Conducting Mastery Checks in Sonday System Essentials

In Sonday System Essentials, a Mastery Check is an informal assessment that evaluates students' progress in spelling. They can be administered to all students in a group session.

Although it varies by grade level, Mastery Checks in Essentials usually occur every 5th or 10th lesson.

To conduct a Mastery Check:

1. Mastery Checks are embedded in the digital platform in the applicable lessons. In Essentials, Mastery Check for Spelling replaces Step 4 - Spell Words in the lesson plan. (The Slide Controller still displays 4 - Spell Words for the students so that they do not feel pressured by the assessment.)

   

2. Click the purple forward arrow in the Slide Controller to display the Writing Prompt slide. 
   
    

3. Reading down each column, dictate all 20 words in the Mastery Check, so that you can assess whether students can spell all the words in an appropriate amount of time. (There are no sentences to dictate in Mastery Checks.)
   
   Students should write the words down in their notebooks or on a piece of paper for your to collect.

    Tips

   • Do not use each word in a sentence unless it is a homophone. Instead, give students quiet time to think and write their answers.
   • Look to see if students are Touch Spelling independently when they are uncertain, but do not initiate Touch Spelling or do it with your students during a Mastery Check.

4. Finish a Mastery Check session the same as any other session, by clicking Click Here To End This Session.

    Note

   There will be no Step 5 - New Material in a Mastery Check session.

   

5. Click OK to confirm ending the assessment. Then collect students' work so you can enter their data and have the program calculate their scores. 
   

6. After ending the session, the empty score summary displays. Do one of the following:

   Do one of the following:

   If you want to...	Then...
   Enter Mastery Check data now	Continue to the next step
   Return to the lesson and input scores later	Return to the class and look in Recent Session History for the Mastery Check scoring icon (piece of paper). If it is red, then you have not finished inputting all students' scores. Click the icon to add or edit scores.

7. Click Edit next to a student to open their scoring page.

   

8. Record the student's spelling results by reviewing their Student Notebook or the papers you've collected. For any misspelled word, check Incorrect and, if desired, write the incorrect spelling or a brief description of the error in the Error Description field. Filling out the Error Description field is optional, but we recommend it because it provides good data for you to reference/reflect on later. 
   
   Optional: You can add notes or general observations in the Notes field at the bottom of the page. 
   
   Click Save Scoring Details to finish entering data for this student.
   

9. The Spelling Score field populates for this student; now go in and add data for the rest of the students in your class.

   

10. After you've input data for all students, a general recommendation for the class is provided at the bottom of the scoring page. Students who scored below the threshold for mastery (i.e., under 85%) will also have a red exclamation point icon next to their score.