What is Continuous Blending?

Imagine a stream of water from a faucet that you are using to fill a cup. You can stop the stream by turning off the faucet. Water can come out in choppy amounts, but water is still coming out and cup is being filled. Or, you can leave the faucet running and water will come out in one amount. That’s similar to the differences between traditional sound by sound blending and continuous blending. With traditional blending, each sound is given in isolation. When those isolated sounds are put together, the word is blended. With continuous blending, sounds are stretched and connected together, flowing from one sound to the next. It’s free flowing rather than isolated and choppy.

Why is Continuous Blending Beneficial?

As mentioned before, many students struggle with blending words as they read. Most students struggle for just a short period of time and their phonemic awareness skills advance rather quickly. For others, trying to read even the simplest of words can be laborious. Continuous blending is a natural scaffold for those students as they are able to speed up the sounds as they attempt to blend them. It can be applied with the simplest of word patterns- vc and cvc words, helping support students right from the start as they begin trying to read.

• Enhances Phonemic Awareness: By smoothly blending sounds, students strengthen their ability to hear and manipulate individual sounds within words.
• Boosts Confidence: The flowing motion can make reading feel more natural and less daunting for some students. As students successfully use continuous blending,
• Provides Scaffolds: When beginning to read words with consonant blends, and adding that 4th sound into words, continuous blending can help support students, even if they didn’t need support initially. Blending an additional sound, and keeping it in a student’s phonological working memory, can be a difficult transition for some. Continuous blending helps ease that transition since each sound is heard.

Tips for Continuous Blending

Continuous blending has some key components to consider as you implement it with students.

• Continuous Sounds: Continuous blending should initially be done with only continuous sounds in non-final positions. This is essential for the blending to be continuous, or connected. Not sure what the continuous sounds are? Watch my video below that compares continuous and stop sounds.

• Build complexity: As students get more proficient with reading words using continuous blending, there are two ways you can add complexity to support students’ further reading development.

First, you can introduce stop sounds in the initial position. This means students that first sound is unable to be held as the other sounds are added. Since all vowel sounds are continuous, it naturally helps students blend the rime. This is a great way to push students forward as they only have to hold the one stop sound in their working memory as they work to blend the onset and rime.

Another way to add complexity is by introducing blends, or words containing 4 sounds rather than 3. Continuous blending can continue to be done with blends, as long as each sound in the blend is a continuous sound. Final s blends are a great one to use as the stop sound is in the final position in the word. Otherwise S and F blends are also great initial blends to use, so long as the second sound is also a continuous sound. Just as mentioned before, once students have become proficient with blending 4 sound words with continuous sounds in non-final positions, the complexity can again be increased by inserting a non-continuous sound within the word.

You may find that some students develop proficiency with decoding CVC words with initial stop sounds but then need the scaffold of using all continuous sounds in order to successfully recode words with blends.

• Add manipulatives: Manipulatives provide a great concrete reinforcement for students as hold and stretch sounds during connected phonation, especially if they are reading a printed or oral word rather than manipulating letter tiles. I like to use counters, toy cars, and even small Junior Slinkys to reinforce the stretch and connection used during connected phonation. Please note: Links are to items on Amazon where I receive a very small product commission for your purchase at no additional cost to you. 

Continuous Blending vs. Successive Blending

Continuous blending and successive blending are both strategies for supporting students struggling to correctly blend words as they’re reading. With continuous blending, the focus is on connecting the phonemes in the word together. This is why it’s also referred to as connected phonation.

With successive blending, each sound is added on, successively, before adding on the next sound. This means the first sounds are blended together before new sounds are added. There isn’t a focus on using only continuous sounds with this strategy, though that’s obviously a support with successive blending as well. I detail all about successive blending in its own individual post.

Ready to try Continuous Blending?

Continuous blending is a strategy that can be incorporated within your existing phonics and phonemic awareness work. Depending on your scope and sequence of instruction, you can intentionally incorporate continuous blending as students are reading words. While it’s a blending strategy that students can use anytime, students will not be able to apply it to words with stop sounds. For this reason, it’s best done with intentionally chosen words and/or sounds to ensure continuation is possible. This makes it a great tool to incorporate within your small group and intervention instruction.

