We hear a lot about phonics, but not always a ton about phonics assessments for older students, especially those in 3rd, 4th, and 5th Grade. However, even if you hear less about phonics for older students, it’s still super important to make sure phonics is part of your upper elementary reading lessons. Phonics assessments for older students can provide you with detailed information about your students. The information learned from the phonics assessments for older students can lead to more effective instruction. The point isn’t just to do an assessment, but rather to use what you learn from the assessments as part of your daily teaching. Using phonics assessments for older students allows you to pinpoint where students are struggling most when it comes to breaking down different types of words. You may find that all your students struggle with a certain phonics pattern, or just a small handful need guidance with another phonics pattern. No matter what is causing difficulty for your students, you’ll be able to address it in future lessons. Read more about the phonics assessments for older students you’ll come to know and love!
The Best Time to Use Phonics Assessments for Older Students
The best time to use phonics assessments for your 3rd, 4th, and 5th Grade students is the start of the school year. Using phonics assessments for older students at the beginning of the school year allows you to kick off the year with effective phonics instruction tailored to the needs of your students. However, the beginning of the year is often a blur and you may not have time to squeeze in another assessment in those first few weeks. Instead of totally skipping them since you missed the beginning of the school year window, you can use the time later in Fall when your class routines are well underway. You’ll still get super meaningful information out of doing the phonics assessments for older students. Small groups, independent reading activities, literacy stations, and worksheets sent home can all be more specific to each students’ needs, once you have their scores from the phonics assessments.
To make this easier on you, I’ve come up with a system that allows you to conduct benchmark phonics assessments for older students in the fall (or beginning of the year), winter, and spring. However, that is not all! A lot of times assessments give you little snapshots of what your readers can or cannot do. Often, that is not enough to actually learn a bunch about each individual reader. There is so much information to gain about each reader, but you have to use the right assessment to actually get that information. That is why I created my Phonics Assessments and Progress Monitoring Pages. These phonics assessments for older students are the assessments you need to get the big picture!
I’ve Used the Phonics Assessments…Now What?
It doesn’t end after the benchmark phonics assessments for older students. These phonics assessments also include progress monitoring practice pages which allow you to give students the opportunity to improve on the phonics skills that were causing them trouble, as identified by the phonics assessments.
I know teachers don’t have a ton of time to complete lengthy assessments, especially not on repeat, which is why I call these “quick checks”. They will of course still take a few minutes of your time, for each student. However, you’ll find them so valuable. These assessments and quick checks will help you in so many ways- from parent/teacher conferences, to data meetings, to helping each reader in your room develop the specific skills they need help building!
Your students can complete the progress monitoring worksheets during small groups, independent reading time, at home, or in a literacy station. Then you can have your students come up one on one every few weeks to check in with them. They’ll read aloud the one page progress monitoring worksheet to show how they’re improving.
This is your quick check in! You can then use the information you learn about each reader to inform what you’ll either continue or begin to do in small groups, in literacy centers, for independent work, etc.
Parent Teacher Conferences
These phonics assessments and progress monitoring pages are also perfect for sharing information with parents at Parent Teacher Conferences. Often you’re looking for something that gives a snapshot of the students in your class and their current abilities. These pages can be shown to parents to give them an idea of what exactly their child is struggling with or doing really well with, when it comes to phonics patterns.
Revisit Phonics Assessments
You’ll also want to revisit the phonics assessments with all your students multiple times throughout the year. The main reason for this is because your students should be making major progress as the weeks move on. You’ll be able to keep track of that progress by using the benchmark phonics assessments and progress monitoring pages. The data you need to change up what you’re doing as word work focus for your older students will come right from the phonics assessments and progress monitoring pages. This is all included within my Phonics Assessments for Older Students!
Quick Recap of the Phonics Assessments for Older Students
These phonics assessments for older students work great for your entire class, or intervention groups, special education classes, or even for tutoring! Read on to see if these seem like a good fit for your class.
If this feels familiar:
- You’ve heard you need to be assessing and working on phonics skills, but haven’t actually been provided with materials to do so.
- You’ve been given curriculum, but the materials just don’t actually provide you with what you truly need to reach ALL the readers in your classroom.
- You’ve been noticing students struggling with reading, but aren’t sure how to identify what it is that your students really need help with when it comes to reading skills.
Then, you’ll be happy to know:
- I’ve made the assessments and practice pages for you!
- These will not only provide info about each reader’s abilities and needs, but they’ll also provide you with practice pages to grow those skills.
- You’ll identify where students struggle- whether at the isolated word level, in sentences, or in actual passages.
- It’ll be evident if decoding, fluency, or comprehension is an issue.
Ready to grab your set? Click here for the Phonics Assessments for Older Students in 3rd, 4th, and 5th Grade!
Free Phonics Progress Monitoring Practice Pages
Before you go, I also wanted to share free samples with you! I have free samples of the Progress Monitoring Practice Pages which are included in the Phonics Assessments for Older Students. You can get a peek at how you’d be able to use these in between the benchmark assessments, in your classroom. Grab the free Progress Monitoring Practice Pages!
Also- if you want to learn more about using these phonics assessments…
Read all about the K-5 Simple Reading Assessments for Elementary to Assess Phonics here!
