Assessing Phonics Knowledge

A critical part of teaching phonics is determining what your students know about phonics and what they must learn. Ongoing informal assessment is most useful for planning instruction. You can assess your students’ current phonics knowledge and application with:

• Checklists
• Running records
• Anecdotal records
• Audio recordings

You can also use students' writing samples to assess phonics knowledge by analyzing how they are spelling words.

As we’ve mentioned, students should learn and practice applying phonics generalizations with both words in isolation and words in context. Keep in mind that a student that can recite phonics “rules” may have very little understanding of applying phonics.

Assessment should only be on your students' effective application of phonics knowledge when decoding unknown words during reading. Documentation can be constructed using checklists of targeted phonics skills while listening to students read. You can construct a list of words containing the targeted generalizations or purchase ready made lists, such as The Reading Teacher's Book of Lists.

Another way to assess phonics application is to have students brainstorm lists of words containing the targeted element and use those lists as assessment documentation. Regardless of which method you choose, you should log the results of each assessment as part of each student’s running record.

Some teachers find it helpful to record students as they read, so that they can focus on evaluating the student when they have more time. Audio recordings are also a good way to show students and parents how much progress students have made over the course of the year.