Early+Literacy+Assessment

Assessing children gives the teacher an idea of their progress and what they need to learn. It allows the teacher to group the children into categories of learning focuses. For example a small group of children may need to work on a certain set of words for spelling or reading. The teacher needs to know 'what students know and what they need to know' (Opitz & Ford, 2001, p.15) before they can group the children. there are several points the teacher needs to assess to gain an understanding of the child's level. These are written language, ideas and text conventions (Hill, 2006). These cover what the child knows about written language, the meaning of the writing and ideas the child has come up with and also text placement and directionality (Hill, 2006). Running Records can be used to assess reading. The teacher listens to the child reading and marks the percentage of correct words, self-correcting, repeating and asking for help. These records can be done continually through the year and give the teacher an understanding of what the child might need to learn and what they can move on from.