How do we know how well our students are doing? It's important to take time regularly to assess their progress, so we can adjust instruction as needed and help ensure that no student slips through the cracks. As students progress from kindergarten through third grade, they should be steadily developing the skills they need to become proficient readers. Students need to learn and then master their foundational skills (e.g., decoding individual words) while gradually developing the ability to understand and critique increasingly complex texts. The Common Core State Standards, which have been adopted (or adapted) by most states, identify what students should know by the end of each grade (K-3) in order to become successful readers. Below, you can find a set of grade-by-grade charts, based on the standards, that provide a useful benchmark for the skills that, ideally, all of our students should master. Types of assessmentsTo monitor student progress, schools and individual teachers conduct different types of assessments with students in Grades K-3: Screening assessments are given to all students at the start of the school year to determine which students are at risk of struggling with reading. They are not used to diagnose specific skill gaps; rather, they help to identify children who need diagnostic assessments, as well as children who may require supplemental intervention. Screening assessments should be relatively fast and efficient to administer. One type of useful screening assessment involves curriculum-based measures (CBMs). Examples include DIBELS Next or Aimsweb. Diagnostic assessments are used to assess specific skills or components of reading such as phonemic awareness, phonics skills, and fluency. The results of diagnostic assessments inform instruction and intervention. Diagnostic assessments can be formal standardized tests of children’s component reading and language abilities or informal measures such as criterion-referenced tests and informal reading inventories. Not all children need this kind of in-depth reading assessment, which is most important for struggling and at-risk readers.
Outcome assessments, also called high stakes assessments, are given to all students in a grade. They measure students’ skills against grade-level expectations. Outcome assessments are used to make decisions about students, teachers, a school, or even an entire school system. Progress monitoring assessments measure a student’s overall progress during the school year or progress toward acquiring specific skills that have been taught. Examples of these kinds of measures include curriculum-based measures (CBMs), criterion-referenced tests, and informal measures such as reading inventories. These tests can be given more than once a year and, depending on the assessment, sometimes quite frequently. For instance, many CBMs could be given on a weekly basis if desired. As the list above suggests, a single assessment can sometimes serve more than one purpose or fit in more than one category. For example, a CBM such as DIBELS Next can be used as part of universal screening at the beginning of the school year to help determine which children are at risk in reading. It can also be re-administered later in the school year to help gauge a child’s overall progress in reading. Back to top Video: Introduction to Reading AssessmentThis podcast from the University of Florida Literacy Institute provides a brief overview of basic concepts related to reading assessment. Identifying students’ skill gaps to target specific weaknessesStarting in first grade, most students are given assessments of their reading comprehension. These assessments are important, but they provide us with only a global view of a child’s reading ability. To provide useful instruction and intervention, we must be able to target instruction to a student’s specific weaknesses. For instance, two first-graders might obtain the same low reading comprehension score, but if one student’s difficulty is mainly in the area of decoding and the other student’s main weakness involves limited vocabulary knowledge, then those students will need different types of instruction to improve their overall reading comprehension. The simple view of readingThe Simple View of Reading (SVR) offers one useful way to think about reading and the skill gaps students might have. SVR is widely referenced in scientific studies of reading. According to SVR, good reading comprehension requires two broad types of abilities: good word recognition and good oral language comprehension. Both of these domains — word recognition and oral language comprehension — incorporate other specific abilities. For example: Word recognition encompasses:
Oral language comprehension encompasses:
[Note: these are key examples, not an exhaustive list.] Students need both types of abilities to read and comprehend well — just one will not do. For instance, children who have excellent language comprehension, with the ability to understand sophisticated stories read aloud by the teacher, still will not have good reading comprehension if they cannot read individual words. Conversely, a child who reads words accurately and automatically but who does not have good oral comprehension will also not have good reading comprehension. This latter type of child might be able to decode a sentence perfectly, such as The gorgeous lady with the flowing white robe and the golden crown was confined to the attic of the castle. However, if the child does not know the meanings of words such as gorgeous, confined, and attic, or if he or she cannot understand the somewhat complex syntax of the sentence, then reading comprehension will nevertheless be impaired. This article provides an excellent discussion of the Simple View of Reading and what it means for good reading instruction. Children who can read grade-appropriate passages accurately, with ease and appropriate speed, as well as with good oral expression, generally have good language comprehension as well. Other cognitive abilities, such as working memory and