Assessment Book Contents Table Teacher's Guide The Sound Knowledge Table Explanation The Sound Knowledge Table
CONTENTS Use performance on the following assessments, together with careful reference to the Sound Knowledge Table provided, to decide where is the best place to start working with each child. GUIDE FOR THE TEACHER SOUND KNOWLEDGE for the Green, Blue, Yellow and Red Programs ASSESSMENTS 1. Early years (same pictures are used for both assessments) a) Quick Screening Processing Assessment b) Detailed Processing Assessment 2. Green, Blue, Yellow and Red Programs a) Read words b) Read nonsense words c) Read sight words d) Read a story e) Spell words f) Spell nonsense words 3. Processing Skills Use performance on the following assessments to determine if your child is experiencing difficulties with these skills. If this is the case, a concentrated effort on helping the child to develop these skills will be of great benefit. 1. Separating Sounds in Words 2. Blending Sounds into Words 3. Processing of Sounds in Words 4. Identify Words in a Sentence (as opposed to syllables) 5. Identify Syllables in a Sentence (as opposed to words) a) Sheet A b) Sheet B 4. Additional assessing Use performance on the following assessments to determine the quality of the Written Language skills that your child is able to display. Writing about a Picture a) Write a sentence/s about a picture. b) Write a story about a picture. RECORD SHEETS 1. Early years (same pictures are used for both assessments) a) Quick Screening Processing Assessment b) Detailed Processing Assessment 2. Green, Blue, Yellow and Red Programs a) Read words b) Read nonsense words c) Read sight words d) Read a story e) Spell words f) Spell nonsense words 3. Processing Skills a) Sheet A b) Sheet B 4. Summary Sheet for all records
GUIDE FOR THE TEACHER The DIPL Assessment Book has been developed as a tool to help teachers determine the underlying phonological awareness skills essential for reading and spelling. It also allows for comprehensive assessment of a student s reading, spelling and writing skills. These assessment tools do not provide reading or spelling ages, but allow for a very comprehensive assessment of a student s strengths and weaknesses in the above mentioned areas. The assessments may be carried out at various times throughout the year. However, it is advised assessments are completed in the first few weeks to determine the needs of students and relevant programming adaptations. Follow-up assessments may then be carried out when the teacher feels appropriate. To support the comprehensive assessments provided in this book, a short spelling test for both real words and nonsense words is provided in the Easy Reference section of both the Teacher s Reference Book A and the instruction manual for each year of the program. Therefore the DIPL Assessment Book covers the areas of phonological awareness, syllable identification, reading, spelling and writing. Details of each assessment are outlined below: Phonological Awareness There is much research supporting the importance of quality phonological awareness skills in enabling students to become competent and successful readers and spellers (NSW Department of Education and Training, 2009, Literacy Teaching Guide: Phonemic Awareness). For this reason, the DIPL Assessment Book contains three specific phonological awareness assessments: A comprehensive assessment designed for the first year of schooling to ascertain how well the student is able to identify and distinguish individual sounds and manipulate individual sounds in words. This assessment also identifies the student s rhyming and syllabification skills. This is a very extensive assessment of phonemic awareness skills. An assessment for the first year of schooling. This assessment contains key components of the above assessment, but in a format that allows for a quicker screening of phonemic awareness skills. An assessment for ages 6 and above. This assessment will help ascertain the student s skills in identifying, distinguishing, combining, blending and manipulating individual sounds in words. It also assesses how well the student is able to distinguish words in a sentence and the number of syllables in words contained in a sentence. All of these provide a thorough assessment that clearly identifies a student s strengths and weaknesses in the underlying skills essential to be competent readers and spellers. Therefore, these assessments are a very worthwhile place to start with students. Reading, Spelling and Writing In addition to the phonological awareness assessments there are comprehensive reading, spelling and writing assessments provided. The reading and spelling assessments have been divided into specific levels that correlate with our remedial and extension program, Lizzy. For more information on Lizzy please visit our website on www.lizzyonline.com.au. The content of these levels can also be found in the front of the DIPL Assessment Book (called Sound Knowledge) with content correlations made to the various stages of DIPL. It is up to the school s/teacher s discretion as to which assessments are conducted. DIPL does not dictate the required assessments, but provides the tools to allow for comprehensive assessment if required.
