7.1 Assessing Letter Naming Knowledge
Letter Names and Sounds Skill Explainer
Word Recognition x Language Comprehension = Reading Comprehension
Assessment
The process of measuring students' progress and providing information to help guide instruction
(active)
Word Recognition
The ability to see a word and know how to pronounce it without consciously thinking about it
Phonological Awareness
A group of skills that enable you to recognize and manipulate parts of spoken words
Articulation
The production of speech sounds.
Articulation Skill Explainer
Syllables
Part of a word organized around a single vowel sound
Onset-Rime
Two parts of a word: onset is the initial sound; rime is the vowel and any consonant sounds that follow it.
Phonemic Awareness
The ability to recognize and manipulate individual sounds within a spoken word
Phoneme Segmentation and Blending
- Overview of Phoneme Segmentation and Blending
- When to Teach Phoneme Segmentation and Blending
- How to Teach Segmentation and Blending
- Videos: See It in the Classroom
- Lesson Plans for Phoneme Segmentation and Blending
- Assessing Your Students
- What the Research Says
- Resource Hub: Phoneme Segmentation & Blending
(active)
Phonics
A method for teaching children the relationship between spoken sounds and written letters so they can learn to decode and encode
(active)Sound-Letter Correspondence
The relationship between a phoneme and the grapheme that spells it
Letter Names and Sounds Skill Explainer
- Overview of Letter Names and Sounds
- When to Teach Letter Names and Sounds
- How to Teach Letter Names and Sounds
- Videos: See It in the Classroom
- Lesson Plans for Letter Names and Sounds
- Student Practice Activities
- Assessing Your Students
- For Students Who Need Additional Support
- What the Research Says
- Resource Hub: Videos, Lessons, Activities
Phonics Patterns
Common letter combinations found in words.
Short Vowels Skill Explainer
- Overview of Short Vowel Sounds
- When to Teach Short Vowel Sounds
- How to Teach Short Vowel Sounds
- Videos: See it in the Classroom
- Lesson Plans for Teaching Short Vowels
- Student Practice Activities with Short Vowels
- Assessing Your Students
- For Students Who Need Additional Support
- Resource Hub: Videos, Lessons, Activities
Closed Syllables Skill Explainer
- Overview of Closed Syllables
- When to Teach Closed Syllables
- How to Teach Closed Syllables
- Lesson Plans for Teaching Closed Syllables
- Videos: See It in the Classroom
- Student Practice Activities
- Assessing Your Students
- For Students Who Need Additional Support
- What the Research Says
- Resource Hub: Videos, Lessons, Activities
Glued Sounds Skill Explainer
Open Syllables Skill Explainer
Spelling with 'c' vs. 'k' Skill Explainer
- Overview of Spelling with 'c' vs. 'k'
- When to Teach Spelling with 'c' vs. 'k'
- How to Teach Spelling with 'c' vs. 'k'
- Lesson Plans for Spelling with 'c' vs. 'k'
- Videos: See It in the Classroom
- Student Practice Activities
- Assessing Your Students
- Students Who Need Additional Support
- Resource Hub: Videos, Lessons, Activities
Consonant Digraphs Skill Explainer
‘-ck’ Spelling Rule Skill Explainer
- Overview of the '-ck' Spelling Rule
- When to Teach the '-ck' Spelling Rule
- How to Teach the '-ck' Spelling Rule
- Videos: See It in the Classroom
- Lesson Plans for the '-ck' Spelling Rule
- Student Practice Activities
- Assessing Your Students
- Students Who Need Additional Support
- Resource Hub: Videos, Lessons, Activities
FLoSS(Z) Spelling Rule Skill Explainer
- Overview of the FLoSS(Z) Spelling Rule
- When to Teach the FLoSS(Z) Spelling Rule
- How to Teach the FLoSS(Z) Spelling Rule
- Videos: See It in the Classroom
- Lesson Plans for the FLoSS(Z) Spelling Rule
- Student Practice Activities
- Assessing Your Students
- Students Who Need Additional Support
- Resource Hub: Videos, Lessons, Activities
‘y’ as a Vowel Skill Explainer
Coming soon.
Soft 'c' and Soft 'g' Skill Explainer
Coming soon.
R-Controlled Vowels Skill Explainer
Coming soon.
