Reading Words Self-Assessment

I use this assessment with PreK and KG students 3 times a year. At the beginning (after a few weeks of school), middle (usually December or January) and end.

You color code according to the date so you and the students are able to see their progress. Give the child about 5 seconds to read the word then move to the next. young children usually sound out the words, which means they say each sound and then say the word.

At the beginning preK I do not expect the children to read any of the words but as the year goes on we begin to see progress. At the end of the school year I expect them to be able to read most of the words independently by slowly sounding them out. 

At the beginning of Kindergarten some children might not be able to read any of the words but they usually progress fast and by the end of the school year I expect them to read all the words accurately and in less than 4 seconds by sounding them out loud or internally.

I am also posting a blank template for you to put your own words.

Below is an example of a finished assessment. This assessment might go in the child's portfolio.

Portfolio Cover Idea

Student portfolio covers is something that usually evolves with the portfolio content. The students had done a nice collage of tissue paper on colored paper and we thought that would be it, another beautiful art creation. 

Letter Sound Assessment

Assessing the knowledge of letter sounds is extremely important in preschool. If a child knows the sounds of the letters and has the ability to orally blend and segment sounds to read and write words then this child is likely to be successful in reading and writing in Kindergarten.

Of course I am going to take into consideration all the important reading and writing behaviors expected for the age of the child but for that I use different assessment tools.

This post is to share with you what I have developed for assessing the knowledge of letter sounds.

With the template I created the child (or the teacher if it is too tiring for the child) colors the letters as the child says its sound.

Once the letters are colored the child can ‘see’ how many she or he knows and the others become a learning goal.

Once the child colors all the letters it gives the child such a sense of accomplishment, and by then the child is usually doing guided reading which is heavy in comprehension, word attack strategies and becoming an independent reader.

I usually use this assessment at the beginning of the school year, December and end of the school year, usually end of May or June. 

The child shown below is moving to another country so we had a short conference about her portfolio and we decided we should complete all the assessments that I will do later in the month with the other students. 

Below are the templates for assessing knowledge of Upper and Lower case letter sounds. Just click on the images do download the template.

Here are the blank templates for you to write the letters as you teach them in your class.

I suggest to demonstrate the assessment to the class before you do it with the individual student.

If you have a projector and a white board or an interactive board you can easily do this.

Self-Portrait

Making a Self-Portrait is always a fun and enriching activity. I am going to describe today's learning experience in doing a self-portrait.

First I showed the paper the students would use and I projected it on a white board. You can use a smart board of course or just chart paper I recommend having something to model drawing yourself.

We defined self-portrait and thought about which shapes we have in our bodies.

I asked a volunteer to come to the front and asked the kids to help me draw her face.

I add all details the children suggested.

 We were happy with the results.

I modeled using a mirror to look at my face and draw it.

After I finished my self-portrait I asked for the students input. They were fantastic. They asked me to add my hanging little camera purse, earrings, glasses, my toes showing because I was wearing sandals, patterns from my dress, and more.

I then handed a mirror and a paper to each student.

The kids had a ball looking at their faces in the mirror

They could work sitting or standing. And look how this girl is so focused on her drawing.

Even the younger ones did an amazing job.

Princesses did a great job too.          

After they were all ready we shared them with the group. I have different ways of sharing work. We had targeted our audience. It was our friends and our parents as we thought that this would be a great portfolio piece.

The way we chose to share today was for me to hold each drawing and ask the class to tell what they liked about the self-portrait I was holding.

And here are some more self-portrait samples.

You can download the self-portrait template by clicking on the picture below.

If you are doing portfolio with your class I have made two templates that can be useful. One to be used at the beginning of the school year and another one for the end of the school year. This way we can see the progress of drawing a self-portrait. 

Click on the pictures below to download the templates.

Reading Reflection for Student Portfolio

It’s the time of the year when many of us are preparing for student portfolio sharing conferences.

Student Portfolio is an amazing tool for many reasons that I can talk about later.

One of the pages of my students' portfolios is a reflection of what they feel as a reader or how they feel about reading.

I am sharing today three different templates. You can download the documents in Word doc format so you can manipulate them according to your needs, but please keep my copyright at the bottom of the page.You need to delete my picture and replace with a picture of your student. Adjust the spaces if necessary.

I do a group discussion about why students consider themselves good readers (or not). Being a good reader and good reading behaviors is something we have been talking about since the beginning of the school year.  So it should be something familiar to the students. It is not something I am just introducing now.

Then you need to have individual conferences with each child to tell you his / her thoughts. I usually transcribe that the child says as in Pre-K most of the students can’t write long sentences.

I really enjoy the whole process of student portfolios!

Amelia Mello, M.Ed.

World's Math Day

Today is World's Math Day and we did a lot of Math activities.

We did many activities and I am going to show two of them, writing numbers and shapes.

In preparation for writing numbers on a paper we did counting, rote counting and singing. The students traced numbers on the seed tray, traced them also on the sand number card and finally they wrote the numbers using the colors of the rainbow. They have also done numbers with play dough, counters, dot-to-dot and many other ways but not today.

I made a worksheet for the students to trace the numbers . Repetition is key but it needs to be fun. Out of everything I tried the rainbow number worksheets is what the students liked the most and it is only one sheet of paper that you can use many times. You can ask the child to use one color per day but if the child is motivated you can let the child trace the numbers with as many colors as the child wants in one go. I made two templates. One with numbers from 1 to 5 and another that goes up to 10.

Click on the picture below to download the template 1-5 from MediaFire.

If you want to use the back of the page you can have the students trace dotted numbers.

Click on the picture to download the template from MediaFire.

Here is one example of the student work from the template 1 to 5.

I made a sand number card by gluing sand on the numbers on a colored cardboard. It works well. You can also cut the numbers on sandpaper.

Click on the image below to download the template 1 - 10 from MediaFire.

On the back of this paper you can have the children trace and copy numbers 1-10.

Click on the image below to download the template from MediaFire.

And one more sample of student work.

We also reviewed SHAPES!

And we recorded the shapes we know. This assessment is going to be placed in the students' portfolios.
I had the shapes pre cut and the students could choose which color they wanted and how they would place the shapes on the page.
Click on the image below to download the template from MediaFire.

If the child did know know all the shapes of their learning goal, we place the shape(s) the child did not know along with the sheet in a plastic pocket. In a month or two we can check again and if the child can name a shape then it can be pasted on the sheet.

I would also like to share an assessment that I did on counting and rote counting as this is one of the skills we usually work with preschoolers. This type of assessment allows you, the child and parents to see the child's progress in rote counting and counting objects from the beginning until the end of the school year. It is an idea for a portfolio entry.

I made this template if you are going to use dots. My students used the dot-to-dot markers for this assessment.

 I also made this template to be used with anything the child wants to count like fingerprints, cut shapes, seeds, etc.

Amelia Mello, M.Ed.