Card Drills

I start out most of my small group instruction doing card drills to review letter sounds and to practice decoding using phonics and phonemic awareness skills. The routine takes only a few minutes and gives students quick and focused practice on reading a variety of real and nonsense words. I’ve learned that it’s similar (or maybe even the same as) the 3 part drill from OG, but I’ve done it for many years before ever hearing of that method of instruction.

To implement card drills, all you need are letter cards. I have made cards using regular index cards or I’ve also printed ones on my own. After reviewing letter sounds one at a time, I lay the cards out as detailed below to create the stacks for our CVC words (or more complex words if that’s our focus). If you’re doing words with blends, you’ll obviously change this to match that practice.

Step 1: Set up your letter cards

Pile 1 C– all continuous consonants  except for q and x

Pile 2 V– all vowels

Pile 3 C– all stop sounds

It seems like a lot to remember, but it becomes pretty quick and painless once you’ve done it a few times. If you inadvertently include a letter a wrong spot, just move it as you’re practicing.

Step 2: Stretch and blend

Once the cards are set up, you’re reading to blend. Stretch the sounds into each other and blend the word to form the word. Then, flip over one letter to create a new, minimal contrast word and read again.

With card drills, students get exposure and practice with both real and nonsense words just due to the nature of the routine. Practicing with nonsense words, which may seem counterintuitive, actually ensures students aren’t just reading words that are stored in their long-term memory. A great routine is to have students identify the word as a real word or nonsense word before continuing on to the next word.

Continuous Blending Slides

If you’re ready to give continuous blending a try in your classroom, I offer a few sets of Continuous Blending Slides to help you get started. With that said, continuous blending can absolutely be implemented without buying anything special! Just use letter tiles and/or letter cards for the letters and get working!

My CVC Continuous Blending Slides were created for independent practice . Each slide was intentionally created with a continuous sound as the first sound- especially with commonly confused continuous sounds /h/, /w/, & /y/. These are great tools use during literacy centers, independent work, homework, and small group work. Because these include a self-checking or feedback component, students are able to use them to practice independently.

With that said, they are also perfect for whole class practice on a display screen or interactive whiteboard! Just display and walk through the routine together! That’s perfect for special education or other intervention groups, or for beginning readers just working on blending CVC words.

To check out my CVC Continuous Blending Slides click the image below.

You can also get a set of free continuous blending slides practicing the CK and SH digraphs (individual practice sets) by signing up for my newsletter below. A link to the download containing both Powerpoint and Google Slides slideshows will be sent immediately.

The post Continuous Blending: An Effective Scaffold for Supporting Decoding appeared first on Tales from Outside the Classroom.

What is Structured Literacy?

Structured literacy is an umbrella term designed to describe all of the programs that teach reading in a similar way. It’s rooted in the Science of Reading and was developed by the International Dyslexia Association. It emphasizes highly explicit and systematic teaching of each of the key components of reading, with a focus on language. The aim of structured literacy is to provide the necessary instruction so that all children learn to read, including, and especially, those with dyslexia. Up to 20% of the population may have symptoms of dyslexia (International Dyslexia Association), so structured literacy is designed to ensure these students’ needs are met. In structured literacy, teachers carefully and strategically structure literacy skills, concepts, and the sequence of instruction to facilitate learning and progress. It addresses both the “what” and the “how” of our literacy instruction.

What are the Components of Structured Literacy?

The components of a structured literacy program include:

Phonology – Phonology is the study of the sound structure of spoken words. This includes phonological and phonemic awareness. In a structured literacy program, phonemic awareness is a critical component of early literacy instruction. For some students, their ability to articulate sounds can be challenging and can interfere with their development. This is especially true for multilingual learners whose native language have differing sounds than English. For other students, especially those with dyslexia, hearing the differences between two sounds that are similar can be a challenge.

Sound-symbol association – This refers to the connecting of phonemes to graphemes known as phoneme-grapheme correspondence, or phonics. This is the ability to map the sounds that are heard in words into their printed form. This is also referred to as the alphabetic principle. Sound-symbol associations must be taught and mastered in two directions: visual to auditory (reading or decoding) and auditory to visual (spelling or encoding).

Syllable instruction – This goes beyond identifying, orally, the syllables in a spoken word. Syllable instruction includes knowledge of the six syllable types and division rules. This is to support readers in determining the sound of the vowels in a multi-syllable words.

