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    First Grade Testing
     
     
    First Grade Testing

     

     
    First grade students are given five Marie Clay tasks and a test of auditory analysis.  The following is a brief description of each:
     
    1. Letter Identification Task:  The student is asked to identify letter names, sounds and/or words starting with a particular sound.
    2. Ohio Word Task: This is a basic sight word task.  The child is asked to read a list of words in isolation.
    3. Dictation Task (hearing and recording sounds):  The child writes a simple, slowly dictated sentence.  The September sentence does not include the more difficult sounds such as diphthongs, r-controlled vowels, etc.  The dictated sentence is more complex in the May testing.  As the school year progresses the first grade reading and writing expectations increase.
    4. Concepts About Print: This test identifies the child's understandinig of basic concepts about print such as directionality (read from left to right, top to bottom), return sweep, meaning of punctuation, one to one word correspondence, etc.
    5. Text Reading: The child reads leveled Fountas and Pinnell texts revealing the child's:

     Independent level: 95-100% accuracy with excellent or satisfactory comprehension.
     Instructional level: 90-94% accuracy with excellent or satisfactory comprhension.             Frustration level: Below 90% accuracy with any comprehension score.  
     A text read at 90-94% accuracy with limited comprehension is also frustration level    . 

    The Fountas and Pinnell reading provides valuable insights into:
    • How the reader orchestrates effective reading (on easier materials).
    • How the processing and problem- solving can be done (on instructional texts).
    • How and when effective processing breaks down (on the more difficult materials). 
    The Test of Auditory Analysis tests a child's auditory perceptual skills and shows how a child manipulates sounds. 
       
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    *Clay, Marie M.  An Observation Survey of Early Literacy Achievement, heinemann, Aukland, 1993