Progress monitoring checklists are provided for the review assessments in LOE Foundations and Essentials lessons. The checklists are designed to help you keep track of which skills students have mastered and which ones are still developing. In addition, they help to identify which skills need to be mastered before you move on. The checklists are designed particularly for those teaching in a classroom or group setting, but those teaching multiple students in a home school setting may find them helpful as well.

About assessments and progress monitoring

Progress monitoring tools like the review/assessment lessons in Foundations and Essentials should be viewed as a way to track students’ progress in order to make better informed decisions. Both Logic of English core curriculums build on the skills of reading throughout the program; therefore, students are not expected to have each skill in every assessment mastered. The progress monitoring tools have been developed in order for you to understand where your student is at and what (if anything) they need to review before moving forward in the program.

Foundations

In Foundations, a chart is included at the beginning of each review in the teacher’s manual notes listing the desired mastery level for each skill:

• Skills marked with a 1 should be mastered before the student progresses to the next lesson.
• Skills marked with a 2 should be familiar to the child, but the child can still be working towards mastery. Level 2 skills will be practiced extensively in upcoming lessons, which will provide the student an opportunity to move towards mastery.
• Skills marked with a 3 do not need to be mastered in order for students to progress. They are listed in the chart; however, they are not included in the assessment activities.

These target mastery levels for each activity in the assessments are provided to give you an idea of what skills students should have mastered by this point. For the skill to be considered “mastered,” the student must independently complete all aspects of the activity with 95-100%. 

For skills to be considered “developing,” students need to show that they are familiar with the concepts, but they do not have to be able to apply them with great accuracy at this point. These skills will be used and practiced more as the lessons progress.

Emerging skills, marked with a 3, are skills that have just been introduced to the students or that are more advanced. While these skills have been introduced in the lessons, they do not need to be mastered before students can progress, and are therefore not measured in the assessments.

Essentials

The Essentials progress checklists focus on two levels of mastery:

• Mastered — these skills should be mastered before students progress to the next unit. Students need to be very comfortable with these concepts before moving on.
• Developing — students should be very familiar with these skills and be able to demonstrate developing mastery in them; they will have some opportunities to continue practicing them in future units.

Many skills will be listed as needing to be mastered. Essentials introduces the concepts to students at a faster rate than Foundations, which is why a high level of mastery of fundamental skills is needed before moving on to the next unit. It is important to provide additional practice with any of these skills if students need it; students should not be allowed to fall behind on these concepts. There should be a collaborative effort between students and teachers to determine what areas should be practiced further.

It is important to note that the areas in which mastery is required are different in Logic of English than in many other programs, because the focus is on learning the tools for spelling rather than coming away with a finite list of memorized words. This is why you will notice that mastery of the unit's spelling words, which are assessed through dictation, is always listed as a target of developing. There are two reasons for this.

1. Mastery is not required in the dictation portion because the requirements continually shift, becoming more challenging with each unit as students learn new concepts. So students should continue to find this section challenging as the level of difficulty increases. It is not expected that their "score" here will improve over time, since each unit introduces more challenging words.
2. Essentials is not a spelling word memorization program; mastering the tools they are learning and applying them successfully in many words is a higher priority than memorizing individual words in this week's list. Memorizing which phonogram to use to spell a sound in a particular word when more than one is permitted by the rules often takes significant practice, and more time may be needed before all the words are fully mastered. This need not prevent the student from learning new concepts. A student who is applying the phonograms and rules accurately and spelling most of the words correctly is ready to progress to the next unit. Use students’ performance on the dictation assessment to assess their understanding of the phonograms and rules they are learning and to determine whether more spelling practice with the spelling words may be helpful to include in future lessons.

Using the Progress Monitoring Checklists

The goal of using the progress monitoring checklists is to decide if students need more review, games, or practice before moving on to future lessons. When making decisions about what to do next, it is always good to have at least a snapshot of how each student is progressing.

Download Progress Monitor Checklists (PDF)

Foundations checklists include a list of kindergarten and first grade Common Core standards fulfilled by the lessons. Foundations C and D also fulfill many second grade standards.

Foundations A Progress Monitor Checklist

Foundations B Progress Monitor Checklist

Foundations C Progress Monitor Checklist

Foundations D Progress Monitor Checklist

Essentials checklists include a list of third grade Common Core ELA standards fulfilled by the units. Essentials fulfills many fourth and fifth grade standards as well. Additional third, fourth, and fifth grade standards are fulfilled by The Essentials Reader.

Essentials 1-7 Progress Monitor Checklist

Essentials 8-15 Progress Monitor Checklist

Essentials 16-22 Progress Monitor Checklist

Essentials 23-30 Progress Monitor Checklist