Functional Reading Assessments

So I have been on a major Teachers Pay Teachers drought over the last couple months...I haven't been posting any new products.  All of a sudden this week, I got a major boost of energy and am now kind of addicted to posting new products again.  Yesterday, I posted a fun movement book for kids with autism.  Today, I am posting about a new assessment I have added to my store (Click here to go to my TPT store).

When I started teaching my first class of students to read, I began with functional words (like animals, foods, schedule words, etc.) instead of the traditional sight words (like "and," "but," "the).  Although all words are important when learning to read, I felt that functional words would be more meaningful for my students.  I also found that these words were more motivating for my students to want to learn because they could use them right away in their every day lives.  Also, if work is meaningful and motivating, you are less  likely to see problem behavior (sounds good to me!).  This packet of assessments cover the following topics.
-Body Parts
-Months
-Colors
-Numbers
-Weather words
-Animals
-Fruit
-Food
-Community places
-Community Workers
-Schedule Words
Each topic listed above has 12 related words.


I use these assessments with students who are verbal (using the expressive and receptive assessments) and students who are non-verbal (using the receptive assessment). 
--Expressive Assessment:  Teacher points to word and student reads it out loud.
--Receptive Assessment:  Teacher says a word and student point to it.

How it works:
--Students use the words in the boxes for the assessment.  You can have students go in order, or mix it up to help avoid memorization of the assessment. 
--As students expressively or receptively identify words, you mark a plus or minus on the dashed lines at the bottom of the page. (If I am testing receptive language--I use the dashed line on the left; for expressive--the line on the right).

--Add up your total corrects and put that number in the green box.
--Add your data to the tracking sheet so you can monitor over time and show student growth.

I currently use these assessments:

--When I get a new student (especially non-verbal) to assess their reading level.
--To regularly assess my students on their IEP goals.  Many of my beginning readers may have a Language Arts goal for reading (expressively and/or receptively) functional words.
--To assess students during a thematic unit as a pre/post test (like for my monthly unit on body parts).