Letter and Sound Assessment

I like to take an inventory of the letters and sounds my students know at the beginning of the school year.  To do this, I use my Letter and Sound Assessment!  
I use this as a means to assess and then monitor the progress throughout the year. 

I begin by showing the students the upper case letters.  I ask them to tell me the name of each letter and what sound it makes.  I then move on to the lower case letters.  Although this isn't a "timed" test, I only give the child credit if they are able to name the letter or sound automatically (within 3 seconds).  They do not get credit if they need to employ some type of strategy in order to recall the letter name or sound (i.e., they have to recite the alphabet, spell their name, etc...).

Because I use this informal assessment multiple times throughout the school year, I make sure to mark the letters and sounds in a different way and with a different color each time I assess.  There is a space to assess the child three times on one form (6 times total if you print front-to-back).

There is also a box to write notes each time the child is assessed.  (I tend to take a lot of notes on my students, do you?)  I like to keep track of what letters/sounds they did not know, especially if they demonstrate inconsistencies between assessment periods.  Another thing I like to note is if the letter or sound seems to be emerging and I note the strategy the student is using to identify it (i.e., they had to spell their name, recite the alphabet, state the letter-keyword-sound in order to produce the sound).  Here is a picture of the assessment with one of my students for some of the year:

I do suggest that you print pages 2-3 front-to-back.  Then you are able to see the child's growth and have the data for six different assessment periods on one sheet of paper!

Thanks for stopping by!!

Snowman Letters and Sounds

At school, we just completed our AIMSweb Benchmarking.  
Most of the kiddos had a great deal of difficulty with Letter Sound Fluency (LSF).  If you are unfamiliar with AIMSweb, this is where the student is presented with a random series of upper and lower case letters and they need to produce as many sounds as they can in 1 minute.  

When I assessed them with my Letter-Sound Assessment to see exactly what letters and sounds they knew, I found that many of them simply didn't know many letter-sound correspondences.  So they really need a boost in this area.

One game that I like to play with my kiddos is the, 
"Hide/Find the ____" game.  
This game has been around for years and years, but I just love how you can make simple changes and the kids continue to love it each and every time they play it.

I didn't have any fun alphabet cards to use for the winter season (well, none that wasn't currently part of an activity I would be using), so I made these Snowman Alphabet cards to place into a pocket chart and play, "Hide the Penguin" to reinforce letters and sounds.

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How do I play, Hide the Penguin?

Well, do you see that little penguin above?

He is the little guy who I hide behind the cards.

I simply place the letters I want to reinforce  into my pocket chart, as seen below (I play this game with sight words too).

  I then hide the little penguin behind one of the cards.

The kiddos take turns naming a letter and/or producing a sound trying to find the penguin!

Have you played this game before?  Do your kids like it as much as mine?

If you are interested in my Letter-Sound Assessment, you can find it in both of my shops!

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Making AIMSweb Cute FREEBIE

How many of you are administering AIMSweb?

This is the first year we will be doing it, and since Thursday was the first day of school for our kiddos, we still have yet to start!

But, I really dislike the ugly, boring training binder that our district gave us.  It just isn't the least bit cute, so of course I wanted to make it look a little more appealing! 
So I went ahead and made some binder covers for myself, my colleagues, and am sharing them with you too!

AIMSweb has a wonderful matrix showing their recommendations by each grade level that you can find here.  But because I am a reading teacher, I am only interested in the reading portion of AIMSweb.  So I pulled out all of the math components and created an AIMSweb Reading Benchmark Grid.  Now I can easily see what is needed for each grade level during the benchmarking periods.

I am using the type of binder with the clear sleeves on the outside.  So I am simply sliding the cover into the front and the Reading Benchmark Grid into the back!

Here is my binder!  It just happens to match my bag!  LOL!
  (I have a slight addiction to Chevron right now, can you tell?)
And since so many of you are wondering about my bag, let me add the info for you!  It is a handmade XL Hobo bag from a shop called JanetElizabethLLC, listed on Etsy.  She is so wonderful to work with!  Right now she is catching up on completing some current orders for her Hobo bags, so the links to the hobo bags are not active.  But she thinks she will be all set by the end of this week!  Check her out!

How does your school administer AIMSweb?  Who administers the benchmark assessments?  Do your classroom teachers, reading teachers, or a combination of both?

Buzzing Through Letters and Sounds

My students have been working hard this year building their letter and sound knowledge through different games and activities.  I monitor their progress as I show each child a letter chart and they name each upper case letter, lower case letter, and the produce the sounds for each with the following tool:

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But we know that it is not enough to just to be able to accurately name the letters and sounds.  Children must also be able to accurately name the letters and sounds automatically.  This fluency with letters and sounds becomes very important as they decode words when reading connected text.

To help monitor their progress and practice these skills both at school with me and at home, I wanted to create something that would look and sound fun to the little ones. (And of course I am a sucker for cute clip art so I wanted something that looked cute!)  I created 

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This activity addresses the following Common Core Learning Standards:
K.RF.1.d-Recognize and name all upper- and lowercase letters of the alphabet.
K.RF.3.a-Demonstrate basic knowledge of letter-sound correspondences by producing the primary or most frequent sound for each consonant.

