Back to Assessment articles & videos

A guide to Sound Waves spelling and reading assessments

Sound Waves Literacy 15/4/24

Sound Waves provides a suite of assessment resources for Foundation and Years 1–6 to help you closely monitor students’ progress.

Let’s unpack what each assessment entails and see how they fit into the yearly plans.

Foundation

Reading and Spelling Assessments

What are they and when do I administer them?

There are four types of assessment in the Sound Waves Foundation program that are used to evaluate students’ ability to read and spell words with the sounds and graphemes taught.

Phonemic Awareness Assessment: This assesses the phonemic awareness skills taught during Phase 1: Exploring Sounds in the Foundation program. The skills assessed include identifying initial, final and medial phonemes, blending and segmenting. To align with Phase 1: Exploring Sounds, the assessment is administered at the end of Term 1.

Single Word Reading Assessment (Regular Words): This assesses students’ ability to read single words containing the phoneme–grapheme relationships taught during Phase 2: Discovering Graphemes in the Foundation program. These assessments are administered at the end of Terms 2, 3 and 4.

There are two assessments for each term. The first assessment features VC, CV and CVC words, making it an ideal starting point for all students. The second assessment is more difficult, featuring either CCV, CCVC, CVCC or two-syllable words. It is up to your own teacher judgement if you conduct both or just the first assessment with each student. For example, if a student is struggling with the first assessment you may choose not to progress to the second assessment with that student.

Single Word Reading Assessment (Special Words): This assesses students’ ability to read the Special Words (high-frequency words that contain unusual or advanced phoneme–grapheme relationships) taught during Phase 2: Discovering Graphemes in the Foundation program. These assessments are administered at the end of Terms 2, 3 and 4.

For both the Single Word Reading Assessment (Regular Words) and the Single Word Reading Assessment (Special Words) you’ll use the Recording Sheets to record whether the student has read the word correctly or incorrectly. A correct attempt can be recorded as either automatic or decoded. For example:

Correct attempt – automatic
The student read the word accurately and quickly without having to sound it out. For example, they read zap as zap, not sounded out as /z/,/a/,/p/

Correct attempt – decoded
The student correctly sounded out the word. For example, they read web as /w/,/e/,/b/

The Foundation Reading and Spelling Assessment Information also includes a Marked Sample along with information on common reading behaviours to look out for when conducting the reading assessments.

Spelling Assessment: This assesses students’ ability to spell words containing the phoneme–grapheme relationships taught during Phase 2: Discovering Graphemes in the Foundation program. These assessments are administered at the end of Terms 2, 3 and 4.

How do I use the results?

For each of the four assessment types used in Foundation, the Assessment Information includes follow-up suggestions for students who experience difficulty and require targeted remediation.

When a student has difficulty with phonemic awareness skills, such as identifying phonemes or segmenting, use the Sound Waves Foundation Skills Remediation Resources (available in the Foundation Reading and Spelling Assessment section of the online teaching resources) to provide remediation.

When a student is mostly decoding (reading words correctly but not automatically) they need more practice reading connected texts to develop automaticity. Use the Sound Waves Decodable Readers to assist with this. Refer to the Assessment Information for specific details on which Decodable Readers to use to revise different word types including:

• CV, VC and CVC words
• CCV, CCVC and CVCC words
• Special Words.

It is also recommended to revisit lesson content at Sound Waves Literacy Online to reteach the phoneme–grapheme relationships or Special Words students read incorrectly.

Foundation assessment schedule

A regular check-in of student progress is essential, especially in the first year of schooling. This is why the Foundation assessments are designed to be used in combination across the four terms.

The following assessment schedule shows how each type of assessment fits into the Foundation year.

Years 1 to 6

As Years 1 to 6 share a similar unit structure, they also share a similar assessment schedule. These year levels include two types of assessment: the Spelling Diagnostic Test and Remediation Pack and Content Reviews. Each assessment has its own benefits and together they form a perfect pair to give you a comprehensive picture of your students’ spelling knowledge and application.

Spelling Diagnostic Test and Remediation Pack

What is it and what does it do?

The Spelling Diagnostic Test is a single-word spelling test consisting of 70 words. There are two versions of the test, one for lower years students (Years 1–3) and one for upper years students (Years 4–6). The test allows you to diagnose students’ strengths and weaknesses with specific spelling concepts and use the targeted Spelling Diagnostic Remediation Resources (also available in two versions for lower years and upper years students) where required.

Unlike other traditional spelling tests where whole words are marked as correct or incorrect, the Spelling Diagnostic Test focuses on whether specific components within each word are correct or incorrect. This in-depth approach to marking allows you to closely monitor students’ progress with specific spelling skills, such as their ability to use consonant digraphs, consonant graph blends, suffixes and more.

