The Literacy Lowdown- Phonological Awareness Assessments at Memorial

After reading my recent post about phonological awareness, you may have asked yourself, How do we as parents and teachers know that students have mastered all of these skills? Teachers at Memorial combine their daily interactions with students and the
results from three universal/benchmark assessments to determine student progress and next steps for instruction in phonological  awareness.  These assessments are: DIBLES First Sound Fluency (FSF), DIBELS Phoneme Segmentation Fluency (PSF), and the Burlington Phonological Awareness Screener- keep reading for more information about each of these assessments!

DIBELS First Sound Fluency (FSF)

All kindergarten students at Memorial are administered this assessment at the beginning and middle of the school year.   It is given to each child individually.  During the test, children are a asked to give the first sound in spoken words.  At the beginning of the year, we expect kids to identify 20 first sounds in one minute, and at the middle of the year the expectation is 30.

DIBELS Phoneme Segmentation Fluency (PSF)

Students are administered the Phoneme Segmentation Fluency assessment at the middle and end of the year in kindergarten, and also at the beginning of first grade.  This test is also given to children one at a time. When students are assessed, they are asked to segment, or break apart, the sounds in spoken words.  For example, if a student is given the word hat,  they should respond with each sound, /h/ /a/ /t/.  In the middle of kindergarten, we expect students to segment 20 sounds in one minute, and at the end of kindergarten we look for them to segment 40 sounds in one minute.  At the beginning of first grade, we check in to make sure that they are still able to segment 40 sounds in one minute.

Burlington Phonological Awareness Screener

The Burlington Phonological Awareness Screener is a formal assessment that was created by teachers in our district.   It is composed of ten sub-tests, and assesses student's ability to apply a range of phonological awareness skills.  Specifically, it measures a child's understanding of rhyme awareness, syllable awareness, and phonemic awareness.  The test is administered to all kindergarten and first grade students in Burlington.

Phonological Awareness encompasses a wide range of skills.  Our assessments at Memorial help us to get a better understanding of our student's progress in these critical early literacy abilities.

Dr. Seuss Day!

Today we had the opportunity to celebrate Dr. Seuss Day! In Mrs Burnham's room we read Green Eggs and Ham.  Then we created our own class book, 1st Grade Does Not Like Green Eggs and Ham.

The highlight of our morning was a special visit with a Burlington High Senior, Caileigh H.  She did a wonderful job reading a couple of our Dr. Seuss favorites.  A huge thank you to Mrs. Bannon and Mr. Peterson for organizing this event!

Continue the celebration  tonight and the rest of the month with fun titles from this  Complete List of Dr. Seuss Books.

For online fun and games check out Seussville.