Quick Ideas: PreK-K

Reading Assessment

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Put on a Puppet Show
Measures reading comprehension. Invite the child to act out a portion of a story he or she has read or retell it using paper dolls, puppets, or blocks. Encourage the student to describe what he or she is doing while retelling. Check for comprehension by asking inferential questions about the text, such as “What do you think Cinderella did next?”

Sit in the Critic's Seat
Measures language comprehension. Give the child a pair of sunglasses and have him or her sit in a director’s chair in front of a television or laptop. Tell the child that he or she is a “movie critic” and then show a short, preferably dialogue-rich clip from a favorite children’s film. Ask the critic questions about what he or she has just heard, focusing on inferential questions such as “What do you think Nemo was feeling when he was in the dentist’s office?”

Guess the Mystery Song
measures decoding skills. Choose a popular children’s song, such as “The Itsy-Bitsy Spider” or “Old McDonald.” Write at-level vocabulary words from the lyrics of the song on separate index cards. Have the child read the cards one-by-one, and then challenge him or her to guess the song. If a child struggles with accuracy or fluency, play the song and try the activity again.

Pretend to be on TV
Measures background knowledge. Interview the child as if he or she was an expert on a television show. Before you begin a unit of study, invite the child to hold a cardboard frame around his or her head to represent the television. Ask the child relevant questions to your unit; for a study of China, for example, you might ask, “Where is China? What language do they speak?” Repeat at the end of the unit to check progress.

Sort Big from Small
Measures letter knowledge. Display a gallery of upper- and lower-case letters on an interactive whiteboard. Also display two boxes, one labeled “upper-case” and one labeled “lower-case.” Invite children to name each letter and then drag it into the appropriate box. Invite a partner to check the work.

Listen to Silly Words
Measures phonology skills. Give the child a buzzer borrowed from a board game. Read aloud paired nonsense words that differ by only one phoneme (gibbit and schibbit, for example). Also occasionally read the same word twice. Have the child sound the buzzer when he or she thinks you read the same word. When finished, ask children to make up fun meanings for the nonsense words.

Read a Mixed-up Story
measures syntax skills. Read aloud a favorite picture book to the child, but change things up by switching the syntax of several sentences to be incorrect. While reading Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, for example, you might read, “the police went to they” instead of “they went to the police.” Ask the child to raise his or her hand every time you read an incorrect sentence, then challenge them to say the mixed-up sentence in the correct way.

Make up Secret Spy Names
Measures phoneme awareness. Have children come up with secret “spy names” by rearranging the phonemes in their own names. For example, they might put the first phoneme in their name last (so that Sara becomes Aras), or vice versa (Ike becomes Ki). Have children each determine the code names for your class roster, and then have a “secret spy snack time” where you use the code names to refer to one another.

Plan A Picnic
Measures knowledge of the alphabetical principle. Ask children to write a packing list for a pretend picnic. Together, discuss what to bring, asking questions such as “What should we have for dessert?” or “What will we eat off of?” Have children write the list with no input from you. They may spell words incorrectly (e.g., plat for plate), but their ability to reflect the number of sounds in a word demonstrates knowledge of the alphabetical principle.

Play Librarian
Measures knowledge of print. Invite children to take turns serving as both librarians and patrons of your classroom library. Have the “librarian” check out books by writing the title and the name of the borrowing student on a clipboard. The “patrons” can sign their names to show they received the book. Observe how all students handle the books (e.g., holding right-side-up, reading from left to right and front to back) as well as their word and letter formation during the checkout process.

Hannah Trierweiler is the assistant editor of Instructor.

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