Assessment: Informing our Teaching
There are four main literacy assessments that I suggest you use to determine literacy goals and measure progress. These are:
- Emergent Literacy Assessment
- (The Bridge Observational Schedule for Students with Complex Needs)
- Transitional Literacy Assessment
- Conventional Literacy Assessment
- And each of these uses the Writing with All Tools Continuum
Assessment Frequency
You may already have a policy at your school telling you how frequently you need to do a literacy assessment. If you don’t, then you’ll need to make a decision.This is really teacher judgement, but I would generally suggest once per year for whichever of the four main assessments is most appropriate.
The additional assessments can be completed as needed.
Which Literacy Assessment Should I Use?
You can use the Literacy Assessment Decision Making Flow Chart below to decide which assessment to use. If the student has no assessment history, always start with the Emergent Assessment. Otherwise, look at last year’s results and make sure you follow the chart. Please also ensure that the student has achieved the scores to go up to the next assessment – moving a student up before they are ready doesn’t do them any favours!
Additional Assessments
There are some additional assessments that we use with students as needed. These are linked to below – or you can also navigate to most of them via the assessment menu above.
There is an additional assessment you might use to track progress in print concepts with emergent students – this is referred to on the Shared Reading page as well as being located under assessment.
- Informal Concepts About Print check
There are also three additional assessments you might do with transitional and conventional students.
- Oxford Word List Assessment (to determine student word knowledge at the beginning of each school year to plan word wall teaching)
- Cloze Assessment (done periodically to determine reading comprehension level for comprehension instruction and self-selected reading)
- Developmental Spelling Test (used to check the progress from phonics instruction, completed a maximum of once per term)
Literacy Assessment Pathway
The Literacy Assessment Pathway document describes the areas covered in each assessment.
Assessment to Instruction Matrix
The Assessment to Instruction Matrix (based on an original idea by Emma Pearson from Bullimbal School) helps us to plot a student’s assessment data to determine their instructional needs. The matrix covers a classroom of students and their instructional needs.
There are two versions of the Assessment to Instruction Matrix available. A Printable version and an electronic fillable version. Additionally, if your school is using the Comprehensive Literacy Assessment & Goal app from Jane Farrall Consulting, you can go to the data for each classroom and the app will complete the matrix for you.