Begin by assessing phonemic awareness, the ability to hear and manipulate the sounds of our language, by having the student identify pairs of spoken words as being the same or different. Use some pairs of words that have gross differences, such as boy/table, and some that have slight differences, such as hit/pit. Create items that have slight differences in initial sounds, medial sounds and final sounds. For example, include discrimination items such as pit/hit, pit/pet, and pit/pig.
Have the student count the sounds heard in spoken words with three to five phonemes. This can be accomplished by having the student say words one phoneme at a time, as in when a young reader "sounds out" an unfamiliar word. The word "dog" spoken one sound at a time would be said /d/-/o/-/g/. The learner can put up a finger for each sound as it is spoken.
Show the student letters of the alphabet in isolation and find out if the basic sounds for each are known. For example, show a card with the letter H on it and ask the student what sound that letter makes. The student should respond with the /h/ sound. When assessing letters with two or more common sounds, such as vowels or letters C or G, prompt the student to give another sound after the first response.
Display letter cards showing common clusters of letters and ask the student to identify the sounds made by those groups. Begin with the more common digraphs and clusters, such as sh and ch. Include vowel digraphs and dipthongs such as aw, au, oy, ou, ai, oa, and ie as well as r-controlled vowels like /ar/ and /or/ in the assessment of a more experienced student.
Assess the student's ability to apply phonics rules and see phonetic patterns by having him or her read nonsense words from flashcards. Include nonsense constructions that demonstrate the consonant-vowel-consonant pattern, such as gat and heb, and use all five vowels in the medial position. Create cards that require knowledge of the consonant-vowel-consonant-silent e pattern such as pape and nibe, again being certain to include all five vowels. Use nonsense syllables that require recognition of vowel combinations, such as bowd and tay, those that will show understanding of r-controlled sounds like sher and har, as well as those that show syllables with consonant blends and digraphs in various positions, like shob and cratch.
Use polysyllabic nonsense constructions to assess the student's understanding of syllabication. Cards should include examples of two syllable words to split between consonants, like gosnip, and those that split before or after a single medial consonant, such as pamer or faden. Use constructions that have real affixes on nonsense base words, such as plimming and datched, and include nonsense words that have the -le ending, like badle which would have a long /a/ and tabble which would have a short /a/ due to the doubled consonant preceding the -le ending.