With their schooling having been interrupted by Covid-19, it is more important than ever to find out which foundational skills students have learned and which skills need to be developed. There is a temptation to begin at the beginning and reteach skills. However, this wastes valuable time and will bore students who have mastered the skills.
As Fisher, Frey, and Hattie (2020) recommend in Distance Learning Playbook, use “methods for discovering what students already know in order to minimize wasted instructional time such that we can focus on needed learning experiences” (p. 3). To paraphrase a current TV ad, “Only teach them what they need.”
On my website buildingliteracy.org, I have listed a series of informal assessments ranging from letter knowledge and phonemic awareness to phonics and syllabic analysis that can be used to estimate starting points for instruction in the foundational skills.
For instance, the Phonics Inventory, which assesses single-syllable patterns, is geared to the scope and sequence of today’s major programs and can be used to estimate which basic phonics have been mastered and which need instruction. It indicates students’ proficiency in five areas: short-vowels, short vowels with blends, long vowels, r vowels, and other vowels (too, took, paw, cow, toy). The assessments are downloadable and free at https://buildingliteracy.org/assessing/.