Administer the Spelling Diagnostic Test at the beginning of Semester 1 and Semester 2 (see the Years 1 to 6 assessment schedule below). This approach allows you to get the most out of the diagnostic and remediation process, where you:

• administer the test to your new students at the start of the year
• implement any required remediation in Term 1 and Term 2
• administer the test again at the start of Term 3
• implement required remediation in Term 3 and Term 4.

How can I use the results?

Record students’ results in the Spelling Diagnostic Results Spreadsheet to automatically assign an achievement level (Not Evident, Developing or Achieved) for each focus component. The spreadsheet has a colour-coding system that will automatically highlight cells red, yellow or green, making it easy to identify which students are sitting at Not Evident for particular spelling concepts. As an added bonus, the Spelling Diagnostic Results Spreadsheet allows you to input students’ results for both Semester 1 and Semester 2 so you can easily compare progress between the two sittings.

If any of your students do not demonstrate an Achieved level, use the resources from the Spelling Diagnostic Remediation Resources. The resources include activities, games and worksheets for each focus component so you can provide targeted support in a variety of ways. Use time on a Friday (outside the weekly spelling lesson schedule that runs Monday to Thursday) to conduct this remediation as required.

Content Reviews

What do they do and when do I administer them?

The Content Reviews allow you to check students’ understanding of phoneme–grapheme relationships and monitor their long-term retention of previously taught Focus Concepts. There are eight Content Reviews per year level. Each review includes a section on single-word dictation, phrase/sentence dictation and Focus Concept activities.

The Content Reviews provide you with regular feedback on students’ knowledge. Use this feedback to address misconceptions and inform future teaching.

The reviews can help answer the following questions:

• Did the student learn what I taught them over the previous four to five weeks?
• Did they retain the knowledge and processes correctly?
• Can they apply the grapheme choice or suffix addition pattern to a new context?
• Do I need to revisit a concept or clarify a misconception?

We highly recommend using the Content Reviews to replace a traditional Friday spelling test as they give you a more valuable picture of a student’s spelling ability as well as information that directly relates to the teaching undertaken in your spelling lessons.

Administer a Content Review at the middle and end of each term (see the Years 1 to 6 assessment schedule below). Each Content Review should take no more than 40 minutes to complete.

How can I use the information?

After marking a Content Review, you can record students’ results in the Content Review Results Spreadsheet (optional). This spreadsheet allows you to easily identify students who scored 50% or less for dictation and Focus Concept activities. However, unlike the Spelling Diagnostic Test results, it is not essential to record the Content Review results in the spreadsheet provided. If a student scored 50% or less for Single Word Dictation or a Focus Concept, the related spreadsheet cell will become orange. The Phrase/Sentence Dictation cells will only become orange if a student scored 0 out of 2.

If you notice a large number of students struggling with a particular Focus Concept, refer to the Scope and Sequence to identify where and when you can address this through your teaching. Here are two possible ways to achieve this:

• If the concept is repeated in a future unit, students will have an additional opportunity to learn and understand the concept as part of your regular lessons. When you’ve identified a Focus Concept that’s giving students trouble, such as the suffix ed, take note of when the concept is repeated so you can be sure to spend time explicitly teaching and helping students with the concept next time.
• If the concept is not repeated in a future unit, use time on a Friday (outside the weekly spelling lesson schedule that runs Monday to Thursday) to revisit the lessons or printable resources from a previous unit. You could also simply revise the concept through a game of Bingo or a dictation exercise.

Years 1 to 6 assessment schedule

Together, the Spelling Diagnostic Test and Remediation Pack and Content Reviews provide regular assessment, which is critical to check students’ progress and provide timely intervention or extra practice when needed.

The following assessment schedule shows how both types of assessment fit into a school year for Years 1 to 6.

Note: The Spelling Diagnostic Test is available in a lower years version (for Years 1–3) and an upper years version (for Years 4–6). The Content Reviews are specific to each year level.

Where do I find the assessment resources?

Log in to Sound Waves Literacy Online and open the Assessment section. Click on the relevant year group button to find all your assessment resources in one handy place. Here, you can access detailed information about the assessments, including all the resources you need to administer, mark, remediate and record results. For Years 1 to 6, in addition to being available in the Assessment section, the Content Reviews are also conveniently located within the relevant units.

So there you have it, an overview of the suite of Sound Waves spelling and reading assessment resources you can use to confidently assess and monitor student progress throughout the year.

More Sound Waves Literacy articles & videos