About the assessment

The Spelling diagnostic assessment assists teachers to establish where individual students are in their spelling development to target teaching and monitor student learning progress over time.

To help identify teaching focus and plan for differentiated instruction for students, the assessment items are grouped into sets that include different forms of spelling knowledge and skills. The sets align with K-10 English syllabus outcomes and includes National Literacy Learning Progression indicators.

The assessment is currently paper-based and focusses on students’ ability to coordinate all 3 word forms when spelling: phonology, orthography and morphology.

The assessment identifies a student’s

• phonological knowledge – the ability to segment spoken words into smaller units of sounds within a word (syllables, onset and rime, and individual phonemes)
• orthographic knowledge – knowing letter patterns within words (26 letters of the alphabet to represent 44 phonemes)
• morphological knowledge – understanding the meaningful word parts and how they can connect.

The Spelling diagnostic assessment can be used as both a formative and a summative assessment with any student from Kindergarten onwards. It can be administered with individual students, small groups or the whole class.

Teachers can use the assessment:

• in conjunction with teacher observations and other literacy assessments to monitor student progress
• to support differentiation
• to provide student feedback and enable goal setting.

Information for families and carers

If you have any questions relating to the Spelling diagnostic assessment, please speak to your school.