Morphology – Morphology includes the study of base words, roots, and affixes (prefixes and suffixes). this will obviously be more relevant in the upper grades, but even kindergarten and first graders can learn some of the most basic prefixes and suffixes (such as plural “s”, and “ed”)

Syntax – Syntax encompasses the rules that tell us the sequence and function of words in a sentence in order to convey meaning. This includes grammar and sentence structure as well as the mechanics of language.

Semantics – Semantics is the aspect of language concerned with meaning. This is the component that includes reading comprehension instruction.

You may notice that 4 of these areas have a focus on word recognition. Structured literacy, while absolutely includes language comprehension, has a foundational focus on accurate word recognition skills. That is not to say that it’s lacking in language comprehension; but this is why so many people think structured literacy, and SOR in general, is “just phonics”.

A note on syllable instruction

I have heard a lot of mixed thinking on syllable instruction. The research isn’t clear on instruction on syllable types. However, many programs, especially those based on the Orton-Gillingham method, do teach them. Many people have stated that by teaching the syllable types, it’s just more rules for students’ to learn. And those students often struggling with reading, also have struggles with various executive function skills that makes remembering, retrieving, and applying those rules more difficult. These are very valid points. I’ve also heard the point that we didn’t learn those rules as part of our instruction, therefore it’s not needed.

With that said, I have seen strong benefits for my weakest readers from some basic syllable division work. Through practice, students have begun able to independently apply that work into reading multi-syllable words without first dividing them. I don’t expect my students to be able to identify each syllable type, and we don’t focus on labeling each of the syllable types, because I’m not yet sold on that need. However, I have found value in teaching some flexible syllable division strategies alongside vowel flexibility and set for variability.

Key Principles of Structured Literacy

In addition to the components of a structured literacy program, there are some critical principles of structured literacy that address methods of instruction. These principals drive the “how” of literacy instruction.

Explicit instruction: Teachers are intentional, clear and direct in what is said. Models have strong examples, and there are opportunities for supported, guided practice after explicit instruction. Students have many response opportunities with clear, corrective feedback on errors.

Systematic, sequential, and cumulative: Instruction has predictable routines and a clear scope & sequence building from easier to more complex sills. Concepts are reinforced and practiced over time. There is a lot of built in, intentional review.

Diagnostic: Progress is consistently monitored and instruction is adjusted based on student needs. This data comes from both formal assessments and informal observations.

Teaching is an art. While it’s incredibly important that teachers know best practices and keep up to date with scientific research on evidence-based practices, they have to craft that knowledge into the most effective instruction for specific scenarios. Some students need additional time with phonemic awareness. Others need additional fluency practice. These kinds of judgments will differ between students, and even with the same student over time as needs shift.

Multisensory learning: While not an official component of structured literacy due to the lack of extensive research and evidence, the IDA does promote a multi-sensory approach to instruction.

A personal note on Structured Literacy

For many years, I was navigating my way with balanced literacy, as that was how I had been taught, while also still supplementing with things I knew my kids needed. I kept asking my district for a strong phonics curriculum because I could see that what I was doing wasn’t working for many of my kids. I knew I needed to target their needs, and I knew I needed to build their decoding skills. I gave phonics assessments and tracked my students’ progress. I supplemented my guided reading time, especially with my readers at a first grade level, with a lot of additional phonics and word work. But I wasn’t intentional enough, and I didn’t do enough instruction beyond one syllable words. Many of my students still learned to read. But, some of my students were behind their peers. Because I had the unique experience of a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade loop, I was the one responsible for all of the early foundational instruction for a large pocket of my students. Their lack of progress and their struggles were entirely the result of my lack of intentional instruction. I have seen, entirely, the need for explicit decoding instruction for many students.

Every school teaches beginning reading with phonics. Heck, just teaching letter sounds is phonics. But, many approaches and programs aren’t intentional enough for our neediest students. Those students need a phoneme-grapheme association approach that is explicit and responsive to their needs.

Structured literacy explicitly teaches systematic word-identification, or decoding, strategies. These strategies benefit most students. More importantly, they are vital for those with dyslexia. With that said, structured literacy isn’t only decoding and phonics.

