TO: Kindergarten Teachers
FROM: Brenda Worden
RE: End-of-Year Assessments
DATE: February 6, 2004

Many of you are asking when we will be receiving the state provided End-of-Year Assessments. The assessments are still being revised and will not be printed until after February 25th. Hopefully, we will receive them sometime early Spring. In the meantime, below are some answers to questions recently asked:

Q: What subtests will be included on the end-of-year assessments?
A: ~Letter Identification – Upper/Lower Case
~Sound/Symbol Correspondence - Vowels/Consonants
~High Frequency Words
~Rhyming
~Phoneme Segmentation

Q: How will the Sound/Symbol Correspondence subtest be administered?
A: Students will be given a laminated page with the consonants and short vowel spellings. They will point to the letters (one by one) and say the sound. Teachers may point to the letters for the students, but will not say either the name of the letter or the sound it represents.

Q: Which high frequency words are students expected to know for the test?
A: The program introduces 31 sight words , which are all taught by the end of Unit 5. Some of those are decodable with CVC spelling patterns. There are 12 nondecodable words and most of those will be on the test. However, by the end of the year, students should have firm grasp on all 31 high frequency words. The 12 nondecodable words are: who, has, are, what, you, my, here, the, have, small, this, down.

Q: How will the Rhyming subtest be administered?
A: The same as the Mid-Program Assessment. Students will need to generate their own rhyming words.

Q: How will the Phoneme Segmentation subtest be administered?
A: Teachers will say a word and students will be asked to say the word back one sound at a time.

Q: Do teachers need to turn in the hard copy of the Mid-year Assessment scores to the district?
A: No, as long they are recorded on OARS, the hard copy doesn’t need to be given to anyone else. The only exception to this might be if your site principal makes this request.

Q: Which Concepts About Print should be used for the report card?
A: The Open Court Program Assessment booklet has a good test (Print and Book Awareness, page 4 – 6) that can be used.

Q: Which Writing Assessment should be used for the report card?
A: Use the Fox in Box Listening Passage, “Lost”, and the Writing Development Rubric on page 40 in the test booklet.