When the Little Learners Team are asked this question, we find that people often get muddled around the term 'move on' - sometimes teachers are referring to moving onto new content in the teaching sequence with their whole class, sometimes teachers are referring to what stage decodable book students should be reading. This blog will aim to cover both areas.

1. USING FORMAL ASSESSMENT DATA

Our formal assessments - the Little Learners Assessment of Reading Skills (LLARS) and the Little Learners Assessment of Spelling Skills (LLASS) - assess the scope and sequence of the Little Learners Love Literacy® explicit teaching program. They will identify, in diagnostic detail, what students know and to what level they can apply their skills and knowledge to reading. With this powerful data we can plan appropriate next steps for children as soon as possible.

The LLARS and LLASS are formal assessments designed to be administered twice per year - at the end of Term 2 and at the end of Term 4.

What's the data used for?

The data should be used to track student progress/achievement and inform:

• Tier 2 interventions (10-20 week additional small group instruction) 
• Whole class planning for the next term (Do you need to re-teach and revise content to whole class?)
• Reporting.

 Why shouldn't I use the LLARS and LLASS more regularly?

The formal assessments rate mastery and reveal the gaps in knowledge and misconceptions that require our attention.

• Formally assessing mastery of an LLLL stage straight after teaching is not the best use of time.  Mastery can take time - students must show not only that they have remembered the learning after some time has passed, but that they can apply their skills and knowledge in a range of scenarios.
  The LLLL scope and sequence is cumulative - it enables students to practice and apply in order to transfer learning to their longterm memory, allowing them to continue mastering prior learning whilst learning new content.
  

• Formative assessment is more efficient than the LLARS and the LLASS to make weekly decisions such as book choice, what scaffolding is required, what the revision foci should be, what tweaks are needed to your planning, etc. Formal assessments can be time consuming to use more than twice per year and as our time with our students is precious, we have to be smart with our time.

The LLARS is not an appropriate tool to inform decodable book choice for your students throughout the year. For small group reading to work effectively, teachers need to choose their groups of students and their decodable texts based on ongoing formative assessment.

2. USING INFORMAL ASSESSMENT DATA

How do we know what our students need? Teaching a defined, cumulative scope and sequence explicitly gives us powerful real-time informal data which can both inform our next steps for the class and our next steps for students (such as which decodable books to give them). 

Below we've broken down some examples of formative assessment data that every school using LLLL will receive regularly.

You might want to check out AERO's formative assessment practice guide for further advice in addition to this blog: https://www.edresearch.edu.au/sites/default/files/2021-03/AERO-Tried-and-tested-guide-Formative-assessment.pdf

1. Whole Class Teaching: Check for understanding techniques

Effective ways to check for understanding during whole class teaching and inform your next steps include:

2. Daily reviews

• Chitter Chatter Chants
• Speed Sounds
• Speed Words - decoding
• Speed Words - automatic
• Choral as a class, followed by cold call checks

Daily reviews are not only excellent for supporting students to remember, recall and master content and skills, they are a a handy check on student progress. Teachers can also include content in their daily review that has caused students issues in lessons earlier in the week, or the prior week of teaching. If students struggle - model it, practise it and check for understanding before moving on. 

3. Written work

Teachers have always used written work as a record of progress, as well as using it as evidence to plan next steps for students and it is no different with a structured literacy program.

Written work provides evidence of mastery of the alphabetic code and a number of skills. Remember, writing is a much more cognitively demanding skill than reading - if children can write it, they'll be able to read it.

• Let's Write Dictation should be scheduled twice per week and follow the Six Super Steps.

  The teacher can choose word, phrase or sentences to dictate. As students have no scaffolds for this writing routine it is an excellent formative assessment tool. Through this written evidence teachers can assess whether students can segment to spell words accurately with no scaffolds, read words accurately to check spelling, and form letters correctly.

• Other written work will include: Let's Spell (learn more), Read, Write and Draw (learn more) and more from the activities in the Teacher Activity Resources such as Sound and Write.

4. Small group reading observations

Reading a decodable book with small groups allows teachers to hear every child in the class do the following:

• Phonics warm-up: recall phoneme-grapheme correspondences, read Heart Words and decode single words at a certain stage of the teaching sequence
• Read connected text with developing fluency
• Show comprehension and vocabulary knowledge.

The LLLL Team have drafted a basic observation template that you are welcome to download and use in your small group reading sessions - let us know how you find it. Teacher time and focus must remain on the session - providing responsive feedback and instruction, not note taking/assessing skills.

Which book to chose next?

In an ideal world children would be reading the decodable books recommended in the Teacher Activity Resource books, allowing them to apply what they've been learning as a whole class. But every class has a bell curve and small groups are a good way to target your teaching to student need.

Review your observations from the small group reading session to decide if students need more practice at the same stage. Your choice shouldn't be too easy - the session is instructional, not independent, so you want teaching points to occur to help develop children's skills. The following questions can guide you:

• Was the reading slow and laboured to the point that comprehension and enjoyment was low? Try a lower level book or work on single word and sentence reading at this stage to build skills.
• Did children read some words automatically and decode to read other words (maybe with your support)? Was their fluency and comprehension developing? Good. They're reading the right books.
• Was reading accurate and automatic? Was reading comprehension high and prosody developing? Great! Don't skip ahead of your whole class instruction though - focus on prosody, and try the decodable nonfiction containing more challenging vocabulary and concepts for comprehension.

Your take-home and partner reading choices should use slightly easier books to build fluency and confidence. Read more about take-home reading here.

Still unsure?

Try a quick quiz at the end of each week with your whole class. This could be written or digital (using a tool like Kahoot) to record results.

We hope you agree that when teaching Little Learners Love Literacy® explicitly, you are receiving valuable formative assessment data every day to inform our planning - we just need to trust it!