Transcript

When beginning instruction with struggling readers, a good place to start is always with assessment. This assessment doesn't need to be standard formalized testing. This is the kind of dynamic assessment that will better inform our teaching so we can tell an awful lot about a child's reading and writing abilities through a number of fun activities. The types of activities you could use for informal assessment would include looking at the child's letter sound knowledge. So can they say the names of the letters when the letters are shown to them on cards? So you could show them the symbol "M" and can they tell you the "M" makes the sound /m/?  You would also want to look at the child's ability to read or decode short words. These can be real words from high frequency word lists; they can also be nonsense words. You would also want to look at the types of texts that the child is able to read and look at their reading fluency. What do they do when they come to a word that they struggle with? Do they skip it? Do they sound it out? What kinds of strategies are they using, or not using? A part of a good assessment would also look at writing. So both spelling words, perhaps dictated words. When doing assessment for the purpose of instruction, you just want to do the amount that you need in order to cater your programming to the student. So, if you've asked them to write the alphabet, and they've had difficulty writing an "A" and a "B", it's not necessary to make the child write the alphabet all the way to the letter "Z". Assessment can be fun. You can do it through games, in short activities. The purpose is really not to diagnose a child, but to best cater a program to their strengths and needs and interests.