One of the things at the top of my list comes August/September, regardless of the class, is to get assessments done. It's very hard to map out a plan for the year if I don't know what I'm working with!
Assessments can be time-consuming. It's also difficult to find time in the day when you can get children up to you 1-on-1. Particularly in infants when there's usually at least five children wanting attention from you all at the same time! I give myself plenty of reminders that I've the whole of September to work through them so I don't put undue pressure on myself. September has enough going on as is! I find morning time, when they're doing their morning activities at their tables, to be a good time for it. I also highly recommend some sort of visual indicator (light, hat etc.) to show that you're unavailable and can't be interrupted unless it's an emergency.
Depending on your school, you might have some assessments you're required to do. The areas I look to assess in infants are:
Phonemic awareness
Reading/Decoding
Encoding/Writing
Maths
Not only does it help with planning, organising class groupings, identifying children who need additional support etc. Assessment also gives lots of information for parent-teacher meetings/reports and, come June, it's lovely to be able to look back over their progress!
I've gone into more detail on my assessments below, with a download link at the bottom. If it seems like a lot, don't forget that you've the whole of September! I aim to get one heading done each week. If you're extra lucky, you might even be able to get SET to help you work through the assessments. You don't get if you don't ask!
Phonemic Awareness
'Heggerty' baseline assessment
Heggerty is the phonemic awareness programme that I follow. They have a great, free, baseline assessment available online. PA is really important in infants as they need to be able to hear the sounds within words before they can match those sounds to letters.
Reading/Decoding
Letter name recognition (lowercase)
Sometimes we can get so focussed on making sure children know their sounds that we can forget that it's important they also know the letter names!
Initial letter sound identification (26)
This is one of the most important assessments. In Senior Infants, you'd hope that a lot would start with you knowing most of these sounds but I've had children start with only a handful.
VC and CVC words (in list form)
This is important for seeing how well the children can blend their initial sounds to read words. If a child has struggled significantly with identifying initial letter sounds (in the above assessment) then I don't do this assessment with them.
Encoding/Writing
Initial letter sounds
I call out each sound and have them write down the corresponding letter. It's great for seeing if they can match letters to sounds, but also works as a handwriting assessment to see what way they're forming their letters e.g. letters being written backwards.
Name writing
I get them to write their name on the same sheet once per term. I note down their pencil grip, what hand they're using etc. It's a nice way of seeing they're progression over the year!
Maths
Subitising
Subitising is the ability to instantly recognise the number of objects in a small group without needing to count them. It's thought that the maximum number for subitising, even for most adults, is 5. So I show domino dots from 1-5.
Numeral identification (0-10)
Show children each number, in written form, and have them say the name.
Numeral writing (0-10)
Call out each number and have them write down the corresponding numeral.
Click on the image below 👇
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