Assessment: Senior Infants

Yesterday’s blog post was on assessment in the beginning of Junior Infants. While some of the checklist could apply to Senior Infants too, there are other types of assessment that could be carried out in the early stages of Senior Infants.

In the early days of Senior Infants I use these checklists from NEPS. the phonics skills checklist will assess their letter sounds, blending and diagraphs. I also use the Dolch first hundred words checklist. I copy one for each child and have one master copy. I enlarge the master copy to A3. The child reads from the master copy and I highlight the words they know on their individual sheet.This sheet is then stored in my assessment folder and can be repeated at another stage in the year. This makes it easier to monitor progress for each child.

Another similar test for phonics can be found in the teachers manual of the Just Phonics books by educate.ie. We are introducing Just Phonics to our infant classes this year. These workbooks are based on the Irish phonemes and sounds and the children also get a practice copy in the pack which can be used for homework. I really like the Teachers Manual that is available for this scheme. It contains an assessment pack that can be used from Junior Infants right through to 2nd Class. Once copied it can be kept on file for the individual child and this makes it easier to monitor progress too.

While these assessments methods for Literacy are for Senior Infants, they can be extended and used in a 1st class setting also.

In maths I devised my own checklist in line with my Ready Set Go scheme. This checklist could be used in June of Junior Infants or early stages of Senior Infants. It can be hard to complete these checklists in a busy class, so for the early days of Senior Infants I would focus on one specific group that you may have concerns about. I have another checklist that can be used throughout the year for Senior Infants Maths, it could also be used for early days in 1st Class. Both of these Maths checklist are now available on Mash.ie.

 

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