Teachers love these FREE Diagnostic Literacy Assessments because, unlike random sample screeners or inventories, these tests are comprehensive and teachable. For example, what good is a 20-word spelling inventory that indicates a developmental spelling stage? Or a phonics screener that indicates vowel digraph strengths, but diphthong deficits? Or a mechanics assessment that indicates mastery of commas, but not capitalization?
Most teachers I know much prefer diagnostics that pinpoint specific literacy deficits. Wouldn’t you rather administer a 102-word spelling diagnostic that tells you which students have and have not yet mastered the ending stable syllables: sion, tion, and cian? Wouldn’t you prefer data on each of the six common long /e/ sound-spellings? Wouldn’t it be helpful to know specifically which comma rules do and don’t need to be taught/reviewed? We need these kinds of data to inform instruction. Tier 1 instruction should be robust and rigorous, but we can’t gloss over the fact that many of our students need efficient Tier 2 remediation.
A 2018 meta-analysis by Mathew Hall and Mathew Burns, of 26 experimental or quasi-experimental studies on reading interventions found: “Interventions were more effective if they were targeted to a specific skill (g = 0.65), than as part of a comprehensive intervention program that addressed multiple skills (g = 0.35).” In other words, interventions that targeted student deficits were approximately twice as effective!
Nate Joseph, 2024
Let’s target those specific skills! These FREE assessments are teacher-friendly with audio files, self-correcting Google forms and sheets (or print versions). They include corresponding recording/progress-monitoring matrices to provide the data teachers need to target instruction for grades/levels 3–adult.
Following are the FREE Diagnostic Literacy Assessments I would like to send to your inbox: 5 Phonemic Awareness, Alphabetic Awareness, Vowel Sound Phonics, Consonant Sound Phonics, Spelling (American or Canadian English), Grammar and Usage, Mechanics, 5 Academic Language, Fluency, Heart Words
What’s the catch? I’m a teacher-publisher (Pennington Publisher) and my programs target each and every diagnostically-determined literacy deficit with quality instruction, activities, and/or worksheets. Each of the FREE Diagnostic Literacy Assessment downloadable PDFs include corresponding program links. Plus, I’ll send out more periodic free resources via the Pennington Publishing newsletter.
Get the Diagnostic Literacy Assessments FREE Resource:
With these FREE transition worksheets, students will learn to identify these syntactic tools in challenging reading text and join ideas, establish relationships, create logical connections between clauses, sentences, and paragraphs in their writing. The reading-grammar-writing connection is well-established in the research:
Syntax study can improve reading comprehension at the sentence level. (Scott & Balthazar 2003)
William Van Cleave’s Syntax Matters, 2017
Inadequate ability to process the syntax of language results in the inability to understand what is heard, as well as what is read. Beyond word knowledge, it is the single most powerful deterrent to listening and reading comprehension.
J.F. Greene, 2011
Fostering young writers’ awareness of the linguistic choices available to them in writing and how those choices differently shape meaning is developing their metalinguistic knowledge of writing.
Myhill, Jones, Lines, Watson, 2013
Language comprehension is one of the most automatic tasks that humans perform. Yet it is also one of the most complex, requiring the simultaneous integration of many different types of information, such as knowledge about letters and their sounds, spelling, grammar, word meanings, and general world knowledge. In addition, general cognitive abilities such as attention monitoring, inferencing, and memory retrieval organize this information into a single meaningful representation.
Van Dyke, 2016
These 11 transition worksheets are organized by purpose: Definition, Example, Explanation or Emphasis, Analysis, Comparison, Contrast, Cause-Effect, Conclusion, Addition, Number or Sequence. Each worksheet includes identification within text (reading comprehension), fill-the-blank syntax practice (grammar), and application (writing). Answers provided.
To improve reading comprehension and writing sophistication, check out the reading, grammar, and writing resources from Pennington Publishing. Each product description includes a complete preview of each program.
If you are adding more morphology to your reading and ELA lessons, you will love these FREE Interactive Morphology Walls. Developed as a drag and drop Google slides activity, students combine high frequency prefixes, bases, and suffixes to form big words. Share the slides with students or work off the display projector to discover and create academic language words with 54 high frequency prefixes, bases, and suffixes. The author, Mark Pennington, has selected these 54 morphemes to combine into 18 memorable anchor words in 18 separate Interactive Morphology Walls. For example: un-sub-scribe provides the first 3 morphemes and combines to form the first anchor word. The author’ Comprehensive Vocabulary Grades 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 programs feature anchor word pictures, definitions, and etymologies. Of course, your students can do the same with the Online Etymology Dictionary.
