Science of Reading-Aligned assessments are a vital tool in identifying students’ strengths and areas for growth. By using a combination of screeners, diagnostic assessments, and progress monitoring, teachers can provide targeted instruction to help every student succeed.
After getting the classroom ready, welcoming the kids, and going over routines, it’ll be assessment time. I know it can be boring and time-consuming, but I actually love to look at the results of the assessment to learn more about my students. A big question I get, especially from people making the shift from Balanced Literacy to Structured Literacy, is how to assess students without leveling them. Here are evidence-based assessments aligned with the science of reading.
Step 1: Screener
Start the year with a universal screener to get a quick snapshot of your students’ reading abilities. These brief, standardized assessments help identify students who are at or above grade level and those who may be at risk. Administering screeners three times a year ensures you can monitor progress effectively and adjust instruction as needed. Once you’ve identified at-risk students, use this data to group them for targeted instruction or plan follow-up diagnostic assessments.
- All students should be screened with a universal screening measure three times a year. (Good et al., 2011)
- These are brief (most subtests are only 1 minute)
- These are standardized assessments.
- They identify who is at risk (but do not go in-depth about why the student is struggling or how to help).
- Students are assessed on several indicators of early literacy skills appropriate for their age and grade.
- A student’s score allows teachers to predict future reading performance. Benchmark scores are determined by research.
Two good screeners are DIBELS and Acadience. Both offer free downloads for testing materials. If you want to use their data systems, it’s like $1-2 per student, but I definitely recommend that.
Step 2: Diagnostic Assessments
If I want to learn more about my students and dig a little deeper, a diagnostic assessment will help me identify skills my students have and any gaps in their knowledge. There are a few different assessments I may use depending on the need.
Diagnostic assessments are tools that give you a closer look at a student’s specific strengths and areas where they may be struggling in reading. Unlike screeners, which are quick and broad measures to identify at-risk students, diagnostic assessments dig deeper to uncover why a student is struggling. They help teachers pinpoint gaps in foundational skills such as phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, or comprehension. This allows us to create targeted intervention plans tailored to the unique needs of each student.
Research shows just how important diagnostic assessments are in effective reading instruction. The most impactful teaching happens when it’s guided by clear data about a student’s current skills and gaps (Foorman et al., 2016). Think of diagnostic assessments as a roadmap—they help teachers figure out exactly where a student needs support and ensure interventions are tailored to meet those needs. These assessments are most helpful after a screener flags a student as at risk or when a teacher notices ongoing struggles that need a closer look.
One key thing for teachers to keep in mind is that diagnostic assessments should be used as needed—not for every student—to save time and energy. The results should always be actionable, giving you clear next steps, like grouping students for small-group instruction or focusing on specific skills during one-on-one support. Unlike screeners, diagnostics aren’t about predicting future reading success. Instead, they’re all about giving you immediate insights to guide your instruction and help each student move forward.
Phonics Diagnostic:
Phonics diagnostics are assessments that dig into a student’s understanding of foundational phonics skills. Phonics diagnostics identify specific gaps in a student’s phonics knowledge, such as particular phonics patterns, rules, or graphemes they haven’t yet mastered.
For example, a child might successfully read CVC words and silent e words but struggle with digraphs or vowel teams. These assessments pinpoint exactly which areas need to be taught, allowing teachers to target instruction more effectively. After administering the diagnostic, you can create a small-group intervention plan that aligns with students’ specific needs. Click here for information about phonics instruction and intervention.
Phonics Diagnostic Resource:
I created a free phonics diagnostic to share with you! This resource is a big one! It includes three different assessments!
First, there is a page with words that use different phonics elements. This will help you determine what phonics skills your student already has and where to begin with instruction. Since the average first grader at the beginning of the year likely can only read CVC words and words with digraphs, you will not need to use this with the average first grader. Instead, you would want to give them an assessment with CVC words and see how well they can read those. I have a free assessment with just CVC words here (or you can just rely on the one you use in your DIBELS or Acadience screener). If you have students who are above level in first grade, this is a great tool to use so you can determine exactly what they have mastered. This is most appropriate for second and above (or above level first graders as I mentioned). However, I also like to use this later in the year with first graders as a check-in.
If your students in second or above score low on the nonsense reading portion or the oral reading portion of the screener, this will help you determine the breakdown.
The next part of this pack is a sentence reading assessment. I like to use this along with the word assessment above. The sentence assessment allows me to see how fluent my students are. Sentences begin with just CVC words and then each sentence gets harder with other phonics elements added in. It’s one thing for a student to be able to decode a word. That shows me they know the graphemes in that word and they have blending skills. But if they are having to sound out most words in a sentence, that tells me they need more time practicing that skill to become more automatic, which leads to fluency. This is why I like to incorporate sentence reading as well.
The picture below shows the first sentence reading assessment. This includes closed syllables only, which I usually teach for the first quarter of first grade. There are two others after this one that include other syllable types. You would choose the one more appropriate for your student. If you choose one too difficult or too easy, you can always adjust and switch to another. (For first grade students who can only read CVC words and digraphs, you can see how well they read those first few sentences.)
The last piece to this pack is a spelling diagnostic. Usually, students can read a lot better than they can spell!