Further Reading on Structured Literacy

Structured Literacy Instruction: The Basics by the International Dyslexia Association hosted on Reading Rockets

What is Structured Literacy? by the International Dyslexia Association

Structured Literacy Brief by the International Dyslexia Association

What Is Structured Literacy?

Further Information on the Science of Reading

I am sharing helpful information on the Science of Reading throughout this blog series. Each post has a different focus and includes links to relevant posts of my own, from time to time. The topics have been carefully chosen to include the background information needed to understand the science and help you learn more about some of the large, underlying research in the field. The first three up in the series include The National Reading Panel’s 5 Pillars of Reading, the Simple View of Reading, and Scarborough’s Rope.

Want to get each post in your email so you don’t miss it? Sign up below. I will email you the posts, beginning with the first ones in the series, and continuing with each post throughout.

The post What is Structured Literacy? Getting Started with SoR appeared first on Tales from Outside the Classroom.

The multisensory nature of spelling the words helps build the connections with phoneme-grapheme relationships. I find that changing the format of how we practice keeps students engaged in our work. Most of these encoding ideas or activities are done within our small group instruction where we focus on practicing our current phonics skills. With that said, these encoding ideas can also be done during our whole group teaching – it takes more time to get materials ready so I keep our whole group instruction to minimal items needed.

Lined Paper

I like to use old school grade level lined paper to practice our phonics skills. We fold the paper into 4 columns and focus on handwriting and letter formation as we write. You’d be surprised by how much even older students, like my 3rd graders, benefit from having the defined letter formation lines. The focus is on the phonics skills we are practicing and spelling the words correctly. However, I also focus on proper letter formation. I find that the more we practice writing letters, the easier it is for students, especially struggling students, to build their muscle memory with each letter.

Desks or Tables

One of the most exciting ways to practice writing ANYTHING at all is being able to write on student desks or classroom tables. My small group table takes a dry erase marker well, erasing with a small residue that comes up with any spray or wipe. I love to use the tables for writing word chains so students can make a long list of words – almost like making a word ladder. Like some of the other encoding ideas I’ve shared here, this is not anything new or groundbreaking. But, there’s a certain novelty to getting to do something that feels forbidden that makes this extra exciting for students. Students being engaged in our work helps them build much needed connections much more quickly compared to disinterested practice.

I will add a small disclaimer – I once wrote on student desks with a dry erase marker, but the desks were old, and it definitely remained on the surface forever. So, be sure to test the surface in a small spot first. If you have any tips for removing the old marker, let me know in the comments as everything I’ve tried so far hasn’t worked.

Letter Tiles and Magnetic Letters

Letter tiles are a great way to change up your encoding practice by having students build words rather than writing them. I love to use tiles when I’m doing word chaining activities. I find the tiles, or magnetic letters, being swapped out for the new letter, really helps connect the phoneme manipulation for students. They can visually see the change from one word to the next while they are hearing that change. With that said, I find it super meaningful for students to connect sound-to-symbol relationships through writing the letters themselves. For that reason, I don’t use letter tiles frequently for my practice. Rather, they are a great way to change up the routine.

Pop Socket Dry Erase Boards

This idea is not my own; I saw it come across a social media feed quite a few years ago. Because I didn’t save it at the time, I’m not sure who to credit it with. But, I thought it was genius and last year I took the time to make them. I bought both these dry erase boards and the generic pops from Dollar Tree. I put 6 pops per board as I wanted to ensure I could use these boards with any single syllable words I wanted to practice. These Pop Socket Dry Erase Boards are perfect for building phoneme-grapheme correspondences as students map the phonemes and graphemes. Students tap out each sound in the word using the popper, then they spell the word putting the corresponding letter(s) into each box.

Dry Erase Index Cards

These dry erase index cards are perfect for writing multi-syllable words: each card represents each syllable. For students needing additional support, I like to have them draw lines representing each sound in the syllable before they begin writing the words. Visually seeing the different cards for each syllable gives students a scaffold as they learn to work with spelling multi-syllable words.

I’ve been very impressed with the quality of these dry erase index cards {Amazon affiliate link}. They erase pretty cleanly with just a quick wipe. I reuse the same handful of cards within my groups, only needing to change them out after quite a few uses. They do come in a variety of sizes so you do not have to get traditional index card size, though that is what I use. They have slightly smaller cards which would also work well. Or, you could get the larger cards, such as 8″ x 10″, and use them for displaying at the front of the class.