Vowel Teams and Dipthongs Skill Explainer
Coming soon.
'-tch' Spelling Rule Skill Explainer
- Overview of '-tch' Spelling Rule
- When to Teach '-tch' Spelling Rule
- How to Teach '-tch' Spelling Rule
- Videos: See It in the Classroom
- Lesson Plans for '-tch' Spelling Rule
- Student Practice Activities
- Assessing Your Students
- Students Who Need Additional Support
- What the Research Says
- Resource Hub: Videos, Lessons, Activities
'-dge' Spelling Rule Skill Explainer
- Overview of '-dge' Spelling Rule
- When to Teach '-dge' Spelling Rule
- How to Teach '-dge' Spelling Rule
- Videos: See It in the Classroom
- Lesson Plans for '-dge' Spelling Rule
- Student Practice Activities
- Assessing Your Students
- Students Who Need Additional Support
- What the Research Says
- Resource Hub: Videos, Lessons, Activities
Consonant '-le' Skill Explainer
Coming soon.
Schwa Skill Explainer
Coming soon.
Irregularly Spelled High-Frequency Words
High-frequency words that have a part of their spelling that has to be memorized
Irregularly Spelled High-Frequency Words
Multisyllable Words
Words that have more than one word part
Prefixes
How to add meaningful beginnings to words
Suffixes
How to add meaningful endings to words
Language Comprehension
The ability to understand the meaning of spoken words
Reading Comprehension
The ability to understand the meaning of printed text
Text Considerations
Characteristics of a text that impact the ease or difficulty of comprehension.
Strategies and Activities
How a reader approaches a specific text, depending on their purpose for reading
Reader’s Skill and Knowledge
The skills and knowledge a reader brings to the reading task that are necessary for comprehension
Sociocultural Context
Elements in a classroom that affect how well a child learns to read
Fluency
The ability to read accurately with automaticity and expression
Fluency: Accuracy, then Automaticity
Reading or decoding words correctly (accuracy) and reading at an appropriate rate (automaticity)
Accuracy, then Automaticity Skill Explainer
Coming soon.
Fluency: Expressive Text Reading
Reading characterized by accuracy with automaticity and expression
Expressive Text Reading Skill Explainer
Coming soon.
Writing
The act of putting thoughts into print using transcription and composition skills
Handwriting, Spelling, and Typing
Methods for translating speech into written words
Handwriting and Letter Formation Skill Explainer
Sentence Writing
Composing a complete statement, question, exclamation, or idea with proper grammar and punctuation
Writing a Simple Sentence Skill Explainer
Sentence Expansion Skill Explainer
- Overview of Sentence Expansion
- When to Teach Sentence Expansion
- How to Teach Sentence Expansion
- Video: See It in the Classroom
- Lesson Plan for Sentence Expansion
- Student Practice Activities
- Assessing Your Students
- For Students Who Need Additional Support
- What the Research Says
- Resource Hub: Videos, Lessons, Activities
Features of Structured Literacy
A systematic and explicit approach to teaching reading based on research
Students should eventually be fluent at letter naming as measured by 100 percent accuracy on a timed assessment. Typically during an assessment like this, students will read a document with rows of letters in various order and will be asked to name the same letter numerous times.
Here’s a short assessment you can download to check your students’ progress in mastering letter names. It should take no longer than two to three minutes per child. You'll also find a blank fluency graph where your students can chart their progress.
Letter Naming Assessment for Mastery
Use this mastery assessment for a quick check to see if students can accurately and consistently name each letter.
My Fluency Graphs for Reading Sounds and Naming Letters
Use this bar graph to promote immediate positive feedback, and record with students the correct number of letters read per minute so you can track and celebrate progress together.
If you have students struggling with particular letters (like 'b' and 'd' or 'y' and 'v'), check out this free Letter Fluency Generator (opens in new window), an online resource by Intervention Central. This will help you create more targeted assessments for those students.
Though letter naming fluency is often assessed on screeners three times a year, fewer students are likely to fall behind if you’re monitoring their reading development continuously. So consider doing these assessments more frequently and making adjustments throughout the semester.
Watch a Letter Naming Assessment
Alison Ellis is the reading intervention teacher for Jax, a first grader at Prather-Brown Center in Frederick, Oklahoma. In this video, she gives a quick one-minute assessment to monitor Jax’s progress in naming letters automatically and correctly.
