Assessment Design and Research
As a credentialed reading specialist, I select and administer published diagnostic assessments, review current research, and conduct case studies to build individualized intervention plans that lead to measurable reading gains.
How I Assess and Monitor Progress
Initial diagnostic assessment
Every student begins with a one-on-one diagnostic across the foundational skills: letter identification, letter sounds, phonological and phonemic awareness, decodable and nonsense word reading, spelling, and oral reading fluency. Word reading and spelling tasks progress from simple to complex, including CVC words, digraphs, blends, silent e, vowel teams, r-controlled vowels, diphthongs, and multisyllabic words. Each item targets a specific phonics pattern, so the results show exactly where a student’s skills break down.
Analyzing the results
I look for the earliest pattern a student hasn’t mastered, because that is where instruction should begin. If a student can’t yet decode CVC words, for example, vowel teams can wait. Nonsense word reading shows whether a student is truly decoding or relying on memorized words. Spelling shows whether they can apply those patterns when writing.
Progress monitoring
I reassess every four weeks using alternate forms of each assessment, so students read new words rather than repeating familiar ones. Fluency is measured in words correct per minute and compared with grade-level benchmarks. The results guide what I teach next, what I review, and when a student is ready to move on.
Reading Report Card
I designed a Reading Report Card that turns assessment results into a clear picture for families. It tracks eight skill areas across three checkpoints, explains what each skill includes, compares fluency with grade-level benchmarks, and adds a plain-language summary of strengths, growth areas, and next steps.
Case Study 1: Rising First Grader
A student entering first grade began summer tutoring with gaps in phonological and phonemic awareness, spelling, word reading, and fluency. Her letter-sound knowledge and listening comprehension were strengths. Over three monthly checkpoints:
Download the reading report card to view her progress. Names and dates have been changed for privacy.
Summary
Gracie mastered all letter sounds, more than doubled her spelling score, and met the benchmark for phonological awareness. Her comprehension also moved from needing support to answering questions correctly. Phonemic awareness and fluency remained focus areas as she entered the school year.
Case Study 2: Second Grade, Middle of Year
Sample student profile based on universal screener and early literacy assessment data
Overview
A second-grade student is referred for tutoring after middle-of-year screening shows gaps in foundational reading skills. I review results from two assessments, a universal literacy skills screener and an adaptive early literacy assessment, to identify the student’s strengths and areas of need and create an individualized tutoring plan. Below is the summary I share with the family.
Strengths
The student scores at or above benchmark in vocabulary and comprehension, with particular strengths in expressive vocabulary, word matching, and following directions. These strengths give us a strong foundation for building other skills, so I incorporate them into lessons to keep practice engaging and appropriately challenging.
Areas for Growth
Phonemic awareness. The student scores below benchmark overall. Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and work with individual sounds in spoken words. For example, cat has three sounds: /k/ /ă/ /t/. Strong readers can identify, blend, delete, and substitute those sounds. If we replace /k/ with /h/, cat becomes hat. This student is at benchmark for blending but needs support with isolating, deleting, and manipulating sounds.
Alphabetic principle and phonics. Letter-sound knowledge is an area of need, including long vowels such as /ā/ and /ē/ and digraphs such as ch and sh. Consistent letter-sound knowledge is essential for sounding out new words. The student also needs support with nonsense word reading, which shows whether a student can apply letter-sound knowledge without relying on memorized words. For example, zath isn’t a real word, but blending /z/ /ă/ /th/ shows understanding of z, short a, and the digraph th. This is where phonemic awareness and phonics come together to help students decode unfamiliar words. The student’s stronger results in some phonics skills give us a solid starting point.
Fluency. Word reading measures how accurately and automatically a student reads words. Letter rapid automatized naming (RAN) measures how quickly the student can name letters they already know. Because the assessment is adaptive, the RAN task includes only letters the student has shown they know. The student performs better on letter RAN than on word reading, which gives us another strength to build on.
Tutoring Plan
Session structure: About a quarter of each session focuses on phonemic awareness. The rest of the session focuses on the alphabetic principle, phonics, and fluency.
Using strengths: Lessons draw on the student’s vocabulary and comprehension strengths through games and activities that ask them to follow multistep directions while practicing core skills.
Progress monitoring: I reassess targeted skills every three to four weeks using brief skill checks and compare the results with the initial screening data. This shows whether the student is closing gaps and when to adjust instruction or move on to the next skill.
Responsive instruction: I watch closely for skills that begin to slip and add targeted review right away so the student stays on track.
Outcome Goal
With consistent, targeted practice, the student builds phonemic awareness and decoding skills, using strong vocabulary and comprehension as a foundation for greater fluency and independent reading.