Reporting on the construction and validation of instruments for the evaluation of students in the first stages of reading and spelling instruction, this paper first discusses how teachers themselves can determine a student's learning progress with the help of evaluation instruments. Distinguishing between formative evaluation and diagnostic evaluation, the paper then provides a discussion of the construction of a set of tests that can be used in both ways. The paper argues that the tests make it possible for teachers to apply psychological principles of learning to read to the design of interventions that will improve student reading performance. (FL)