Complimentary Tools

Diagnostic Decoding Surveys

Our Diagnostic Decoding Surveys are an easy and efficient way to detect when students are having word-level reading difficulties, and pinpoint their specific decoding weaknesses.

Our two most popular surveys are the Beginning and Advanced Decoding Surveys.

The Beginning Decoding Survey assesses how well students are reading words they should have mastered by the end of first grade:

High frequency words
Single syllable words with short vowels, digraphs, and two-sound blends

The Advanced Decoding Survey assesses the decoding skills students should have mastered by the end of third grade:

Single syllable words with short vowels and more advance phonics patterns (i.e. trigraphs, three-sound blends)
Single syllable words with advanced vowel patterns
Multisyllable words (real and nonsense)

The complimentary packet contains everything you’ll need for initial assessment of an unlimited number of students. The packet also provides and explanation of how the survey results can be used to group students, and it offers guidance on how to plan effective and efficient instruction.

Learn more about about Diagnostic Decoding Surveys.

Schools nationwide use our decoding surveys as a great companion piece to universal screening instruments such as DIBELS®, Developmental Reading Asssessment®, and AIMSWeb®. The Diagnostic Decoding Surveys enable one-on-one assessments of struggling readers’ phonics skills, and they are free and easy to administer.

After you've used the Diagnostic Decoding Survey, the Grouping Matrix™ allows you to group students according to their reading level.

RGR also publishes six additional forms and a User’s Guide that may be used for progress monitoring. The User’s Guide provides comprehensive guidance on how to administer, score, and interpret the Diagnostic Decoding Surveys. The User’s Guide includes reproducible copies of the additional forms.

RGR also offers workshops for teachers or administrators who use or would like to use the Diagnostic Decoding Surveys in their school. Contact us to bring a customized workshop to your school.