Diagnostic assessment is a critical piece of designing effective instruction, but excessive assessment wastes time. The Diagnostic Decoding Surveys are efficient and easy to administer. Each survey can be administered in three to five minutes per student, and scoring each survey takes an experienced examiner one to four minutes.

The Diagnostic Decoding Surveys are designed to be used with students in the middle of 1st grade and beyond who are suspected of having reading weaknesses, based on a screening assessment or teacher’s recommendation. Many older students have decoding weaknesses that are the basis of their reading weaknesses.  The Diagnostic Decoding Surveys will identify decoding weaknesses and provide critical information for planning effective and efficient instruction for students of any age.

Selected features of the surveys:

• Students read real and nonsense words in isolation
• Surveys are untimed
• Surveys are administered individually
• Each survey generally takes less than five minutes to administer and score
• Seven forms of the surveys are available for progress monitoring

Description of Diagnostic Decoding Surveys
The Diagnostic Decoding Surveys comprise two informal reading assessments: the Beginning Decoding Survey and the Advanced Decoding Survey. The surveys identify weaknesses in a student’s decoding abilities. (Decoding skills are also referred to as phonics skills or word attack skills.) The surveys are designed around a generally accepted scope and sequence for teaching decoding skills.

The Beginning Decoding Survey assesses the student’s ability to read high-frequency words and one-syllable decodable words with short vowels, digraphs, and blends. The Advanced Decoding Survey assesses more advanced phonics concepts, including more complex vowel patterns and multi-syllable words.

The Error Grid is the key to identifying the student’s instructional needs. Examiners mark the specific error type when a student misreads a word. For example, when a student misreads the word rich as rick, a mark is made for digraph on the Error Grid. If the student misreads rich as reach, a mark is made for short vowel on the Error Grid. This precision in error analysis leads to appropriate student instruction.
Diagnostic Decoding Surveys Kit