Most of these encoding ideas are pretty simple and straightforward, but, I can get stuck in a rut and love seeing ways others practice. I hope this gave you a couple ideas for things you can try out! In addition to these tools for encoding, I also embed a lot of word chains and word ladders into our lessons. If you aren’t familiar with those word building activities, you can read more, or watch their accompanying videos, in those posts. You might also be interested in reading my post on 5 Decoding Activities for practicing phonics as a partner with these encoding ideas.

The post 5 Encoding Ideas to Practice Phonics and Build Spelling Skills appeared first on Tales from Outside the Classroom.

Why track student data in Google Sheets?

Tracking student data in Google Sheets has many practical benefits!

1. 1. Accessibility- Since it’s cloud based, you can access it anywhere! I hate lugging my school computer home, so I rarely do. But, if I’m grading at home, I can still access my student data spreadsheets from home!
   2. Collaboration- Since more than one person can access Google Sheets at once, it’s the perfect program for managing student data for more than one classroom. Tracking RtI or intervention data or grade level performance on a school or district assessment are both done easily within Google Sheets. Or, it just makes it possible for you to share your data with your administration team, principal, or instructional coach.
   3. Autocalculations- My favorite reason for using Google Sheets or Excel for my data is the built in formulas! I use it to figure out student percentages from raw scores, I use it to generate a list of students based on proficiency, and I use it to color code based on student proficiency. I always build in averages into the spreadsheet so that I can monitor my overall student performance.
   4. Visualization- If you are a visual learner, it’s super fast and quick to add graphs and charts to reflect your data. While that’s not frequently how I like to view it, it’s super simple to add in.
   5. Versatile- From just checklists for attendance, weekly assessments, formative assessments, and more, you can use Google Sheets (or Excel!) to manage virtually anything you want to track in the classroom!

I used to use Excel to track my data, back in the olden days. Over the years, I’ve shifted to Sheets. I don’t think there’s a single feature I miss in my switch, especially since I don’t utilize the full functions of Sheets or spreadsheets in general.

How do I create student data trackers in Google Sheets?

The first iterations of my data tracking were literally just places to store scores. Over the years, as I’ve learned more about options available in Excel and now Google Sheets, I’ve been better able to customize them to meet my needs. Whether you’re looking to create one spreadsheet you can use to track data in a subject area, or a powerhouse of sheets to hold everything you need, you can build the spreadsheet that meets your needs.

I could list a series of steps to follow to build your student data tracker. But, chances are, if seeing the steps was enough for you, you would have already made your own! So, I think videos are the most helpful. Many people have anxiety around spreadsheet software but I love using them! I’ve spent significant amounts of time learning new things when I want the spreadsheet to do something I don’t yet know how to do! I’m not a pro by any means but I’ve learned a few tricks or two along the years.

This video walks through setting up a pretty basic, academic, standards-based student data tracker. I teach you how to build in formulas to copy information from other cells (so you don’t need to duplicate names), auto-calculating percentages, how to set up conditional formatting to color code based on student mastery, identifying the number of proficient students, and how to build in averages.

Free Student Data Tracker Template

In the video above I walk through how to set up this student data tracker and give suggestions for ways you can modify it to better meet your needs. If you’d rather not build it from scratch, I have a free standards tracking spreadsheet template you can download. The template is exactly what’s shown in the video, and it’s ready for you to continue to customize to meet your needs!

More In-Depth Student Data Tracking

In this Part 2 video, I take that same student data tracker and build individual student reporting pages. These allow you to see how each individual student is performing, standard-by-standard or skill by skill. It’s all set up with formulas so once it’s set up for one student, it’s pretty quick and simple to create it for the rest of the students in your class!  In this video, I talk through formulas for copying cells over to be displayed, adding graps, and conditional formatting.

Student Math Data Tracking Sheets

I think it’s very important to track student data standard by standard in math. It allows you to see who is in need of reteaching or extra support. So many skills build off of a previously learned skill in math. It makes it easy to spiral standards, but also means it’s critical students master them so they’re ready for the next layer. I have standards based math data tracking sheets prepped and ready for you. They’re currently available for grades 1-4. They are prebuilt with the Common Core Math Standards, but are editable so you can change them to match the standards for your state. Or, add in additional skills you’d like to track.