I recently added a beginning first-grade option that only uses skills that they would be expected to have at that point. However, some teachers like to use the original one so that you can compare beginning to the end of the year and show growth.
Phonological/Phonemic Awareness Assessment
A phonological awareness assessment measures a student’s ability to recognize and manipulate the sound structures of spoken language. This includes skills like identifying and producing rhymes, counting syllables in words, isolating sounds (the first sound in “cat” is /k/), and blending or segmenting sounds in words. Phonological awareness assessments help teachers determine if students have a strong foundation in auditory processing skills, which are critical for developing decoding and spelling abilities. By identifying specific areas of difficulty, these assessments allow teachers to provide targeted support to help students build the necessary skills for successful reading.
I use this with my kindergarten students and some first-grade students. It looks pretty technical, but it’s actually super easy and quick. There are spaces for three different assessments at different points in the year, but for many students, you will not need to redo this assessment three times because they may have mastered the skills earlier.
If a student above kindergarten scores low in the phoneme segmenting portion of the screener or low in the nonsense word section of the screener, then this may help you determine what phonemic awareness skills they do have (if any). If a student can’t blend sounds then they definitely won’t be able to read nonsense words. They may know the sounds, but not be able to blend them. This will help you determine the issue.
There’s a third page that has phonemic manipulation skills, which is great for first grade. The most important skills are phoneme blending and segmenting.
Click here for this free phonemic awareness assessment.
Here’s a tip for a phonemic awareness assessment with kindergarten students: I always bring a puppet along with me. When it comes time to do the Blending Phonemes section, I tell my students that my puppet friend speaks very slowly. I have the puppet talk and I translate to model the skill. For example, I’ll say, “What’s your favorite color?” The puppet will respond “/k/ /a/ /t/”. I’ll repeat what the puppet said a few times, then I’ll blend the sounds and say, “Oh you mean cat!”. This usually helps my students to warm up a bit and I always get a smile. Then I tell them for the next activity, I’m going to talk like my puppet friend and they are going to try to guess my word. It helps to make the assessment feel not so stuffy (no pun intended). They always want to hug my puppet afterward!
To learn more about phonemic awareness, click here.
Alphabet Assessment
This assessment is used to determine what letters your students have mastered. It assesses upper case, lower case, and sounds. There is an additional assessment for determining the initial letter of a word. It is perfect for kindergarten (beginning, middle, and end) or for first grade for some students if needed.
- When to use this with a student above kinder: If you have a student who scores low in the letter naming fluency and/or the nonsense word fluency (correct sounds per minute) on the DIBELS or Acadience screener, this assessment will help you to determine what letters and sounds they do know. It will also help you to see if the low score is the result of lack of automaticity (their ability to see it and say the answer quickly) or if it is the result of not knowing those letters or sounds. Sometimes it’s both!
Click here for this Alphabet assessment.
To learn more about teaching the alphabet, click here.
Step 3: Progress Monitoring
Progress monitoring is all about making sure your teaching is working and your students are growing in their reading skills. It’s usually done weekly or biweekly and gives you a clear picture of how students are progressing over time. These are not administered to everyone. These are usually reserved for your tier 2 or 3 students. If you notice that a student’s scores aren’t improving, it’s a signal to adjust your approach or provide additional support.
Progress monitoring is typically more standardized and focuses on tracking overall growth. Tools like DIBELS or Acadience are great examples of progress monitoring systems that help you measure students’ improvement on key literacy skills. These look similar to the screeners you give three times a year. These are meant to be quick and frequent.
Additional Reading Assessments for ongoing learning (Skill-Specific Phonics Assessments):
Throughout the year, I use skill-specific phonics assessments for each phonics skill I teach. For example, after teaching vowel teams, I will assess my students with words and decodable sentences to see if they have mastered that skill. I find that these are much more useful to me in guiding my instruction.
These assessments differ from phonics diagnostics, which are used to identify gaps in foundational skills. Instead, these targeted assessments are administered after instruction to determine if students have successfully learned a specific phonics pattern or rule. They provide immediate feedback on whether students can apply the skill that I’ve just taught, helping me decide if they’re ready to move on or if additional practice is needed.
These also differ from progress monitoring because these check if a student has mastered a specific concept (like vowel teams or digraphs), while progress monitoring looks at broader trends over time. Truthfully, progress monitoring is usually something that is required by a school or district, whereas these skill-specific phonics assessments are something that I find useful to guide my teaching.
I created a resource that makes it easy to assess students’ mastery of specific phonics skills, with targeted assessments for each pattern or rule, including words, decodable sentences, and spelling. Skills included are: CVC words, digraphs, blends, closed syllable (all together) silent e, long vowel teams, bossy r, more vowel teams, and two-syllable words. Click here for this resource.
I hope this was helpful and not too overwhelming! While assessments are crucial for guiding instruction, it’s important to remember that over-assessing can be just as problematic as under-assessing. Constant testing can take valuable time away from teaching and create unnecessary stress for both students and teachers. The goal is to find a balance—using assessments strategically and purposefully to gather the information you need without overwhelming your schedule or your students. By selecting the right types of assessments at the right times, you can ensure that every minute spent assessing directly informs your instruction and benefits your students’ learning. It’s all about working smarter, not harder, when it comes to assessment.
Happy assessing!
~Sarah
