Assessing Your Students

As children are developing early literacy skills, it’s important to assess their progress.

Understanding Where to Start

Use our screening resources to see what children already know and how to group them. • Use our Differentiating Instruction chart (p. 20 of this teacher’s guide) to check children’s early literacy skills to gauge which students are Emerging Readers and which are Developing Readers. Find more digital resources, too . • Go to the Resources section of the A–Z for Mat Man® and Me Interactive Teaching Tool to find screeners to diagnose children’s understanding of alphabet knowledge—alphabetical order, letter recognition, and letter sounds. You can evaluate children individually or in small groups. Download and print these formative assessment measures to understand the needs of your class.

Monitoring Progress

Young children progress at different paces. Children are unlikely to master every aspect of the letter the first time it’s introduced. The same is true for children understanding stories. So, it’s important to use multiple means of formative assessment to make decisions about how to form flexible small groups to meet students’ varying needs. The following resources can help with monitoring progress and planning for supports. • Observe and record how children interact during small-group reading, how they respond to oral prompts, and how they engage in after-reading discussions and activities. • Regularly review students’ practice book pages and use of manipulatives at centers. • Refer to our If/Then charts on pp. 8–13 in this teacher’s guide to watch for opportunities to provide feedback or intervene with additional scaffolding, instruction, and practice. • Use the letter checks at the back of the practice books. The letters are grouped in these checks based on our recommended sequence of teaching the alphabet on p. 18 in this teacher’s guide.

Practice Book Pages

Letters Reviewed Letter Check 1 Letter Check 2 Letter Check 3 Cumulative Review

pp. 58–59

m, Tt, Nn, Aa, Ss, Rr, Pp, i pp. 60–61

Dd, Hh, g, Ll, Oo, Ff, Bb, Cc, Zz pp. 62–63

Vv, Uu, Kk, j, Ww, Ee, y, Xx, Qq p. 64

Full alphabet

• See pp. 188–189 of this teacher’s guide for answer keys to each of these review pages.

Go to the A–Z for Mat Man® and Me Interactive Teaching Tool for additional downloadable assessment resources.