executive function, also influence reading comprehension. Classroom teachers do not typically assess these other cognitive abilities as part of a reading assessment, but they can be important to consider in individual cases, such as when a student has a disability that affects reading. Severe weaknesses in either word recognition or oral language comprehension may require assessments conducted by special educators, reading specialists, or psychologists (e.g., using Woodcock Johnson IV or the WIAT-III). If we are concerned about particular students, we should confer with specialists and with their school’s administration. Determining the profile of reading difficulty and identifying specific skill gapsThe Simple View of Reading has been used to identify four profiles of young learners: a profile for students who are at or above grade level and three common profiles of students with reading difficulties. Among others, Catts and his colleagues (e.g., Catts, Adlof, & Weismer, 2006), Moats (2006), and Spear-Swerling (2015a, 2015b) have discussed these profiles:
When teaching struggling readers, identifying the individual student’s profile can help insure that intervention strategies are effective:
We can use the Simple View of Reading to identify the child’s profile of reading difficulty. From there, we should conduct more fine-grained assessments to determine the child’s specific skills and how to target instruction. At each grade level, certain types of difficulties will likely be common, which means that children can be grouped together for differentiation of instruction in small, flexible groups. For example, in a typical third-grade class, difficulties with word-recognition and decoding would often involve decoding two-syllable or multisyllabic words, and children with these needs could be grouped together. Children with grade-appropriate decoding but comprehension needs involving vocabulary and background knowledge (another common weakness) might be in a second group. Children with needs in both areas could participate in both groups. This plan might not meet the needs of all children, such as those who are very far behind in decoding, but it would provide helpful differentiation of instruction for most children in a class. Back to top Profiles of three struggling readersMillieConsider a third grader, Millie, who eagerly participates in classroom discussions. She can recall details from videos and passages read aloud. She correctly uses new vocabulary in speech. But Millie’s oral text reading is not fluent. She reads slowly, needs to laboriously sound out many words, and lacks prosody (i.e., the ability to read aloud with expression). She also lacks grade-appropriate spelling skills, although she can spell phonetically. For example, Millie spells the word thought as thot. How would we categorize her skill gap? Does Millie have grade-appropriate language comprehension? Yes, she appears to have strong language comprehension; she follows conversations, remembers details, and uses vocabulary correctly in speech. Does Millie have grade-appropriate word recognition? No. The description suggests a lack of reading fluency related to word recognition that is not automatic. Millie is able to spell phonetically. That means she has strong phonological awareness, as well as some basic phonics skills (e.g., knowledge of single consonant and short vowel spellings). For example, she correctly hears the sounds in the word thought. Her spelling difficulties suggest she has weak orthographic skills; that is, Millie lacks knowledge about common letter patterns used in spelling. She may also have difficulty reading multisyllabic words, which require knowledge about many common letter patterns including those connected to roots, prefixes, and suffixes. Millie has the first profile of reading difficulty, SWRD (specific word recognition difficulties), involving grade-appropriate oral language comprehension but difficulties in the domain of word recognition. Millie’s teacher should assess her ability to read and spell words with common letter patterns expected at her grade level, in order to determine how to target instruction for her. She should also look for ways to improve Millie’s reading fluency, such as re-reading of familiar text. Data for Millie from a standardized reading measure with a mean of 50 and a standard deviation of 21.06 might look like this:
Notice that all the scores are below the mean of 50 except for listening comprehension. The listening comprehension score documents Millie’s strong language comprehension skills. Listening comprehension does not require any skills in decoding. The other scores, which require adequate decoding, demonstrate Millie’s poor decoding and word recognition skills. CurtisConsider Curtis, another third grader. Curtis reads third-grade text accurately and fluently, but he rarely participates in classroom discussions. He struggles to answer questions, especially inferential questions. Curtis’s teacher has noticed that he often does not know the meanings of words typically known by third graders. She has observed these problems in Curtis’s own reading, during class discussions, and also in Curtis’s writing. Although Curtis has grade-appropriate spelling skills, his word choice in his writing is a significant weakness. How would we categorize his skill gap? Does Curtis have strong language comprehension? No, he struggles with following a conversation and answering inferential questions. The description of Curtis suggests that vocabulary weaknesses may account for at least some of his comprehension problems. Lack of background knowledge, often associated with vocabulary limitations, may also be an issue. His difficulties with inferencing could be connected to these weaknesses. Does Curtis have grade-appropriate word recognition? Yes, his grade-appropriate oral reading fluency indicates that he does not have problems with word recognition. His grade-appropriate spelling also supports this idea. Curtis has the second profile of reading difficulty, SCD (specific comprehension difficulties), involving poor language comprehension coupled with good word recognition and decoding. Curtis requires more in-depth assessments of specific language comprehension skills such as vocabulary and background knowledge. Because Curtis’s word recognition and text fluency are not an issue, these aspects of Curtis’s comprehension could be evaluated in the context of his reading as well as his listening. For example, his teacher could examine Curtis’s performance on different types of questions during an informal reading inventory or during classroom discussions. Data for Curtis from a standardized reading measure with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15 might look like this:
