Do you use a weekly assessment to keep track of your student's progress for each phonics skill or unit? It may seem like A LOT more to add yet another assessment to your plate. However, getting a glimpse at where your students are can be so helpful. I'm going to share 2 quick and simple assessment ideas for phonics that you can use weekly to see where your students are at.
What is an informal assessment?
An informal assessment is a quick tool to measure students' progress, rather than a formal assessment, where there is a rubric or test given. Rather than just assessing students once a month, once a quarter, or at the end of each unit, it's helpful to continually assess them. You can do this with informal assessments! It's best to plan 1-2 informal assessments per week into your phonics lessons, but don't overthink how you will do this. I did informal assessments during lessons and also with a quick check every Friday. If this seems overwhelming to you, here are 2 quick and simple assessment ideas for phonics that you can try.
1. Using Checklists to Check Weekly Phonics Progress
It was always hard for me to find time to check my students progress. I tried pulling them aside one-on-one, similar to how I do my regular assessments, however, I would run out of time and was not very consistent. Instead, I started using a checklist during my whole group or small group phonics lesson. Each week, I would check a specific phonemic awareness skill. I would use my phonemic awareness warm-up to choose a skill that I wanted to assess my students on during our actual phonemic awareness lesson.
For example, if one of the weekly skills was phoneme isolation, that would be what I would check with each student. Each day, I would give a few students a word to isolate the phoneme by themselves. If they were able to do it with no help, I would mark a check. If they needed a little bit of help, but ultimately were able to do it, I would draw a horizontal line. And, if they were not able to do it, even after I helped them, then I marked an X. Looking down the list each week, I was able to pinpoint which students to really watch during our phonemic awareness instruction. It also gave me a chance to adjust my small group lesson or even pull students for additional intervention time. This ensures that all students have independent practice after guided modeling. Plus, students will realize that everyone has a turn and will be better at paying attention during your lesson!
You can find this editable checklist template in my TpT store here: Editable and Autofill Student Checklists
2. Adding Weekly Phonics Exit Tickets to your Plans
Have you ever used exit tickets with your students? They are a short 2-5 question assessment (usually on a smaller piece of paper) that your students can complete weekly. Right after our Friday phonics lesson, I would have my students complete an exit ticket before starting their ELA center rotations. Sometimes, we would do it together, and other times, they could do it independently. After they turned it in, I would quickly check to see how many they got right and wrong. This allowed me to see who was doing well with the phonics skill and who was struggling with the phonics skill. When planning my lessons and small group lesson for the next week, I would use those exit tickets to help guide and differentiate for my students.
I also liked to add these phonics exit tickets to my phonics data binder as additional data for myself or to show their parents.
Looking for Phonics Exit Tickets?
You can find all the phonics exit tickets you will need in my TpT store. It includes 112 phonics exit tickets covering 16 phonics, phonological awareness, and phonemic awareness skills. Grab the bundle here:
Find it on TPT here: Phonics Exit Tickets for the Year
Let me know how you plan to add these simple assessment ideas for phonics into your weekly instruction.