Assessment

Research Assessment Phonological awareness is an important foundation upon which many later literacy insights are constructed . Children in early childhood settings have the right to be with teachers who attend to the development of their phonological awareness . This means more than providing phonological awareness instruction; it includes monitoring children’s progress so that meaningful and appropriate experiences and instruction can be offered . Although there will be occasions when teachers formally assess children’s phonological awareness development, much can be learned about children’s progress through daily observations and interactions . Each of the activities in this book presents an opportunity for teachers to learn about a child’s phonological awareness development . Effective teachers provide instruction, model and engage children in learning experiences, notice and reflect on children’s responses, provide feedback, and then plan future instruction based on what they have learned about the children . In short, they engage in formative assessment . Some children will quickly embrace an activity and demonstrate understanding of the phonological manipulations . When a teacher uses a puppet to encourage children to change initial sounds in peers’ names to the /m/ sound, and a child responds, “Billy is Milly! Danny is Manny!”, the teacher takes note of this . Other children will find an activity more challenging . If a child does not understand the phonological play in an activity, the teacher may decide to provide more explicit instruction and practice or provide more scaffolding . Depending upon the response to modified instruction, the teacher may decide to build more of a foundation before trying the activity again at a later time . A review of the General Development of Phonological Awareness chart on page 19 will be helpful . The information teachers gather as they observe children during directed and independent activities and teachers’ willingness to engage in reflection before, during, and after an instructional activity contribute greatly to effective teaching that meets the needs of the children . The questions on the following pages focus on progress monitoring and guide reflection . In addition to in-the-moment assessment, we recommend that teachers more formally screen children periodically, especially in preschool and infants . Most published literacy programmes include phonological awareness screening tools . Some children experience difficulty with phonological awareness in spite of excellent classroom instruction . Teachers’ observations and actions are important . Those children with persistent difficulty should be provided individual and small-group instruction early (Foorman et al . 2016) . Instruction that includes attention to the place and manner of articulation of phonemes may be particularly helpful (Castiglioni-Spalten and Ehri 2003) . Children who continue to demonstrate difficulty after high-quality instruction and intervention should be referred to an education specialist for further assessment and support . Note: All formal assessments must be used with care . Adults must ensure the assessments are valid; used for appropriate purposes, such as planning meaningful learning experiences; are linguistically, culturally, and developmentally appropriate; and are not the sole basis of important decisions impacting children’s lives . Furthermore, adults conducting the sample assessments must be adequately prepared to implement and interpret them . A discussion of formal assessment is beyond the scope of this book .

Research

Before the Acivity Questions Things to Consider

Why am I choosing this activity for this group of children? ■ Who are the children? ■ What is their current understanding? How do I know? ■ Is the activity challenging, yet achievable, for these children? ■ What is the purpose of the activity? ■ How does the activity fit in the bigger picture of phonological awareness development?

How should I implement the activity?

How might I differentiate the activity? ■ Shall I use the activity with individuals, small groups, or the entire group? ■ Do I need to differentiate the activity to be appropriate for the range of children I teach?

What will serve as evidence of understanding?

■ What will I look for to determine whether the activity is appropriate and whether children understand it? ■ Will I listen to hear if children generate a rhyming word, blend an onset and rime together to form a word, and/or delete a phoneme from the beginning of a word? ■ Will I notice who is pointing, speaking, or nodding? Assessment (cont.) sample

Research

During the Activity Questions Things to Consider

How are children responding as a group—cognitively, socially, and emotionally? ■ As a group, do children provide correct responses? ■ Do they attend to and participate in the activity? ■ Do they find it appealing? ■ Do they appear confident, enthusiastic, and happy, or are they anxious, restless, frustrated, or bored? ■ Do they ask to keep playing? How are children responding individually—cognitively, socially, and emotionally? ■ Do I ever choose to closely observe an individual during an activity? ■ Is this child silent, yet attentive? Are they quick to respond? Are they accurate or enthusiastic? ■ Does this child go beyond the activity and create other, more sophisticated language play? ■ Is this child distracted or uncomfortable? ■ Does this child give inaccurate responses? ■ What scaffolding might support certain children? ■ How does this child respond when more explicit explanations and specific feedback are given? ■ Does this child seek out the materials to play again later? Is a small or large group activity of value even to those children who appear to understand it less than their peers?

■ Is this activity appropriate for and appealing to even those children who do not appear to fully understand it yet? ■ Do those children appear to appreciate the activity—even just for its silliness—and learn from their exposure to it, or are they just experiencing frustration? ■ What is my role in influencing how children feel when faced with more challenging activities? Assessment (cont.) sample 28

Research

After the Activity Questions Things to Consider

What might I have done differently?

■ Was I engaging, positive, enthusiastic, and respectful of linguistic and cultural differences? ■ Was I explicit in providing directions? ■ Did I model? ■ Did I explain what we were doing and why responses were correct or incorrect? ■ Did I provide specific feedback? ■ Did I guide children? ■ Did I “think aloud” for children? ■ How was my pacing? ■ Did I provide enough time for children to think and respond? ■ Did I provide too much time for a single child to respond so that others became disengaged and bored? ■ When I do this activity again, what will I change? What should I do next? ■ Which children need more individual attention from me? ■ What do children now understand? ■ What are they ready to try or be exposed to next? Are they ready for smaller units of sound, different types of manipulations, and/or the same units of sound and manipulations with other materials or examples? ■ When will I repeat this activity? How might I differentiate it to make it more (or less) challenging for certain children? ■ How will I ensure that children have multiple opportunities to engage in similar phonological manipulations? ■ Will I find ways to spontaneously follow up on this kind of play in other contexts during the day? Assessment (cont.) sample