How To Use A Nonverbal Phonics Screener

Every year, elementary students get screened in the Fall, Winter, and Spring to keep track of their phonics abilities. There are many different ways that districts perform these screeners, including computer based assessments, paper based assessments, and oral assessments. One thing that always frustrated me as a special education teacher is that there was no way for my nonspeaking students to participate in phonics screeners, so I never knew what their true phonics knowledge was! If I claim to be a teacher that presumes competence, then I need to give my students a chance to show me what they know and what they need help with so that I can target my interventions to meet their needs.

One of my special education colleagues introduced me to the CORE Phonics Screener years ago, and I’ve been undergoing a project to adapt it for non-speakers because I think it is so valuable to a special education teacher trying to better understand her students’ phonics skills. The CORE Phonics Screener is from the Consortium on Reaching Excellent in Education and looks at a student’s ability to identify common phonics skills that are present in early reading. If you remember Scarborough’s Reading Rope from undergrad, you’ll remember that skilled reading can be broken down into two main skills- language comprehension and word recognition. The CORE Phonics Screener assesses a student’s beginning word recognition skills, specifically phonological awareness and decoding abilities. The screener starts by assessing a student’s alphabet skills and letter sound correspondence (Parts A-D), and then moves on to assess a student’s reading and decoding skills (Parts E-L). Among those skills include short and long vowel spellings, CVC words, common and uncommon consonant spellings, digraphs, -tch trigraph, r-controlled vowels, and multisyllabic words.

Even if you understand that knowledge of these phonics concepts will help our students become better readers, it can be hard to know how to assess our students who are nonspeaking. Using the CORE phonics screener, I’ve laid out below some steps you can follow to adapt this screener for your students. When you’re ready to administer, you can find Parts A-D of the screener in my Free Resource Library (access available below) and I’m currently working on adding Parts E-L in my TPT store (stay tuned!). A complete screener, including error analysis pages, will also be listed on my TPT store.

Administering the Screener

Below I outline how to administer the screener and adapt it for your nonspeaking students. I’m a visual person, and if you’re like me just reading about how to do something doesn’t usually cut it- you can watch a video of me walking through how to do this on my TikTok page!

Before you even begin the screener, it is really important to model for your students how to respond to the questions you’re going to ask. Once you’ve determined the most reliable way your student can respond (eye gaze, pointing, AAC device, writing, even using their foot for direct selection!), you are going to want to model for them what you want them to do. I like to do this with a student’s name or another symbol, picture, or word they easily recognize. You’re going to put this easily recognizable word or picture in a field of 3 in front of the student. The other 2 cards should be blank. For your students using eye gaze, you want to put the 3 cards on different corners of an eye gaze board or felt board. For your direct selection students, you can either use a felt board, a dry erase board, spread the cards on a table, or even spread the cards on the floor if they’ll be using their feet. For students using their AAC device or writing the answer, make sure they have those materials ready to go.

Once you’ve set up your practice section, say the name of the target and immediately show they how to select the icon. For example, if you have a student using eye gaze, touch or point a flashlight at the correct card when you say its name. For the next trial, you want to change the location of the cards and say the name of the target again. This time, you’re going to model how to respond and wait for the student to also respond, as well. Finally, move the location of the cards one more time and say the target name. This time, you’re going to wait for the student to respond. If they don’t given 5-10 seconds of wait time, model for the student and continuing practicing until they got it. If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice this follows the classic “I do, We do, You do” approach to explicit teaching!

After your student clearly understands how you’re asking them to respond, you going to pick the part of the screener you’re going to assess. I only recommend doing one part at a time, and given your student’s attention needs you might only be able to do 3-5 targets at a time before taking a break. That is okay! We want to make sure we’re accommodating our students’ needs when administering a screener like this because the goal is not for them to take the “test” in a standardized way, the goal is to truly understand their knowledge! Each part (Parts A-L) consists of a directions form, a recording form, and response sheets. These sheets can be presented as-is to the student or cut up and rearranged to meet the response form that is easiest for your student.

This is the time to get creative in order to get the most of your screening session! Do you have a learner who can’t sit still? Put the cards on a board and hold them up while the student jumps on the trampoline, or tape the words or letters to a big wall and have them walk to find the correct target. Do you have a learner who hates “academic” looking tasks? I do too, and I find that by decorating the cards with glitter or using different colors to outline the words helps things look less like a task and more like something fun! Do you have a student who does better with technology? Project the response pages on your smart screen and let them point to or circle their answer. I really encourage you to find a way to make this as enjoyable as possible for your students for two reasons. 1. This is a really long screener with lots of parts, and it is important that students are responding not just to end a task but to show their knowledge. 2. The way you present the screener tasks will be similar to how to introduce phonics instruction to your student. If they are used to doing these kinds of tasks because they are enjoyable, your instruction will be much easier once you’ve completed the parts of the screener you need to.

If you would like to be the first to know when the complete adapted nonverbal phonics screener is completed, sign up for emails below and I’ll send out a note to you when it is ready!