I teach English Language Development to English language learners in Colorado. This year I began teaching morphology and I found your website and recommendations helpful. I plan to use the activities found on your morphological awareness page as an assessment to show student growth from now through the end of the school year. I realize it was not intended as an assessment so I'm wondering if you have an assessment recommendation or advice on where to find one that is broken into proficiency levels. I want to show that my students gain awareness and improve their morphological awareness throughout the year. The administrators at my school would like to see students move from one proficiency level to another, so if the assessment is already broken into levels that would be ideal for my purposes.
I checked on this issue with my colleague at 3LI, Dr. Lauren Katz, whose specialty happens to be in the area of morphology. She said there isn't anything that is normed or even criterion referenced, but it's possible something's come out recently that she hasn't seen.
We recommend using Dr. Katz’s mentor Dr. Joanne Carlisle's Test of Morphological Structure. It's been published in a number of Dr. Carlisle's studies, and it has been found to be predictive of word reading and reading comprehension skills. We can send the measure to you if you want. There was also a paper that came out a few years ago that included a dynamic measure of morphological awareness that Dr. Katz has modified (words and procedures) for use with older students.
It is so heartening to hear of someone targeting morphology, which is critical for older students!