Note that all of Curtis’ scores for anything related to language comprehension (listening comprehension, reading comprehension, and vocabulary) are below the mean of 100. The scores that require adequate decoding (word attack, word identification, and spelling) are at or above the mean. The data support the profile of poor language comprehension but good word recognition and decoding. BellaConsider Bella, a talkative first grader whose intervention teacher says she reads accurately. Bella can retell stories and answer questions during discussions. In class, Bella reads many words sound by sound, then looks at the teacher and says the whole word as if asking a question. At the end of the paragraph, Bella has no memory of what she has read even though she has read every word accurately. Does Bella have strong language comprehension? Yes, she can understand discussions, and she can retell stories. She engages in discussions during class. Does Bella have strong decoding? Are her orthographic skills strong? She is capable of associating the sounds with the letter patterns. This is not the area of primary weakness. She has weak phonological awareness, likely at the phonemic awareness level. She has to hear herself say the sounds in order to blend them into a word. Even then, she is unsure if she has done this correctly. This is so effortful that she exhausts her working memory reading the words. She cannot comprehend what she reads because of the effort required to sound out words. Phonological awareness should be assessed to find where instruction should start. SummaryBy looking at reading errors through the lens of the Simple View of Reading, we can categorize the area of weakness. From there, we can administer skill-level assessments to find the student's lowest level of skill. That is where instruction should start. Back to top Seeking helpWhile assessments can help identify a student’s skill gaps, there will be times when we need additional support. For example, language comprehension skill gaps may be as simple as building a student’s vocabulary, or they may be far more complex. A student’s decoding issues may appear to be simple phonemic awareness gaps but prove difficult to strengthen. As such, it is important not to wait but to seek help for that student as quickly as possible. Seeking help may start by asking fellow teachers for advice or may require referral to a specialist. This will vary by school and school district. It is critical, however, to act quickly. Students who struggle with reading fall behind grade level content at an alarming rate. When a student does not respond to intervention almost from the start, we should err on the side of seeking additional support. Back to top Foundational reading skills and comprehension benchmarks: what children need to knowThe following charts provide a concise summary of what students should know by the end of each grade (K-3) in order to become successful readers. The charts are derived from the Common Core State Standards and represent a useful benchmark for the skills that all students need. They include foundational reading skills as well as broader comprehension benchmarks. Without foundational skills, reading comprehension cannot occur. It is critical for elementary teachers to address these foundational skills and for children with poor skills to receive needed interventions. By the end of kindergarten, students should be able to:
Back to top By the end of first grade, students should be able to:
Back to top By the end of second grade, students should be able to:
Back to top By the end of third grade, students should be able to:
See all the Common Core English Language Arts Standards. Back to top References: profiles of struggling readersCatts, H.W., Adlof, S.M., & Weismer, S.E. (2006). Language deficits in poor comprehenders: A case for the simple view of reading. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 49(2), 278-293. Catts, H.W., Compton, D.L., Tomblin, J.B., & Bridges, M.S. (2012). Prevalence and nature of late-emerging poor readers. Journal of Educational Psychology, 104(2), 166-181. Spear-Swerling, L. (2015a). The power of RTI and reading profiles: A blueprint for solving reading problems. Baltimore, MD: Brookes Publishing Co. Spear-Swerling, L. (2015b). Common types of reading problems and how to help children who have them. The Reading Teacher, 69(5), 513-522. Back to top Video: Assessing Reading Skills
At the Stern Center in Williston, Vermont, struggling students get a leg up on reading and other skills. What is assessment quizlet?Assessment. - The process of making a decision while using an instrument. - The process of data collection in order to make educational decisions about a student.
Which one of the following definitions best describes true score quizlet?Which of the following definitions best describes "true score"? - The score the student would get if the measurement was completely free of error.
Which of the following is an example of a sustaining expectation effect?What is a sustaining expectation effect example? When you have a expectation of a students but then the students exceeds those expectations but the teacher does not alter their expectations for that student, therefore the student doesn't get an unfair disadvantage.
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