Reading The reading assessment has been split into 4 sections; real words, short passages, nonsense words and sight words. The levels of each section increase in difficulty matching the average language milestone development of children. A record sheet for the teacher is provided for each section as well as the pages for the children to read from. These assessments must be completed on a one-to-one basis. It is recommended that the assessments be stopped once the child has made 5 or more errors in their reading, as this demonstrates the child is having difficulty with these types of word patterns. For example, if the assessment must be stopped while the child is reading through Levels 3 and 4, this indicates the child is having difficulty with long vowel sounds. From here, it would be recommended to provide support in this area using the Lizzy program or the sections of the DIPL program that correlate. The nonsense word assessment provides a thorough assessment of the students reading strategies and skills, not their ability to remember the words, which is sometimes the case in real word assessments. This is to be conducted in the same manner as for the real word assessment. Spelling The spelling assessment may be assessed one-to-one or as a whole class. A record sheet is provided for the teacher to use. However, a separate page is not provided for the student/s. As for the reading assessment, the levels of each section increase in difficulty matching the average language milestone development of children. It is recommended that the assessments be stopped once the child has made 5 or more errors in their spelling, as this demonstrates the child is having difficulty with these types of word patterns. For example, if the assessment must be stopped while the child is spelling through Level 1, this indicates the child is having difficulty with consonant-vowel-consonant words including consonant digraphs and the long vowels oo, ar and ee. From here, it would be recommended to provide support in this area using the Lizzy program or the sections of the DIPL program that correlate. The assessment for spelling nonsense words is a useful tool. By conducting this assessment it will become evident if the student/s has a sound knowledge of the DIPL rules or if they are, instead, relying on their memory of word patterns to spell. Because they are nonsense words, there will, sometimes, be more than one way to spell the word, e.g. squeen or squean; frated or freighted. Word meaning also is involved in spelling, and this knowledge will not help with nonsense words. However, the choice of letters must still fit with the rules. Writing The writing assessment provides a tool to determine the student s knowledge of text types, grammar and punctuation skills, also, their spelling skills beyond word level. Two pictures have been provided as stimulus for the writing tasks. A marking scale has not been provided for this assessment as it was felt the school s/teacher s discretion and criteria were of greater importance. It is important to remember, that these assessments have been provided as tools to help teachers determine the strengths and weaknesses of their students and program accordingly. DIPL does not dictate when each assessment must be completed, only offers advice. Also, not all students will need to complete each assessment. Instead, DIPL allows for professional teacher judgement on their knowledge of their school s assessment requirements and individual student s programming needs.
The Sound Knowledge Table. The Sound Knowledge Table serves two vital purposes, within the DIPL Assessment framework. 1. The Sound Knowledge Table is a diagnostic tool. The Sound Knowledge Table outlines the sound knowledge being tested within each of the Assessment Levels. The assessment of these Levels gives a clear understanding of the skills and knowledge that have been developed, as well as a clear point for diagnosing any areas of concern. Each Level has a particular sound knowledge skill set that children need to master before moving onto the next level, e.g. short vowels should be mastered in Levels 1 and 2 before moving onto long vowel work. When working with your class, this assessment can also give an indication of areas for review or areas that have been mastered. Sometimes the assessment can identify a chunk of missing Sound Knowledge that needs to be addressed before a child can progress. For example, when administering the Level 1 Spell Words test, a child (or group of students) that spell the word shack shak and fizz fiz, are clearly not applying the rule that states use ff, -ll, -ss, - zz, -ck after a short vowel. We would also check, in this instance, that the simple short vowel words in the test, such as cup and nets, were spelt correctly to ascertain firstly, if that child is confusing short vowel sounds, and then if they have simply just not grasped the rule. In Level 2, as well as the use of the spelling rule, we are also ascertaining whether the child can identify and manipulate consonant clusters (such as sp-, tr-, gl-, spl-, -unk, -ft and so on). 2. The Sound Knowledge Table supports individual learning needs. The Sound Knowledge Table provides information regarding where to locate each Sound Knowledge concept, within the DIPL Program. This gives the person implementing the assessments a point of reference for supporting the individual needs of a child or group of children. Consider a) A child working at a consonant/vowel/consonant level (Level 1 of the table) who cannot spell shack shak and fizz fiz... We can ascertain from the Sound Knowledge Table that Level 1 corresponds with the DIPL Green (or Mid Stage 1) Program, Week 8 and has information regarding the rule that states... use ff, -ll, -ss, -zz, -ck after a short vowel (see red arrow below). The Green Program material can then be utilised as a teaching point for that child, or students. If that child also had trouble with confusing short vowel sounds, we would then find the supporting material for this in Weeks 1-7 of the Green (or Mid Stage 1) Program. b) A child is able to process consonant blends (Level 2 of table) but cannot spell snack snak and frizz friz. We can ascertain from the Sound Knowledge Table that Level 2 corresponds with the DIPL Blue (or Later Stage 2) Program, Week 2 and has information regarding the rule that states... use ff, -ll, -ss, -zz, -ck after a short vowel (see blue arrow below). To ascertain the corresponding DIPL program to a specific level, simply identify the appropriate level and follow the table to the right.
