Signs for Sounds: Monitoring student progress

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As students work through Signs for Sounds, monitor their progress on both sound-out words and spell-out words. (Students should also keep track of their own progress by recording their scores on their individual score sheets.)

SOUND-OUT WORDS

Students move from lesson to lesson based on their performance on the sound-out words, so it is important to closely monitor their accuracy on these words. Monitor progress both informally and formally to guide your instructional decisions.

Monitor progress throughout the lesson to decide whether to advance to the next phase or to continue reviewing the skill. At the end of the teaching phase, informally assess whether or not students understand the skill before moving on to the testing phase. At the end of the testing phase, check whether or not students have met the recommended criteria for mastery (a score of 80 percent correct or higher on sound out-words) before moving on to the dictation phase.

Evaluate students' performance on review lessons. These lessons, noted in the lesson guide, are the final lessons for specific skill categories. Use the results of the testing phase of these lessons to confirm students' mastery of the skills. If students have not mastered the specific skill, repeat the corresponding lessons.

Review students' score sheets to monitor cumulative progress and to guide your instruction. The recommended requirement for passing the testing phase of a lesson is 80 percent correct or higher for sound-out words. If several scores are below this requirement, consider making a change.

Adapting the Signs for Sounds Program

Students monitor their own progress by recording their scores on their lesson forms and then transferring their scores to the score sheets in order to see their progress over time.

SPELL-OUT WORDS

Although students do not advance from lesson to lesson based on their performance on the spell-out words, it is nevertheless important to monitor their progress on these words.

At the end of the testing and dictation phases, note any spell-out words the students spelled incorrectly. Repeat those words in the dictation phase of future lessons.

Students monitor their own progress on spell-out words by recording their scores on their dictation forms and then transferring their scores to the score sheets. Students are able to visually monitor their own progress over time.

SIGNS FOR SOUNDS SPELL-OUT WORDS ASSESSMENT

You can also monitor student progress on the spell-out words by administering the Signs for Sounds spell-out words assessment at any time during the course of the program. This assessment can also be used as a pretest and posttest.

• The Signs for Sounds 1 spell-out words assessment covers 30 irregular words from the first 50 high-frequency words (in the order they are taught in level 1).
• The Signs for Sounds 2 spell-out words assessment covers 36 irregular words from the first 100 high-frequency words (in the order they are taught in level 2).

The Signs for Sounds assessment directions and student forms are located in the appendix of the Signs for Sounds Blackline Masters books.