My favorite part of these math data trackers are the student information sheets. These student data pages are auto-generated! They’re literally no extra work for you! They prepopulate based on the assessment scores you enter into the data spreadsheet. They display the student scores by standard, organized by domain. This makes them perfect reporting pages for parents, or to take with you to a data meeting like RtI, MTSS, or IEP case conferences.

I have math data trackers available for 1st grade, 2nd grade, 3rd grade, 4th grade, and now 5th grades. They are ready to be used, and are customizable to match your state standards, or district’s assessments. Each is tailored to your specific grade level and includes a video tutorial that walks you through how to use them. You can get yours sent to your inbox (for free) at Math Data Tracking Spreadsheets.

Phonics Tracking Sheets

Another pre-made student data tracker template I have available is my phonics tracking spreadsheets. This spreadsheet is built using the Quick Phonics Screener but is entirely editable to match whatever assessment you use. Tracking phonics data skill by skill is a great way to ensure students are making progress with their foundational reading skills. I’ve included the video tutorial below, but head to my Free Phonics Data Tracker Spreadsheet page to grab the tracker and read more about it.

Looking for a phonics assessment to use alongside one of my trackers? My Diagnostic Phonics Assessment & Custom Data Tracker allows you to assess students’ phonics skills in order to target your systematic and explicit instruction. The custom data tracker is built to match the assessment and includes both a phonics only and a phonics and fluency option.

Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Assessments Data Tracking

Do you give the Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Assessments? If so, this data tracker is for you! Designed for the Kindergarten and Primary Phonemic Awareness Assessments, this data tracker also creates individual student reporting pages. Designed similar to my Phonics Data Tracker, just enter in names and scores and the individual pages are created for you! Just head to my Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Assessments page to grab it for yourself!

You can use Google Sheets to create even more in-depth student data trackers! Do you use Google Sheets in other ways? I’d love to hear it in the comments below.

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Assessing Students for Phonics Deficiencies

Begin with a Reading Screener

In many places, a screener is in place to determine students in need of further diagnostics. It identifies students working below grade level or those with holes that make them at risk for not progressing as expected. In many places, that screener is computerized. It makes sense- let’s start with something easy to administer to all students, and then spend our efforts drilling down to those students that need it. NWEA and iReady both are computerized screeners that are used widely. With that said, I think one should err on the side of caution with these. One assessment a former district of mine used did not assess phonics and phonemic awareness for third grade and above, and didn’t do phonological awareness above 2nd grade. If your district uses an electronic one, I would recommend assessing phonics needs for all students just at or below grade level, or having a second data source to help determine which students are in need of targeted phonics assessments.

The first, and probably most well-known screener, is DIBELS. It’s evolved over the years with further depths of assessments included. Companies have worked with the University of Oregon to make the materials and data more teacher-friendly and technologically accessible, though the original version was paper-pencil. DIBELS 8 printable materials can be downloaded for free from the University of Oregon website. Newer versions of the DIBELS assessment are part of Acadience Reading. As DIBELS has evolved over the years, it’s deepened and become more targeted. However, it remains a high-quality, data backed screener.

After the screener comes diagnostic assessments. Think of the meaning of the word diagnostics- things that diagnose. A diagnostic assessments’ aim is to identify what areas a student a student struggles with. With reading, 80% of below level readers have a decoding issue. A diagnostic phonics assessment will help you know where exactly a student’s weaknesses are and where to target your instruction.

As the “Science of Reading” has increased the need for systematic and sequential phonics, more and more states are passing laws requiring frequent and early diagnostics of foundational, phonetic skills. Therefore, your school or district may already have these things in place, or your state may already have guidance. But, in my experience, there are a lot of schools that aren’t yet systematic in their diagnostic assessments. These resources I’ve included here are high quality, free, or reasonably purchased by a teacher or school looking to drill down with their phonics assessments.

Move to Diagnostic Assessments

Once you have identified which students are in need of further tests to determine proficiencies, you are ready to start giving diagnostic assessments. For early readers, most diagnostic assessments focus on phonics and phonemic awareness. As students progress through the years and early skills can be eliminated as being the crux of reading difficulties, other diagnostic assessments can be given to help determine students’ weaknesses.

