Articles on: Literacy

A collection of questions raised in relation to the Early Years and Foundation screening.

Q1: With the Early Years Pre-Literacy Screen- Alphabet Sound Knowledge Section (Kindergarten). If the student only recognises the sound with the hand action - should this be marked as correct, half correct or incorrect when entering the data onto the spreadsheet?

Answer: The purpose of the action is to scaffold the initial learning process and should not be linked to the testing. The testing is only testing if the student sees the letter and verbalises the sound (whether the action is present or not is irrelevant).

Q2: Foundation teachers have completed the reading and spelling screening for Term 3, however if a student has correctly spelled the target sound, but incorrectly spelled another part of the word (i.e. incorrectly identifying either c,k or ck) are they still marked as incorrect? Examples of the last assessment included:

Keep- ceep

Book – boock, booc

Quick – quik, quic

Skip – scip

Answer: Words are only marked correct when they are totally spelled correctly. The skills are emerging if the phonic pattern or concept is within the word, but this represents partial skill development. Students need to apply the phonic concept to the whole word and within a word; this typically means applying the additional letter patterns before and/or after the phonic concepts.
Keep in mind, that if a student is unable to spell the word in isolation it is HIGHLY UNLIKELY that the word would be able to be spelled within sentence level (self-generated writing), which is the ultimate goal of spelling. In terms of the PLD teaching sequence, remember that digraphs are still presented within Term 4. Many students will not secure 100% at the end of Term 3. https://pld-literacy.org/product/foundation-teaching-sequence-manual/

Updated on: 05/10/2021

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