Informal Assessment
Administering informal assessments on a regular basis throughout the school year provides useful information that can help teachers to identify the individual strengths and weakness of each student — and most importantly, guide the next steps in instruction.
More resources:
- Sounds and Symbols: Assessments by Specialists (PBS Launching Young Readers series)
- Fluent Reading: Assessing Reading Skills (PBS Launching Young Readers series)
- Assessment: Course Module
- Topics A-Z: Assessment and Evaluation
Informal assessment information can help you decide the following:
- How to plan future instruction so that student needs are met
- How students should be grouped for instruction so that each student receives instruction at the right level of difficulty
- If instruction is being delivered at the right pace
- Which students need individual support
What do I want to know about my students?
There are different informal assessment tools for assessing various components of reading. It's important to ask yourself: "What do I want to know about my students? What do I want to assess?" These short articles can get you started:
- Concepts of Print Assessment
- Letter/Sound (Alphabet) Recognition
- Phonemic Awareness Assessment
- Phonological Awareness Assessment
- Phonic Elements
- Word Recognition
- Reading Fluency
- Reading Accuracy
- Informal Reading Inventory
Assessment chart
For easy access to all of this assessment information, just download and print the PDF handout: Overview of Informal Reading Assessments.
Featured Video: Informal Classroom-Based Assessment
See also
- Topics A-Z: Assessment and Evaluation
- Reading Assessment Database for Grades K-2, Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL)
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