Week 5- PALS article review and Phonemic Awareness links

The article “Linking Assessment and Instruction via Web-based Technology: A Case Study of a Statewide Early Literacy Initiative” by H. Partridge, M. Invernizzi, J. Meier and A. Sullivan provides us with an in-depth review of how effective web-based technology was used in the state of Virginia at helping to support their early literacy initiatives. The Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening (PALS) is a statewide early literacy screening tool which identifies those students who might be in need of additional instruction between the grades of kindergarten through third grade. The PALS system uses technology which makes it easy to access students’ early literacy progress over several years. In kindergarten, the teachers are able to track the progress their students are making in concepts such as phonological awareness, alphabet recognition, letter sounds as well as invented spelling just to name a few. In the first through third grades, the teachers can track to progress their students are making in areas such as word recognition, spelling, oral reading in context as well as fluency and comprehension. The PALS website allows teachers to log on and enter the scores their students achieved during PALS screenings which are described as twice per year, at the end of the fall and spring. The PALS website offers various web-based reports which provide unique information with a specific purpose. For example, there is a “classroom summary sheet” which provides the teacher with an overview of class performance. The “class report” gives the teacher the ability to identify the students they feel should receive intervention as well as the ability to group their students by their instructional level for reading. As the article mentions, the reports and data which are provided by the PALS website have several different purposes but their main benefit is the fact that they bridge the gap between assessment results and informed instruction which is the key. I think my favorite report generated by the PALS website database is the “score history report”. This tool allows any teacher to monitor the progress a student has made throughout the years. I believe this is very important because occasionally students move to another state or community. The benefit of this link is that it allows a teacher who is unfamiliar with this student to look at the assessment data which has been provided by previous teachers and they can inform their instructional goals based upon it.
The PALS site has benefits for administrators as well. Principals as well as district literacy personnel can use the information found on the site to determine the effectiveness of their literacy programs, what staff to hire to meet the needs of their students as well as staff development to provide ongoing support.


2 Phonological Awareness Assessment Tools:

Songs For Teaching website:
1) http://www.songsforteaching.com/phonemicawareness.htm

This site builds phonological awareness through the use of songs. Students can listen to the songs and follow along with the lyrics while building skills such as concepts of words and syllables; rhyming; word families, blending as well as the manipulation of phonemes.

2) Read Strong website:
http://www.edb.utexas.edu/readstrong/phonoaware.html

This site provides links for teachers, students as well as parents on phonological awareness. In addition, there are teaching strategies offered such as name games, invented spelling, poetry as well as read-alouds and tongue twisters to help students develop phonological awareness.