RtI Reading Assessments
RtI Reading Assessments
From time to time I get questions from potential customers or competitors regarding Response to Intervention reading assessments. Customers ask me about the assessments included in my Teaching Reading Strategies reading intervention program and accompanying Sam and Friends Guided Reading Phonics Books. (Don’t worry… the usual book advertisement will follow the article :).) Competitors (fellow teacher-authors and educational publishers who are developing their own Response to Intervention resources ask as well. Two such questions came my way recently, so I thought I’d answer each in this article to save myself from similar future responses. Bear with a few technical definitions, a bit of historical educational context, and some personal experience and I’ll reward you with a set of useful phonemic awareness and reading assessments for your tiered RtI classes, early-late reading programs, individual tutoring, and literacy centers. Of course ESL, ELD, and special education teachers are critically important in this discussion as well. Gone (or at least going) are the “protect your own program castle” mentalities which separated these teachers from whole-school Response to Intervention.
Here are the two questions regarding my reading intervention program:
Q. Are your assessments and teaching resources Standards-based? Are they specifically aligned to the Common Core State Standards? (from an elementary principal)
A. Yes, my assessments and corresponding teaching resources are aligned to the Common Core State Standards as detailed in Appendix A. Because the assessments and resources are remedial-based, they encompass multiple grade-level Standards and the prerequisite skills articulated by the Common Core authors that are necessary to scaffold these Standards.
No, I didn’t get an order from that principal.
Q. What types of assessments should I create for my reading programs? (from a teacher-author on the Teachers Pay Teachers site).
A. It depends upon what teaching resources you are creating for your curriculum. My teaching resources are assessment-based, so I developed criterion-referenced, comprehensive diagnostic assessments for discrete, teachable pre-reading and reading strategies, such as phonemic awareness, phonics, sight words, syllabication, spelling, and reading fluency in my Teaching Reading Strategies reading intervention program with formative assessments for each lesson. I provide teacher-observation assessment in my accompanying Sam and Friends Guided Reading Phonics Books. In these 54 booklets (includes teenage characters with mature plot themes), teachers assess and teach understanding with 5 comprehension questions; teachers assess phonics and sight words acquisition via 30-second word fluencies; and teachers use custom running records for each story.
How I developed the pre-reading and reading assessments:
Years ago I served as an elementary reading specialist in a large California school district following the demise of the “whole language” method of reading instruction and the resurgence of phonics (at least in the South and West) after the National Reading Panel 2000 report. As our district made the move away from whole language to the K-3 phonics-based Open Court curriculum (with intense professional development), our primary reading scores quickly moved from the 45th to 75th percentiles on our normed state assessments.
Grades 4 to adult teachers, exposed to the same reading professional development, wanted help, as well, for their struggling readers. Our existing diagnostic assessments: the Names Test, Basic Phonics Skills Test, the Slosson Oral Word Recognition Test, etc. were normed tests and indicated which students had phonics deficits. The 15-word Qualitative Spelling Inventory (think Words Their Way) indicated which student had spelling deficits. Older struggling readers were not hard to identify and most all had significant phonemic awareness and/or phonics/spelling deficits. As a site reading specialist, I trained teachers to administer and analyze all of these assessments (and more). One teacher expressed what they all were thinking.
Why should I have to give and grade all these normed tests when I already know which kids need help in their reading? The tests don’t tell me what exactly I need to teach. Give me an assessment that is teachable and I’ll give it, grade it, and teach to it… but I want the instructional resources to do so.
She was exactly right, and her request was reasonable.
Over the next five years, I developed and field-tested these comprehensive phonemic awareness, phonics, rimes, spelling, and sight words assessments. Most of the assessments have audio files for easy whole-class (or small group) administration. Recording matrices are included.
And, yes, I developed the assessment-based instructional resources to teach to each assessment.
The Science of Reading Intervention Program
The Science of Reading Intervention Program: Word Recognition includes explicit, scripted instruction and practice with the 5 Daily Google Slide Activities every reading intervention student needs: 1. Phonemic Awareness and Morphology 2. Blending, Segmenting, and Spelling 3. Sounds and Spellings (including handwriting) 4. Heart Words Practice 5. Sam and Friends Phonics Books (decodables). Plus, digital and printable sound wall cards and speech articulation songs. Print versions are available for all activities. First Half of the Year Program (55 minutes-per-day, 18 weeks)
The Science of Reading Intervention Program: Language Comprehension resources are designed for students who have completed the word recognition program or have demonstrated basic mastery of the alphabetic code and can read with some degree of fluency. The program features the 5 Weekly Language Comprehension Activities: 1. Background Knowledge Mentor Texts 2. Academic Language, Greek and Latin Morphology, Figures of Speech, Connotations, Multiple Meaning Words 3. Syntax in Reading 4. Reading Comprehension Strategies 5. Literacy Knowledge (Narrative and Expository). Second Half of the Year Program (30 minutes-per-day, 18 weeks)
The Science of Reading Intervention Program: Assessment-based Instruction provides diagnostically-based “second chance” instructional resources. The program includes 13 comprehensive assessments and matching instructional resources to fill in the yet-to-be-mastered gaps in phonemic awareness, alphabetic awareness, phonics, fluency (with YouTube modeled readings), Heart Words and Phonics Games, spelling patterns, grammar, usage, and mechanics, syllabication and morphology, executive function shills. Second Half of the Year Program (25 minutes-per-day, 18 weeks)
The Science of Reading Intervention Program BUNDLE includes all 3 program components for the comprehensive, state-of-the-art (and science) grades 4-adult full-year program. Scripted, easy-to-teach, no prep, no need for time-consuming (albeit valuable) LETRS training or O-G certification… Learn as you teach and get results NOW for your students. Print to speech with plenty of speech to print instructional components.
Get the SCRIP Comprehension Strategies FREE Resource:
Get the Diagnostic ELA and Reading Assessments FREE Resource: