THE DEB SOUND AND LETTER ASSESSMENT
(grapheme to phoneme or phoneme to grapheme )
The purpose of this assessment is to see if your child knows the sound of the letter and the name of the letter. Sound (phoneme) – to Symbol (letter).
It will also assess if your child can write the sound they hear. They can’t write a word if they don’t know how to write the sounds the word is made of.
You will need
- Lowercase letter chart for naming sounds (provided on PDF below )
- Uppercase letter chart for naming the letters (provided on PDF below )
- Lowercase chart for writing the sounds (provided – use the same lowercase letter chart you used for naming the sounds)
- Lined paper to write the sounds
- Data Sheet (provided on PDF below )
Steps
- Let the child know what is happening e.g. “Today we are going to check all your wonderful knowledge on the sounds of the alphabet. Then we will know what sounds we need to work on. It shouldn’t take too long, but if you find it hard you let me know.”
- Make sure you do this in a quiet spot so there are no distractions.
- If it takes 3 days, that’s fine, do each stage one at a time. Each child will be at different stages.
- Cover the other lines of sounds with a sheet of paper so they don’t get overwhelmed and move across as you come to each row.
Start with –
- I’m going to show you some letters today and I would love to see how many sounds you know because I know how hard you have been working.
- Start with the lowercase letters. Go through the first row one at a time and see if they can tell you the sound of the letter. Then continue through each row on the sheet until it’s finished.
- If the child says the name of the letter say: “Well done, that is the name of the letter, do you know the sound?”
- If the child is struggling and is getting more than 4 sounds wrong in a row, stop and say well done and ask them if they know any other sounds on the sheet and mark them off on the sounds assessment chart attached.
- Then praise the child again for a good job.
Uppercase
Use the same steps as above but instead of sounds you are asking for the name of the letter. If the child says the sound of the letter instead of the name say: “Well done, that is the sound of the letter, do you know the letter’s name?”
Again, if the child is struggling and is getting more than 4 wrong one after the other, stop and say well done and ask them if they know any other letter names on the sheet and mark them off.
Writing the sound
It’s just as important to assess if the child can write the sound they hear.
Use the lowercase letters sheet and ask the child to write each sound as you say them. Remember to keep praising the child for their efforts.
Don’t correct anything, you are looking for things like, did they start the letter in the correct place, is the formation correct, did they write it backwards? Most importantly did they write the correct sound?
This assessment will help you see what sounds cards you need to start teaching your child and what letters they need to start practicing.
Only teach 2-3 letter sounds at a time. Then you can build on those sounds and keep adding them into the pack each week.
Fill in the date so you can monitor the child’s success.
This document was created by Sharon Scurr founder of the deb in August 2021
Updated 18/01/23