In the Fall, as a teacher you are always excited to receive your students. But you also want to know exactly where each student lies on a metric for growth to assist each student's growth as a reader and writer. The Fall easyCBM BOY assessment allows me to pinpoint each student's starting point when he or she enters my first grade classroom. The assessment provides me with a diagnostic understanding of each student and gives me the tools to plan accordingly to ensure each student's growth throughout the school year.
Beginning of the Year Easy CBM Reading Assessment (BOY)
The purpose of the beginning of the year assessment (BOY) is to capture each student's starting skills. The beginning of the year assessment is a diagnostic test to find out where students are beginning the school year, in addition to checking any skills to be retaught to students from the previous year. Consequently, the beginning of the year assessment, gives me a starting point as an educator and allows me to know where students are at presently and where to begin.
Fall Letter Sounds Assessment
The beginning of the year letter sounds assessment is measuring the knowledge of letter sounds students have entering first grade. The assessment is a diagnostic test and indicates a starting point for students.
The Fall Letter Sounds Assessment is provided in two parts on the easyCBM assessment, including the student copy and the assessor copy. The student copy displayed on the left is displayed in front of the student and the assessor copy is marked by the teacher administering the assessment. To ensure my student's success on easyCBM assessments, I provide students with a ruler to move down the page as he or she reads each letter sound. This marker helps students keep track of where he or she is on the chart of letter sounds. Students have sixty-seconds to say the sound each letter makes. Students start at the top of the page and read across each row. As students read, I provide scoring marks to indicate students letter sound knowledge. Please refer to the assessor copy examples below to gain an understanding of the scoring system for the Fall Letter Sounds Assessment.
The slideshow, includes three examples from the Fall Letter Sounds assessment. Students read from the student copy and the assessor follows along marking mistakes or self-corrections. To encourage students, instead of drawing a slash as indicated in the instructions, I draw a smiley face. Students are told the smiley face stands for the letter sounds that we need to work on together when preparing for the following assessment. Students respond well to the smiley faces and understand that each face marks a place for growth. The Fall Letter Sounds assessment, allows me to gauge each student’s starting point for letter knowledge and sounds.
Fall Word Reading Fluency Assessment
The beginning of the year assessment measures each student's diagnostic word reading fluency. This assessment determines for me each student's sight-word knowledge. Depending upon the level of the score, I assign individualized sight-word lists and goals.
The Fall Word Reading Assessment is given in two parts by the easyCBM system, the student copy and the assessor copy. Similar to the Fall Letter Sound assessment, students read from the student copy and the assessor marks the student's progress on the assessor copy for record. The students are instructed to read across the page and then on the next row. Again, I include a ruler for each student to encourage the students to mark their place as he or she is reading words across the row. The assessor marks any words read incorrectly and words that students self-correct. Once all student results are collected the scores are input into the easyCBM benchmark data entry.
The slideshow, includes three examples from the Fall word reading fluency assessment. Students read from the student copy and the assessor follows along marking mistakes or self-corrections. To encourage students, instead of drawing a slash as indicated in instructions, I draw a smiley face. Students are told the smiley face stands for the words that we need to work on together when preparing for the following assessment. Students respond well to the smiley faces and understand that each face marks a place for growth. The fall word reading fluency assessment, allows me to gauge each student’s starting point for word reading knowledge.
Fall Phoneme Segmenting Assessment
Phoneme Segmenting is only measured in the BOY window. The assessment demonstrates a student's ability to break down words into individual letter sounds. A student's phonemic awareness indicates strong reading and writing foundation. The score on the phoneme awareness section indicates the students that are ready to read and interact with increasingly complex texts and students that need to continue to develop phonemic awareness first before receiving intentional challenges as readers.
The Fall Phoneme Segmenting Assessment includes one copy. The assessment is administered orally, the student during this assessment is listening and responding to the words supplied by the assessor. For the assessment students are organizing the letter sounds he or she hears in each word. The assessment is testing each student's ability to break down words into individual sounds. First grade scholars' phoneme segmenting is only tested during the easyCBM BOY testing window.
The slideshow, includes three examples from the Fall Phoneme Segmenting assessment. The assessor reads a word from the assessor copy and the student is prompted to say the individual letter sounds in each word. Students should not see the assessor copy, this assessment is done orally to gauge each student's starting ability for phoneme segmenting.