapshot of whether or not students are truly grasping the concepts you’re currently teaching. I created them for each phonics skill and they also include a spelling portion (both phonics skills and high-frequency words), along with word, sentence, and passage decoding. If you’re looking for a lifesaver, these quick checks are for you!
Other resources:
Check out my Phonemic Awareness Screener for free!
My Phonics Screener for Units 2-4 assesses both decoding and encoding.
Also check out my Letter Name/Sound Check (5 Word CVC).
Remember that reading is not a race - it’s a journey. When we embrace ongoing assessments in our classroom as well as data-driven instruction, we can ensure that we are delivering the best possible instruction to our students - no matter where they are. So, here’s to the amazing power of assessments that are transforming the lives of readers!
