During the first few weeks of the school year our Learning Resource Team (LRT) arranged for all students in grades 1 - 4 to complete a CORE phonics assessment. This assessment gives our teachers an opportunity to learn about our student's ability to use their knowledge of sound letter correspondences to decode words. It may also help us determine their ability to read individual words and learn of areas in which the student can benefit from targeted support and explicit instruction.

Following each student participating in the assessment, the LRT team gathered and collated the data to look for patterns within each of our divisions when it comes to the phonics related skills. Here is a very general summary of what we learned through the CORE phonics assessment for each of our grades from 1 - 4:

Grade 1 - all could use some support and review of letters sounds, many need explicit teaching on phonics, blending of phonic sounds and consonant - vowel - consonant (CVC) words

Grade 2 - many need to learn long vowel sounds and CVC words and blending of phonic sounds

Grade 3 and Grade 4 - many students would benefit from review or long and short vowel sounds. The assessment shows very clearly which students are not quite at grade level and will benefit from targeted support and explicit instruction in CVC words and long and short vowel sounds.

Overall, in grades 2, 3 and 4, there were a handful of students who were not able to recognize long and short vowel sounds.

To begin with, our LRT team, along with collaboration with classroom teachers, will address these areas of need through instructional approaches in the classroom using resources and programs such as Words their Way, Heggerty, reader's theatre, phonic games, literature centres and buddy reading.