Now you and your creative students will be able to combine the 54 morphemes into many more words than my 18 anchor words. Think of how many academic language words use the first 3 morphemes (un-sub-scribe) of the 54 in this free resource. And, yes, the Interactive Morphology Walls are easily editable to add more morphemes.
Most of our academic language words have one or more Greek or Latin word parts, so it makes sense to study them. Here is the terminology used with the Interactive Morphology Walls. We classify meaning-based word parts in three ways:
The base provides the key meaning of the word. A free base can stand on its own as a word, such as form. A bound base can’t stand on its own as a word, such as vis, and it needs another word part before or after it to form a word.
The word part that comes before a free base or bound base is a prefix, such as uni. Prefixes can’t stand on their own; they need to connect to a free base or bound base to form a word, such as in uniform. When we refer to a prefixes, spell them; don’t say them, because frequently the same prefix is pronounced differently in different words. For example, in the words, complicated and communication, the com prefix is said quite differently, though the meaning and spelling remains consistent .
The word part that comes after a free base or bound base is a suffix, such as ible. Like prefixes, suffixes can’t stand on their own; they need to connect to a free base or bound base to form a word, such as visible. As with prefixes, spell suffixes; don’t say them, because although they are spelled the same, they are sometimes pronounced differently. Notice that the ible suffix has two vowel sounds and is classified as a stable syllable type.
Get the Greek and Latin Morphology Walls FREE Resource:
If middle school students are non-readers or struggle with simple text, should we teach middle school reading intervention like we teach beginning readers?
Can’t I just use a beginning reading program like UFLI and adapt it to my MS students? They need to learn the same foundational skills?
Such questions are posted in Facebook group posts every day. Almost universally, comments are the same:
I used UFLI last year with my sixth-graders and saw tremendous growth.
If a MS student needs basic skills, you need to teach those basic skills.
2 + 2 =4. If a teenager doesn’t know this, there really isn’t any other way to teach it than you would to a first-grader.
Two schoolgirls and schoolboy (6-12) singing in row, close-up
The last 20 years of my career I served as an MS reading specialist. I certainly agree that MS students need to learn the same “skills” that beginning readers require e.g., segmenting, spelling, blending /c//a//t/, and connecting the word to background (prior and extended) background knowledge. If MSers don’t know it, they need to learn it. BUT…
MSers who struggle with reading and spelling are different than, say, first graders. And this fact should impact both WHAT we teach, and HOW we teach.
Quick examples: MSers have much greater oral language lexicons than primary students, much more advanced knowledge of syntax, more life experience, and different interests. These facts should impact WHAT we teach. So, perhaps /k//ou//g//ar/ instead of /c//a//t/ with passive voice sentence examples, comparisons to panthers, catamounts, mountain lions (synonyms) and related species.e.g., cheetahs, lions, tigers. You get the idea. WHAT we teach should be qualitatively different for struggling MSers than for beginning readers.
In terms of the HOW, MSers should benefit from accelerated instruction. Generally speaking, a MS intervention class ain’t a MSer’s first rodeo. Student may not have mastered the /ou/ in cougar, but they probably have been taught it several times before. Thus, generally speaking, less practice is required than for a 1st grader. This is also true for ML and EL learners. With their language experience, hurried instruction is possible. If the instructional pace is too slow, MSers quickly use interest and attention.
Additionally, we can’t forget to account for the trauma that struggling MS readers face to varying degrees. That PTSD-like trauma should influence our choice of instructional reading resources, our motivational strategies, and our approach to behavior management.
Older Age Decodables
I’ll never forget the teenager at the rear of a reading intervention class, chanting under his breath, /c//a//t/, c-a-t, I am stu-pid. Or seventh graders looking through big-headed childish characters in decodables or practicing sound-spelling cards with cartoonist illustrations of “Tony the Tiger.”
So to end my preaching, before selecting an excellent K-2 word recognition program with hopes of adapting it to the WHAT and HOW needs of upper elementary, middle school, high school, or adult learners… consider another age-appropriate program. *****
Disclaimer: I’m the author/publisher of a reading intervention program for ages 8-adult. The following link will allow you to access the entire print portion of the program (not the corresponding Google slides): https://penningtonpublishing.com/collections/reading/products
The Science of Reading Intervention Program for Ages 8-Adults
Research consistently validates the systematic, explicit phonics instruction for older students featured in The Science of Reading Intervention Program. Of course, the trick is that in your reading intervention, ELL, ML, SPED, or adult literacy class, you (no doubt) have four types of struggling readers:
Some struggling readers have mastered some, but not all sound-spelling patterns.
Some struggling readers have a shaky mastery of phonics and need a thorough refresher to improve their decoding accuracy.