If you are looking for one resource you can use to identify and diagnose students’ reading deficiencies beyond just phonics, I would recommend CORE’s Assessing Reading: Multiple Measures book. It’s comprehensive, easy to administer, and includes interpretation and scoring guidance. It includes tests for phonological awareness, phonics or decoding, spelling, high-frequency words, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. It’s a great one stop shop to have in your back pocket when you want to dive deeper into a students’ needs. Because the assessments are individually administered, however, it’s best to use for students that you truly need a deeper dive with. Or, use the individual assessments to fit the hole’s in your existing assessment program. It’s relatively affordable for one individual teacher to purchase, though it’s on the more expensive end of the resources I’m sharing here. Certainly, it’s super affordable for an individual building to purchase, though.

Diagnostic Phonics Assessments

In my opinion, every K-3 student should receive a diagnostic phonics assessment at least twice a year- at the beginning and middle of the year in order to determine differentiated small groups. Beyond third grade, I think it’s worthwhile to give individual phonics tests AT LEAST to students not performing at grade level in reading using universal screening data. There are too many students that learn words through memorization, but struggle with phonetic skills, that start to struggle once texts get harder in 3rd and 4th grades. Because of that, I believe in giving those twice yearly assessments to all or nearly all students. By assessing everyone, we’re not bypassing those on-level readers that truly do have deficiencies.

My favorite diagnostic phonics assessments include two key components: They are broken down by phonics skills and include nonsense words.

Some phonics tests I’ve seen out there aren’t broken down to the level that correlates well with phonics skill instruction. If we want to use the data from the assessment to identify where to start our phonics instruction or intervention, and we should since that’s the point, we need the assessment to be as equally as targeted as our scope and sequence of instruction. Mixing all vowel pairings together, for example, combines both diphthongs and vowel digraphs, making it difficult to identify exactly where students need instruction. Often, our instructional scope and sequence separates long vowel vowel teams from other vowel combinations. I’ve even seen some separate predictable vowels (ai and ay, for example that always make the long a sound) from unpredictable vowels (ea, for example, which is sometimes a long e sound but other times is a short e sound).

Some phonics programs include assessments with them to determine where to start instruction. If yours doesn’t, however, or you are looking for one for other reasons, the best one for you will align well with your current phonics scope & sequence. I suggest choosing an assessment that is broken down well. You can always look at the data in a more focused way and combine the information. It’s much harder to take a broad view and know how to best target your instruction.

I also prefer diagnostic phonics tests that include nonsense words. This ensures we aren’t misidentifying students in need of phonics practice that are great word recallers. It’s surprising, sometimes, when students that seem to be strong readers stumble through the nonsense words test. There are some differing opinions on using them with readers. In my opinion, as long as we are explicit with students that they are nonsense words, then they’re a great tool for measuring phonics (as well as practicing it). This ensures they’re not trying to identify it as a real word. I’ve seen too many students reach my 3rd grade classroom that have decent oral reading abilities, but start to fall apart and just guess when they’re presented with more complex texts with words they don’t already know. It’s important that we identify those students to give them the phonics instruction they need.

Here are my favorite affordable or free diagnostic phonics assessments and why they made the list.

My Top Choices for Phonics Tests

• My own Diagnostic Phonics Assessment and Data Tracker: While obviously I would trust and believe in something I have created, I also recommend it due to the intentionality. With 17 subskills assessed, it’s thorough and specific. Most skills are assessed in both nonsense words and in sentence contexts. The sequence is built so the assessment should be similar to most systematic phonics instruction programs including UFLI. In addition to the assessments, it also includes a custom data tracker for easy management of student data. The tracker allows you to easily make groups based on instructional needs and includes auto-created individual student reporting pages.

• The Quick Phonics Screener by Dr. Jan Hasbrouck includes not only a phonics screener for decoding, but also a new Quick Spelling Survey which can be used to screen for phonics needs based on encoding. For many students, their spelling is not at the level of their reading, so using the QSS to screen students for further needs, is a great baseline. You can find older editions of the QPS in Google searches for free. I really like that this tool moves from letter names and sounds all the way to multi-syllable words and words with prefixes and suffixes. If there’s one tool that could be used in elementary buildings, this is my top choice.