Please note: These assessments always take into account anecdotal and evidence based data that have been gathered from DIPL lessons, and other sources.
LEVEL SOUND KNOWLEDGE SOUND KNOWLEDGE 1 short vowels cvc words a / u words cvc + s words -ff, -ll, -ss, -zz, -ck after short vowel wh, th, sh, ch, qu, ng oo, ar, ee 2 cvcc, ccvc, ccvcc words (l, r, s blends) revision of wh, th, sh, ch, qu, ng ph c / k rule -ff, -ll, -ss, -zz, -ck only after short vowel revision ck / k (especially -nk) -an, -am words base word + endings when to double, e.g. hopping ed = ed, t, d ch / tch rule cccvc, cccvcc, cccvccc revision of short vowel rules WEEK/UNIT INTRODUCED INTO DIPL GREEN BLUE YELLOW RED Week 6 Week 6 Week 8 Weeks 9-12 Weeks 13-15 Week 3 Unit 2 +++ +++ Weeks 18-23 Week 27 ----------------- 9 Weeks 19 +++ Week 23 Week 23 Weeks 24-26 ---------------- ---------------- Week 28 ----------------- Week 27, 29 Week 3 Week 3 Week 2 Week 2 Week 2 Weeks 5-8 Week 6 Week 7 Week 4 ---------- - 5 Unit 2 +++ +++ 9 Unit 2 Units 2-3 +++ Unit 2 Unit 2 +++ Unit 5 +++ base word + ending + ending 3 [ + e] Weeks 30-32 Week 9 Unit 5 +++ [ + e] + s ---------------- 1 [ + e] / no e, Week 33 0 Unit 5 -ck after short vowel, -k after long vowel ---------------- 0 Unit 5 Unit 5 +++ [ + e] + endings ---------------- ----------- Unit 8, 10 Rev in 6 4 ai, ay 2 2 Extended Unit 5 ee,ea,ey, y 3-14 3, 14 Extended Unit 6 ie, i-e, igh, y 5-16 5 Extended Unit 7 oe, oa, ow, old 7-18 6 Extended Unit 8 ue, ew = ue 9 7 Extended Unit 9 double vowels + endings (or 's') Week 22 8-19 Ext Units 5-9 revision ch / tch with long / short vowels Week 23 ----------- ----------- 5 c = s Week 24 Unit 6 Unit 6 g = j Week 25 Unit 6 Unit 2 dge / ge rule Week 25 9 Unit 2 -age, -iage ----------- Unit 27 Unit 23 c / k, c = s, c = k Week 26 Unit 9 6 ou, ow ----------- Week 28 Unit 22 5 oo (short) ----------- Week 27 Unit 21 4 oo (long) 3 Week 27 Unit 21 4 ar 4 Week 27 Unit 21 4 oi, oy ----------- Week 29 Unit 23 6 au, aw, al, or ----------- Weeks 30-31 Units 24-25 Units 17-18 er, ir, ur ----------- Weeks 32-34 Unit 26 Units 19-21 7 prefixes (re-, ex-, mis-, un-, dis-, be-, en-, in-+more) Unit 5 +++ Units 11-13 + suffixes (-ing, -ed, -ful, -ly, -tion, -ness + more) 1 +++ Units 25-29 how to read big words 1 Units 17 + contractions Units 11-13 +++ 8 rules for the sound [s] Unit 27 Unit 22 rules for the sound [j] Unit 23 sounds for letter 'y' Unit 24 vowel +gh (-aigh, -igh, -ough, -eigh, -augh) Unit 28 Unit 5 + silent letters (kn-, wr-, -mb, -st-) Unit 29 9 a = o words Units 4, 21 wh / w Rules for plurals etc. from the Yellow Program and the Red Program have not been included in this assessment book.