Some struggling readers have primary language influences other than English and need to apply these connections and adjust to their differences.
Somenon-readers need comprehensive, A to Z instruction in cracking the alphabetic code and may require some second-chance instruction and practice, as well. These may include SPED students or cognitively impaired students.
The rest of this article will briefly explain how The Science of Reading Intervention Program addresses the needs of these students, and the following 12-minute YouTube sample lesson will show you a complete lesson in real time… well your students, classroom interruptions, computer issues are always the time-variables 🙂
First, let’s examine my approach to phonics instruction for older students to see if you want to keep reading. I began using systematic, synthetic phonics instruction as a district reading specialist back in the 1990s with the Open Court program. Worked wonders! My students and teachers also experienced success with the related Breaking the Code program for reading intervention, ELL, and SPED students. However, it took two (or even three) years of two-hour literacy block instruction for older students to get close to reading at grade level. I began experimenting and researching a similar, but different, approach for older, struggling students.
Open Court and Breaking the Code (and the vast majority of Orton Gillingham-style) programs use the print to speech instructional method. Nothing wrong with this approach! However, I’ve found that a speech to print instructional method has more advantages for older, struggling readers.
It accelerates learning. The Science of Reading Intervention Program covers and helps students master the entire scope and sequence of the aforementioned programs in 18 weeks, 55 minutes per day.
The speech to print approach builds on older students oral language lexicons/language structures and those of non or limited English-speaking students.
It focuses more on problem-solving strategies than rules application. Now don’t get me wrong; I value reading, spelling, syllable, and syntax rules. (I am more aligned with print to speech colleagues in this respect.) However, too much focus on rules bogs down instruction. I want my students to progress as quickly as possible (and they do, too).
Dr. Louisa Moats neatly summarizes the instructional priorities I have incorporated in my program:
“One of the most important jobs for… the teacher of students with reading problems is to foster awareness of phonemes (speech sounds) in words and to help children acquire the ability to articulate, compare, segment, and blend those phonemes” (Moats 2004).
So, back to the four types of struggling readers… How does the speech to print approach in my program address each set of needs?
For 1. Some struggling readers have mastered some, but not all sound-spelling patterns.
Rather than beginning the year with a slew of diagnostic assessments and launching into small group differentiated phonics and spelling instruction, my program provides a phonics, spelling, and fluency screener for program placement, but utilizes whole-class, explicit instruction and guided practice for each of the 54 segmenting-spelling-blending Say it! Spell it! Read it! lessons. True that these types of students will be learning and practicing some of what they already know, but gap-filling the rest.
For 2. Some struggling readers have a shaky mastery of phonics and need a thorough refresher to improve their decoding accuracy.
Often, these students are forced to practice, practice, practice in depth that which really only requires a refresher in context. The accelerated pace of the instruction and practice meets the needs of these types of students.
For 3. Some struggling readers have primary language influences other than English and need to apply these connections and adjust to their differences.
So many variables here, but the program makes use of students’ phonics and spelling knowledge in their primary language to transition to English reading and writing. Plus, the sounds to print approach pinpoints the differences that students learning English need to know.
For 4. Somenon-readers need comprehensive, A to Z instruction in cracking the alphabetic code and may require some second-chance instruction and practice, as well. These may include SPED students or cognitively impaired students.
For these students, often the recursive nature of language acquisition means more practice. Yet, pinpoint, targeted practice. In my program, 13 assessments are administered at the mid-year point after all 54 phonics and spelling lessons have been completed. Corresponding activities and worksheets, designed for individual and/or small group work are assigned as needed.
Check out a sample phonemic awareness opener from my program for older students and see how easy it is to teach to all three types of your students!
Phonemic awareness openers are key instructional components for older students in The Science of Reading Intervention Program. Of course, the trick is that in your reading intervention, ELL, ML, SPED, or adult literacy class, you (no doubt) have three types of struggling readers:
Some struggling readers have already mastered phonemic awareness.
Some need minimal instruction and practice to solidify the sound-speech (phoneme) connection.
Some will need intensive work (perhaps connecting to the phonological stage) to achieve this reading requisite.
The rest of this article will briefly explain how The Science of Reading Intervention Program addresses the needs of these students. However, first we had better quickly dispel the myth that phonemic awareness is only for pre-K and kindergarten. Some older students, even adults, do need training.
“There is no age where a student is ‘too old’ for phonemic awareness training‒if the skills have not been mastered, the student should get training” (Kilpatrick, David A., 2016, Equipped for Reading Success).
