What assessment strategy best evaluates a student's ability to apply phonics lessons to new text?

Having students read unfamiliar non-real words is an effective assessment strategy for evaluating their ability to apply phonics lessons to new text. This approach directly assesses students' phonetic decoding skills, as they will need to utilize their understanding of sound-letter relationships learned through phonics instruction to sound out and make sense of these non-real words.

By engaging with unfamiliar words that do not carry preconceived meanings, students must rely on their phonics knowledge rather than contextual clues or prior familiarity with the words. This reinforces the purpose of phonics instruction, which is to equip students with the skills to decode any written text they encounter, not just those that they have previously practiced or encountered.

This strategy is particularly valuable because it isolates the phonics skill set, allowing educators to determine whether the student can transfer their knowledge to completely new words, reinforcing the essential connection between phonics and reading fluency.