Teaching · Reading Intervention

Which sounds come instantly, which come slowly, which not yet.

Show each letter, listen for the sound and press one key. Two probes side by side show which sounds became automatic, which the student knows but has to think about, and which still need teaching.

Start a probeWhat you get
$19one-time · every device you sign in on
Buy · $19

Included with Caveat Classroom and Whole-school licenses. Or get it in the Reading Intervention toolkit, $49 for 34 items.

The letter-sound probe

One record per student and pair of probes. Use initials or a code, never a name. The example is made up.

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What you get

Teaching · Reading InterventionAlso for Teaching · For Tutors$19 · included with Classroom and Whole-school licenses

What you finish with
For each student, two probes of 31 letter sounds side by side, with counts of automatic, slow and unknown sounds, the sounds that became automatic, and lists to teach and to practice.
Who it is for
Reading interventionists, tutors, special education teachers and early-grade classroom teachers who teach phonics.
Format
Browser grid with keyboard entry, used during the probe. Several saved records per student; printed with the summary or as a blank recording sheet; CSV with one row per record; export and import a file.
Access
$19 one-time, yours on every device you sign in on; the tool opens once you are signed in with it. Included with Caveat Classroom and Whole-school licenses. Also in the Reading Intervention toolkit ($49) and the Teaching Suite pass ($199), and 1 more bundle. Everything you type stays in this browser; nothing is sent to Caveat.
Where it lives
The Reading Intervention space in Caveat Teaching; also listed in the For Tutors space (tutors run the same quick letter-sound probe).
Support
Questions about an order, access or a correction: team@caveatacademic.com.
msee it, say it, no pause
Drawn for this page. Knowing a sound is the first step; giving it without a pause is what frees attention for blending and reading words.

How to use it

  1. Start a record with the student’s initials or a code and the date of the second probe.
  2. Set how you show the letters and the seconds that count as quick.
  3. Show each letter and press q, s, x or n for what you hear. Use the first column for the first probe.
  4. A few weeks later, fill in the second column the same way.
  5. Teach the sounds not yet known and practice the slow ones for speed.

Start a probe

What the probe is for

Accuracy, then speed

Students need to know each letter’s common sound and give it quickly. A sound the student has to search for slows blending and uses up attention that reading words needs. Probing both accuracy and speed shows which sounds to teach and which to practice until they are automatic.

Giving the probe

Show letters in a mixed order, one at a time, and ask for the sound, not the name. Count a response as quick if it comes within the time you set, and use the same rule each time. The sounds listed are the common first sounds taught: short vowels, hard c and g, qu as in queen, x as in box, y as in yes.

What this tracker is not

It is not a normed screening measure, gives no benchmark or percentile, and does not identify a reading disability. It is a teaching probe for planning lessons.

Sources

  1. National Reading Panel (2000). Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction (phonics instruction).
  2. Foorman, B., and others (2016). Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade (NCEE 2016-4008). Institute of Education Sciences, What Works Clearinghouse practice guide.
  3. Ehri, L. C. (2005). Learning to read words: theory, findings, and issues. Scientific Studies of Reading, 9(2), 167 to 188.
  4. Moats, L. C. Speech to Print: Language Essentials for Teachers, 3rd edition (2020).

The example student is made up. The tracker is a teaching probe; it does not screen for or diagnose a reading disability. Support: team@caveatacademic.com.