• The CORE Phonics Survey: This one is not my favorite due to the CVCe words being mixed with other long vowel spellings. While some programs do teach all of the long vowel spellings at the same time, I prefer assessments that separate these skills. They also include the word “dodge” in the short vowels and digraphs section and I feel it’s out of place there and better served within a later section. With that said, I’m aware of these “issues” with the assessment and it is still quite useful.

• Really Great Reading’s Decoding Surveys:  They offer a suite of decoding surveys for various grade levels and even include a free web-based Grouping Matrix. The beginning and advanced decoding surveys include high frequency words (they call them sight words), words in context, and a separation between real and nonsense words. Their error analysis pages are also super helpful to help identify skills students need. The 1st grade foundational skills survey, which includes some work with multi-syllable words, could replace the beginning decoding survey, in my opinion.

Looking to Track Your Phonics Data?

Once you have given your diagnostic phonics assessments, you need to look at the data and use it to drive your instruction. My data serves two purposes: to look at my class as a whole and determine instructional needs for all and within my small groups; and to set individual student goals. Over the last several years, the building I’ve worked in hasn’t had a set way of tracking the data across the year. I’ve created this phonics data tracker to help me keep track of my students’ individual performance, and to help me look at their phonics subskills to create my small groups.

One thing I love about this tracker is that the student data pages auto-populate without any extra work! This makes it so easy to look at individual student performance to set goals for RtI, MTSS, and IEP meetings. It also helps me have data conversations with individual students. It is preset with the Quick Phonics Screener skills and scoring, but it is editable so you can use it with any phonics assessments you’re using.

I created a video tutorial to walk you through how to use this phonics data spreadsheet. You can watch it above but I’ve also included it within the file for easy access. To get your free diagnostic phonics assessment data tracker, fill out the form below. It’ll be sent to you immediately after you confirm your email.

Phonological Awareness Assessments

For many students, the root of their decoding troubles is phonological. For students with reading disabilities, it’s frequently a phonological processing deficit that makes learning to read a challenge. I use the information I get from my phonics assessments to determine which students are in need of a phonological awareness assessment. It’s the students that correctly say the sounds in the word but blend it into a different word. Or, students that struggle to move past the blends level. Students may be struggling with other areas of phonological awareness, but blending and working with words with 4+ sounds is usually the big indicator for me that we need to further assess phonemic awareness to find skills to target. With that said, that’s my thinking with older students- those that should already be proficient with phonemic awareness. For younger students, in kindergarten and first grade, I believe a phonemic awareness or phonological awareness assessment should be given to every student and tracked throughout the year.

• Heggerty offers screener assessments for 2nd grade and above on their website. There are also additional strand assessments they help identify where in the Heggerty program to begin instruction with students in need of intervention. There are also assessments for kindergarten and first grade focused on expected skills at those grade levels. You can access the screener, and their additional assessments, for free on the Downloads section of the Heggerty website.

• The PAST test (Phonological Awareness Screening Test) by David Kilpatrick is quite common. Equipped for Reading Success is a tremendous book by Dr. David Kilpatrick that walks teachers through explicit practices to improve a students’ phonological awareness. It includes the PAST assessment along with resources to target instruction after determining student need.

• Really Great Reading’s Phonological/Phonemic Awareness Survey  might be my favorite phonemic awareness assessment that I can use to drive instruction. It begins with phonological awareness tasks such as combining compound words, two-syllable words, and onset-rimes. Then it moves into phonemic level work including matching, identifying, blending, segmenting, and manipulation. Rhyming is not included, which you may miss, but rhyming isn’t as important of a skill as phonemic level skills. I tend to think of it as a byproduct, rather than a skill that must be practiced on its own.

• EL Education’s Phonological Awareness assessment is focused on the phoneme level with the exception of rhyming. While it leaves out other phonological awareness tasks, it’s a great option for determining a students’ phonemic awareness deficiencies in order to target instruction.

For more information on phonological and phonemic awareness check out

What is Phonological Awareness?

What is Phonemic Awareness?

Building Phonemic Awareness through Phonics

Or, if you’re looking for phonics resources, take I list my favorites here: 6 Top Sites for Phonics Resources to Enhance your Instruction

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