AlphaCode™ CVC Foundational Skills Assessment

RTI-Aligned Diagnostic Toolkit | Segmentation • Decoding • Encoding
Grades PreK–1 | Science of Reading Aligned

Stop guessing where the breakdown is.

The AlphaCode™ CVC Foundational Skills Assessment is a structured, accuracy-based diagnostic toolkit designed to pinpoint exactly where early readers struggle — in phonological awareness, decoding, or encoding.

This is not a worksheet packet. It is a clean, efficient assessment system built for real classrooms, intervention blocks, and RTI documentation.

What This Assessment Measures

This toolkit evaluates three critical foundational domains:

1. Segmentation (Phonological Awareness)

Students orally segment CVC words into three distinct phonemes without letter supports.

2. Decoding (Reading Accuracy)

Students read short vowel CVC words aloud without prompts.

3. Encoding (Spelling / Phoneme–Grapheme Mapping)

Students spell dictated CVC words using correct sound-to-letter correspondence.

Together, these components provide a clear phoneme-level profile of student strengths and gaps.

Designed For

✔ PreK–1 literacy instruction
✔ Structured literacy classrooms
✔ Small-group intervention
✔ RTI / MTSS progress monitoring
✔ Science of Reading implementation

This is an accuracy-based assessment, not a fluency measure.

What’s Included

Segmentation

• 25 full-color segmentation picture cards (5 per vowel)
• 5-item and 10-item recording sheets
• Administrator guide with positional error coding (IS / MS / FS / IO / MO / FO / B / LS / SC)
• Diagnostic interpretation and instructional next steps

Decoding

• 5 vowel-specific decoding checks (Short A, E, I, O, U)

• Mixed vowel benchmark
• Student pages (designed for lamination and reuse)
• Recording forms with error tracking (vowel confusion, consonant substitution, blending, guessing)
• Master summary tracking sheet

Encoding

• 5 vowel-specific dictation checks (8 words each)
• Teacher scripts with sentence context
• Phoneme-position scoring (initial, medial, final)
• Error coding system (IO, MO, FO, IS, MS, FS, LS, IC)
• Pattern-based instructional guidance

Why Teachers Love This Toolkit

• Takes 3–6 minutes per component
• Error-coded by phoneme position
• Distinguishes vowel instability from phoneme awareness breakdown
• Identifies orthographic vs phonemic errors
• Clean documentation for RTI meetings
• Directly aligned with AlphaCode™ CVC Word Detectives

This system helps you move from “They’re struggling” to “The medial vowel is unstable across decoding and encoding.”

That’s the difference between guessing and diagnosing.

Instructionally Diagnostic Design

This assessment goes beyond total scores.

It helps you identify:
• Medial omissions → phoneme awareness breakdown
• Medial substitutions → short vowel instability
• Final substitutions → consonant voicing confusion
• Letter reversals → orthographic formation issue

Instruction should be driven by patterns, not percentages.

Best Used With

• AlphaCode™ Word Detectives: CVC Cases

• Structured phonics instruction

• MTSS documentation systems

• Small group intervention planning