Ms. Pyburn uses daily, informal observation and monitoring as part of her phonemic awareness instruction. This monitoring provides her with information about her students' strengths, weaknesses, needs, and progress. Such continuous informal assessment allows Ms. Pyburn to adjust lessons to provide additional practice as needed and helps her plan for Workshop.

Individual progress with phonemic awareness and phonics activities is likely to vary among students. Therefore, Ms. Pyburn observes her students closely as she conducts activities, noting differences among them. This information will be helpful in developing instructional plans for individuals and small groups of students.

To make informal observation of phonemic awareness skills an easy and regular part of your classroom routine, you might want to do the following:

• Before beginning an activity or lesson, decide which students you want to observe.
• Decide which aspects of students' learning you want to observe.
• Record notes as appropriate. For example, you might answer the following questions:
  • - Do all students understand the activities?
  • - Are some activities more difficult than others? (For example: Are the oral blending activities more accessible than the segmentation activities? Are some segmentation activities more difficult than others?)
• Observe each student in the class over several days. It is not necessary to collect information about every student every day.
• Make notes to document differences among students and activities.

Click here to view the Observation Log: Phonemic Awareness