When determining what data will be most useful to identify student needs and form small groups, we propose a slightly expanded version of recommendations presented by Conradi Smith and coauthors (2022) that focus on assessing decoding, fluency, and comprehension. By adding oral language and/or vocabulary to the list, we can better assess the students’ needs when it comes to meaning-focused domains. Ideally, teachers should regularly collect data about students’ performance in at least one code-focused domain (e.g., phonics/decoding or passage-reading fluency) and one meaning-focused domain (e.g., vocabulary, comprehension; Hamilton et al., 2009). See Table 2 for more information about each reading domain within which teachers can assess students.
Table 2
Instruction Type
Most Relevant Grade(s)
Domain
Benefits
Challenges
Evaluating phonics knowledge can get very
Phonics/decoding involves a relatively constrained set of skills that can be measured using informal or teacher- created inventories. There is also a clear spectrum of complexity (for example, moving from knowledge of individual letter-sound correspondences to reading multisyllabic words).
Phonics/ Decoding
Code- focused
K to Grade 3 and older
granular. It can be difficult to determine when a general sense for students’ phonics ability is sufficient, or if it is important to know exactly what grapheme-phoneme correspondences they have mastered or which ones they have yet to learn. Also, there may be disconnects between the order in which students have acquired phonics knowledge and a curriculum’s sequence of phonics instruction that can make it difficult to put decoding assessment data into action when it comes to forming groups and determining lesson content.
students with code-focused difficulties
ALIGNING PRACTICE WITH RESEARCH TOPIC PAPER 9
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