VELS Level 1 and 2 - An Observation Survey of Early Literacy Achievement

The observation tasks in this survey are designed to: allow students to work with the complexities of written language; to tell teachers something about how the student searches for information in printed texts; and how that student works with the information.

The Observation Survey of Early Literacy Achievement includes six assessment tasks:

• running records
• concepts about print
• letter identification
• word reading
• writing vocabulary
• hearing and recording sounds in words.

It is recommended that teachers obtain a profile of a student across all tasks. No single task provides a satisfactory assessment of progress in early literacy. (Marie Clay 2002)

Running records

Running records provide an assessment of text reading. They are designed to be taken as a student reads orally from any text. Running records provide evidence of how well students are learning to direct their knowledge of letters, sounds and words, and to understanding the messages in text. This kind of information allows teachers to prompt, support and challenge individual students.

About three workshop training sessions, with a teacher who is very familiar with running records, are recommended for teachers before they begin to use this as an assessment technique. (Marie Clay 2002, p. 51-54)

Concepts about print

This task focuses on written language and the information and observations students have absorbed in various environments. (Marie Clay 2002, p. 37).

These tasks have proved to be excellent indicators of the behaviours which support reading and writing acquisition. Nevertheless, a test score alone is not indicative of readiness (Marie Clay 2002, p. 41)

Letter identification

This task is designed to find out which alphabetic symbols students recognise. A name, a sound, or a word beginning with the letter or sound, are all acceptable signs that the child is identifying a letter.

Attaching a second or third label to the letter will be easy once the letter has been distinguished from all other letters (Marie Clay 2002, p. 83).

This observation task is designed, not for predicting progress, but to find out what children do and do not know. This can be used as a guide for subsequent teaching (Marie Clay 2002 p. 89)

Word reading

This task consists of three different lists of 15 words systematically sampled from 45 of the most frequently occurring words in the New Zealand Ready to Read series; a series first published in 1963 and revised regularly since 1978. (Marie Clay 2002, p. 91).

Students are asked to read one list. Their score indicates how well they are accumulating a reading vocabulary of the most frequently used words in the Ready to Read series during their first year at school.

The scores may be used, together with observations recorded, for book reading. Successive tests will indicate whether a student is improving in their reading of words. (Marie Clay 2002, p. 91)

Writing vocabulary

This task encourages students to write down all the words that they know. The student is given 10 minutes to complete the task. A series of systematic teacher prompts may be used if required.

This task is most useful over a one to two-year period, revealing how quickly a student is building up, and gaining a basic command, of writing vocabulary.

The value of this task, in predicting future changes in literacy, is diminished when the student can write more than 40-5 words. At this point the teacher should instead measure how the student does using more traditional spelling or writing tasks (Marie Clay 2002, p. 102).

Hearing and recording sounds in words

Going from phonemic awareness to letter-sound relationships, the teacher dictates a sentence for the student to write. To avoid a practice effect there are five alternative sentence forms that may be used for an initial assessment.

The student is encouraged to write down the sounds they hear in the words dictated. Scores show how successfully the student heard and recorded the sounds in English spelling.

The test is not a pure test of phonemic awareness because what the student has learned about spelling, or orthography, may also turn up in their recording. (Marie Clay 2002, p. 112)

Professional learning activities and resources

Download the review of the Observation Survey of Early Literacy Achievement

• What knowledge and skills are being valued in these assessment tasks?

The Observation Survey of Early Literacy Achievement includes six assessment tasks. An analysis of the results across all six tasks will allow you to obtain a profile for each student. The following guiding questions will assist you to use the results to plan for personalised learning for your students.

• What literacy behaviours do your students demonstrate in reading and writing continuous text?
• What are their learning strengths?
• What are their areas for improvement?

What learning experiences can I plan that will build on their identified strengths and target their areas for improvement?