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Alison Ellis: All right, Jax, how are you doing today, buddy?
Jax: Good.
Alison Ellis: Good. Okay. We're going to go over some of these letters and you're going to tell me the name of the letter today. All right?
Narrator: Today reading interventionist Alison Ellis is giving a quick one-minute assessment to first grader Jax to monitor his progress in naming letters automatically and correctly.
Alison Ellis: Alright, I'm ready when you are.
Jax: Ready. 'A', 'f', 'g', 'y' ...
Narrator: This is a skill they've been working on in their intervention block because letter naming is associated with proficient reading. As Jax reads the letters, Ms. Ellis records how he's doing.
Jax: 'A', 'm', 'g', 't', 'u', 'e' ...
Narrator: When Jax is done, Ms. Ellis will give him immediate positive feedback and share his results.
Jax: 'C', 'n', 'j', 'v' ...
Alison Ellis: Alright, we're going to stop there. Good job. So you read 43 words today or letters, excuse me. Okay, so we are going to talk about if we've made progress since the last time we did that. And so the last time we did that, you in one minute, you read all the way up to 37. And then what did I just say you did today? You remember what I said?
Jax: No.
Alison Ellis: 43. So did you make progress? Yes, you did. You did better today than you did last time. So we're going to go past that 40 mark on this second bar and we're going to color that all the way up to that mark.
Narrator: They use a bar graph to record how many letters he named accurately. This helps both of them see his growth and keep track of his progress. In the final part of this assessment session, Ms. Ellis will talk through each error with Jax, giving him time to think about each letter he missed and make corrections. This time and conversation are key because Jax is included in developing his own reading skills.
Alison Ellis: Good job. You made progress, buddy. Oh, right. So this is a letter that you got confused on. And what is the trick that we learned about recognizing our 'b' from our 'd'? We make our bed (Jax holds up his 'b' finger and his 'd ' finger ). So, what is this letter right here?
Jax: 'B'.
Alison Ellis: It is a 'b'. Good job. Okay, and then you got this one right here, but you stalled. That means you had to think about it for just a second. And this is a capital 'c'. That's a capital 'c'. And then the lowercase 'c' looks just the same, only a little smaller. Okay, so those are both 'c's, right?
Narrator: Jax is learning that accuracy, which is naming the letter correctly, and the rate, which is naming the letter without stalling, are equally important to becoming a skilled reader. Ms. Ellis will use the data gathered during this assessment for future lessons with Jax.
Alison Ellis: You did a lot better than you did last time. Thanks, Jax. Have a good day.
Narrator: Enjoyed this video? Don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel @RUTeaching. For more information, please visit ReadingUniverse.org. Special thanks to Prather-Brown Center, Frederick Public Schools, and the Oklahoma State Department of Education. Reading Universe is made possible by generous support from Jim and Donna Barksdale, the American Federation of Teachers, the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation, and three anonymous donors. Reading Universe is a service of WETA, Washington, DC, the Barksdale Reading Institute, and First Book.
Alison Ellis: I am Alison Ellis, and this is Reading Universe.
Letter Naming Goals
According to DIBELS (opens in new window), the widely used early literacy assessment, the end-of-year goal for kindergarten is naming 42+ letters correctly per minute. For first grade, the end-of-year goal is naming 59+ letters correct per minute. (While there are only 26 letters in the alphabet, your assessment will ask students to name letters repeatedly, including both uppercase and lowercase.)
The chart below shows the DIBELS (opens in new window) benchmarks for letter naming assessment in the fall, winter, and spring. These benchmarks are based on the 50th percentile. If students are below benchmark, they will require intensive support and are considered at risk for not meeting the next benchmark goal. If students are just meeting the benchmark, they will likely need strategic support and are at minimal risk for not reaching the next benchmark goal.
Kindergarten Benchmarks
| Fall | Winter | Spring |
|---|---|---|
| 25+ correct letters/minute | 37+ correct letters/minute | 42+ correct letters/minute |
First Grade Benchmarks
| Fall | Winter | Spring |
|---|---|---|
| 42+ correct letters/minute | 57+ correct letters/minute | 59+ correct letters/minute |
