National Institute for Literacy - Assessment Strategies & Reading Profiles

Reading components work together. Increasing skill on any component affects skill on the others.^RR

We know that if a Native Speaker of English born in the U.S. is in the ABE system and reading between GE 3-5, he/she is probably reading or learning disabled.

Word Recognition and Spelling:

Have your learners mastered these prerequisite skills to accurate decoding (reading) and encoding (spelling):
1. Do they know the names and sounds of the consonants with automaticity?
2. Do they know the names and the long and short sounds of the vowels with automaticity?
3. Do they know the principles of open and closed syllables?
4. Do they understand segmentation/chunking practices?
Profile 8 readers have not mastered the above skills to the point of being able to apply them automatically when they begin to read or spell a word. Developing automaticity in attaching sounds to symbols (phonological awareness) is the skill to aim for. However, Profile 8 learners have a dyslexic's reading component profile of low print skills (alphabetics) and higher vocabulary skills, and therefore, for some, phonological awareness may never become fully automatic. But, practice will strengthen these reading skills and benefit all others.

Phonemic Awareness (PA)
- Any kind of practice that involves only the sounds of letters--not the letters themselves--will help focus learners' attention to "sounding out" a word before spelling it. Give them a PA assessment such as the Test of Auditory Analysis Skills (TAAS) (5 minutes per learner) to see where their mastery of consonant deletion gets shaky. Five minutes of a PA game (see the Spelling page in the Mini-Course) before you start a spelling lesson will prompt the learners to listen to and manipulate sounds before they put symbols to the sounds in the lesson itself.

Phonological Awareness
- To know just which letter combinations and syllable forms that a learner needs further practice on, you can administer a simple word attack assessment. It will save instructional time in that you will be able to zero in on just those unmastered phonic elements that are holding up a learner's progress.

Visual Memory
- Enlarge their bank of non phonetic sight words for both reading and spelling. Similar techniques to those you would use to teach decoding phonetically irregular words (sight word practice) apply to teaching to encode (spell) them.

Word Meaning (Vocabulary):

Some of the new vocabulary words that are appropriate to middle school social studies and science curricula can be used also for both word recognition and spelling instruction. In that way, learners will be able not only to read and understand new words but also to use them in written work. There will be reciprocal reinforcement among all three of these reading components (word meaning, word recognition, and spelling).

Silent Reading Comprehension:

As their word recognition skills improve, we can expect them to be able to give more energy and attention to understanding more difficult passages. As of now, they have to pay too much attention to decoding individual words to think about the meaning of a sentence or paragraph.
They need more general information. Elicit background knowledge before reading. Provide additional background information. Learners need information about the world that they missed in K-12 by not being able to read well enough, not being available to the instruction, or not being in school.

For more information on strategies for instruction and supporting research, please read the sections in this Mini-Course on Word Recognition, Spelling, and Silent Reading Comprehension.

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Browse Profile 8: "HIGH WORD MEANING"Low Intermediate Group - Silent Reading GE 3-5

Suggestions for Instruction for Profile 8 Learners

Browse Profile 8: "HIGH WORD MEANING"
Low Intermediate Group - Silent Reading GE 3-5