How do I know if a student is ready to start taking the Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) assessment in Literably?

Here are a few things to consider when thinking about whether students should start assessing with Literably's Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) assessment:

1. Is the student ready to engage with a level A text? 

A helpful way to gauge this is to use the "See Preview" button to preview a level A text (see image below). Some teachers present the text preview to students (rather than the actual assessment) to informally gauge whether students are ready to engage with level A texts. Additionally, this tool (more info here) can help with selecting a (Level A-D) text based on each text's words and their frequency.  

2. Is the student's level A assessment able to be scored? 

If a student assesses at Level A, and the assessment comes back unscorable (e.g., because the student just describes the pictures), this might be an indication that the student is not ready to start assessing on Literably ORF for the time being if they're still working on their letter identification and sounds. 

It's possible that Literably's ORF assessment may not yet be appropriate for those students. For example, if a student might merely describe the pictures of a level A text, rather than read the words on the page, then it may make sense to wait to assess ORF until you feel that the student is able to engage with a level A text.  

3. Would the student benefit from taking a Foundational Skills (FS) assessment?

If Foundational Skills is not currently part of your district’s Literably subscription, you can consider using a personal email to sign up for a free teacher account, which allows you to assign up to 50 phonological awareness question items per week to students. A Foundational Skills subscription enables you to assess phonological awareness, phonics, and spelling (more info here).