It includes two forms for upper case letters and then two forms for lower case letters.  The forms can be used to monitor letter identification or sound production.

It is pretty simple to use and is similar to other probes out there for the same skills where you simply set the timer for one minute and have the child name as many letters (or sounds) as they can until the timer goes off.  BUT, to make it sound fun to the children, I ask them to BUZZ through their letters (or sounds).  As they BUZZ along, I write a slash through or circle the incorrect responses.  I then record the number of letters (or sounds) named on the bottom of the form and circle letters or sounds.

What fun and engaging activities do you do with your students to incorporate fluency into your instruction with letter identification and sound production?

Color a Lucky Clover FREEBIE

Top Of the Morning to You!Are you wearing green today?  

I am happy that I remembered!!  

(Usually I don't remember until I leave the house!  LOL!)

Just wanted to quickly share something simple that I whipped up to use with my little ones today.  I have used this type of activity for a way to review and as a means to informally assess. 

Here is how I will be using it:

~  I will be printing out the document and cutting it into four strips.  

~  Each student will get their own strip.  

~  As I review various phonological skills with each student, they will color in a Lucky Clover for each correct response.  

It is a fun way for me to informally assess where they are with the skill they are working to strengthen.  You could use this in so many ways, with any type of skill!  It could be used for literacy skills or even mathematics skills!

Also, don't forget about my St. Patty's Day Phoneme Segmentation Activity!

Enjoy your day!!

Now how many of you will be cooking corned beef and cabbage?  Will you do it in the crock pot???

Upper Case Sound Identification Progress Monitoring

I was recently assigned to provide a Tier III intervention and needed something to track the letter sound identification of the student, so I created this little, easy to use tool to monitor progress. 

It includes 2 data sheets for the teacher to mark and monitor progress, along with 12 stimulus sheets for the students to view.  Each stimulus sheet lists the 26 letters of the alphabet in a different, random order. As the student  goes through and produces the sounds, I will make a slash through incorrect responses on the Data Sheet.  (These include the most common consonant sounds and short vowel sounds)  When complete, I will total up the number of correct responses and then graph it right on the Data Sheet. 


The data sheet allows you to have all of your data from 12 different assessment periods on one sheet (when printed front-to-back)!

Click on a picture for the shop of your choice!

What are some ways you monitor progress for either Tier II or Tier III interventions?

Reading and Writing Sight Words

End of the year assessment time is upon us.  So while I complete my assessments with one student from the small groups of kindergarten students I pull, the other students will be practicing the 50 sight words they need to know by the end of the year,. 

I fell in love with the "Popcorn Word Hunt" I saw a couple months ago on Mrs. Morrow's Kindergarten blog.  So just as she did, I filled a little bottle with popcorn kernels and filled them with the sight words printed on the little pieces of popcorn. 

If you click on the picture to the left, you can access the little pieces of popcorn for the bottle and the pages the students will write on. I will print the first two pages front-to-back.  The students will write the first 12 words they see and then read the words to a friend.  (Each piece of popcorn has two lines because my district uses Handwriting Without Tears.) 

Another activity the students will do is very similar, (but not quite as cute).  I created sight word cards with the HWT lines on each word.  I then printed and laminated them and will have the students select six cards.  They will practice writing each word three times and then choose one word to include in a sentence with an illustration.
You can click on the links below for the files:
Sight Word Cards with HWT Lines
Sight Word Writing

Thanks!

Testing Encouragement-Lucky Pencils

So what do you get when you mix peppermint Mentos, a Hershey Kiss, aluminum foil, a black Sharpie, ribbon, and some paper?  A LUCKY PENCIL of course! 

My 3rd and 4th graders will be taking their NYS ELA assessments for three days beginning on Tuesday.  I wanted to do something fun to show them how much I believe in them.  I attached a star with a little encouraging poem I wrote saying,

"You are ready, feel strong! 
Work carefully & you won't go wrong! 
Use your noggin, do not stress! 
Just do your best on the test!"

I just happened to be going through some of the sites I have bookmarked as favorites here on my laptop yesterday and came across these Valentine Pencils.  I thought they were so cute when I saw them in February, but did not have time to do them as Valentines for my students, so I just bookmarked them until a later date...and I am so glad I found them yesterday! 

I followed her directions and wrote, "LUCKY" on the pencil and created the star tag.  On Monday, I plan on going through an interactive Powerpoint I made for them and giving them their "lucky" pencils!

Click below to download a copy of the star tag I created.

I would love to hear other fun ways you have provided encouragement to your students during stressful times?!

Letter Sound Assessment

Here is the form I use when assessing my students’ letter and sound knowledge. 

I just also added the four basic digraphs to the same form.  I start by having them go through and name the upper case letters and say each sound.  I then move on to the lower case letters.  I try to use a different color each time I assess.  This way I can use the same form and also see their progress over time.

Hope you find this useful!
~Mrs. Mc