Additionally, the latest research indicates that phonemic awareness is best taught and caught in the context of connections to letters (or sound-spelling graphemes to get technical) and not solely with auditory instruction. “They Say You Can Do Phonemic Awareness Instruction ‘In the Dark’, But Should You?” (2021). Additional meta-analyses have confirmed the importance of this connection and demonstrated that the two components of phonemic awareness that best transfer to reading are blending and segmenting.
For 1. Some struggling readers have already mastered phonemic awareness:
I designed the phonemic awareness lessons as quick, one-minute openers… language play on Google slides. Simply follow the directions on the slides. Students respond to your prompts in unison. All speech sounds have letter connections.
Now, much criticism has been directed at Dr. Kilpatrick for his advocacy of advanced phonemic awareness skills i.e., phonemic isolation, deletion, manipulation. True that research does not establish a link between these advanced skills and reading acquisition. However, the good doctor’s response to critics does ring true to me that good readers do have these skills. Thus, my one-minute phonemic awareness lessons lessons feature phoneme isolation, addition, deletions, substitution, manipulation, and segmentation. Can’t hurt. And for those who have mastered the requisite reading skills of phonemic blending and segmenting, the latter three skills may be beneficial.
For 2. Some need minimal instruction and practice to solidify the sound-speech (phoneme) connection.
All too often, we teachers tend to spend too much time teaching what can be learned quickly and too little time teaching what requires more guided practice. For some (I would say many) older students, phonemic awareness can be mastered quickly. Older students have the advantage of more language than beginning readers in their oral language lexicons. The one-minute drills in my program will turn on the light bulbs in short order.
For 3. Some will need intensive work (perhaps connecting to the phonological stage) to achieve this reading requisite.
The program deals with the needs of these students in two ways. First, the explicit phonemic awareness lessons are combined with the explicit Say It! Spell It! Read It! sounds to print phonics lessons. Beginning with the sound i.e., Say It! reinforces phonemic awareness, and each of the 54 lessons provides a review of the phonemes introduced in the previous phonics lesson. Thus, the phonemic awareness drills assist phonics and spelling acquisition, and phonics and spelling practice improves phonemic awareness. Second, unlike other programs, The Science of Reading Intervention Program provides second-chance instruction. Midway through the full-year program, students take a battery of diagnostic assessments to determine mastery. For students still needing more intensive phonemic awareness practice (and for newly transferred students), 5 quick, whole-class phonemic awareness assessments with audio files determine which skills students need for group work. Corresponding activities include formative assessments.
Check out a sample phonemic awareness opener from my program for older students and see how easy it is to teach to all three types of your students!
Many ELL teachers are curious about the Science of Reading and (SOR) and, specifically, what a complete SOR phonics-based lesson looks like for their struggling readers. Following are two complete lessons (free) to study and try out with your students. Lesson 5 is a beginning short vowel /u/ focus, and Lesson 40 is a more advanced diphthong /ow/ focus. The lessons are 90 minutes each and include initial instruction and weekly review activities.
Each word recognition (phonics) lesson includes these instructional routines and resources:
1. Phonemic and Morphological Awareness
2. Blending, Segmenting, and Spelling
3. Sounds and Spellings and Heart Words Practice
4. Say It! Spell It! Read It! Word Chains:
5. Sam and Friends Phonics Books (Decodable texts on the lesson focus and review, featuring read alouds, comprehension questions, word fluency practice and timings, re-reads)
6. Elkonin Sound Box Dictations, Personal Sound Walls, and Morphology Walls
The author, Mark Pennington, is an MA reading specialist. Mark is happy to answer any questions about these lessons or how to implement SOR with your struggling readers. Email mark at mark@penningtonpublishing.com.
Many SPED teachers are curious about the Science of Reading and (SOR) and, specifically, what a complete SOR phonics-based lesson looks like for their struggling readers. Following are two complete lessons (free) to study and try out with your students. Lesson 5 is a beginning short vowel /u/ focus, and Lesson 40 is a more advanced diphthong /ow/ focus. The lessons are 90 minutes each and include initial instruction and weekly review activities.
Each word recognition (phonics) lesson includes these instructional routines and resources:
1. Phonemic and Morphological Awareness
2. Blending, Segmenting, and Spelling
3. Sounds and Spellings and Heart Words Practice
4. Say It! Spell It! Read It! Word Chains:
5. Sam and Friends Phonics Books (Decodable texts on the lesson focus and review, featuring read alouds, comprehension questions, word fluency practice and timings, re-reads)
6. Elkonin Sound Box Dictations, Personal Sound Walls, and Morphology Walls
The author, Mark Pennington, is an MA reading specialist. Mark is happy to answer any questions about these lessons or how to implement SOR with your struggling readers. Email mark at mark@penningtonpublishing.com.
