Chapter 6 “Reading Assessment”

1. Chapter 6“Reading Assessment” Classroom Assessment for Students in Special and General Education, by Cathleen G. Spinelli Presented by: Kathy Carr and Renee Irwin

2. Why Reading Assessments? • 7 % - 9% of the school-age population have reading disabilities. • 17.5 % of our nation’s students have reading problems during the crucial first three years of schooling. • 75% - 88% of students who were struggling readers in 3rd grade continue to have reading difficulties throughout high school. • Children who are poor readers early on are 3-4 times more likely to become teen parents and 3 times more likely to become unemployed • It takes four times as long to improve the skills of a struggling reader in the 4th grade than one in mid-kindergarten and first grade. 30 min per day in grades K-1 = 2 hours per day in 4th grade • 40 % of our nation’s fourth graders can’t understand their grade level text. • 20 million school-age children suffer from reading failure – 2.3 million are special education, the 17.7 remaining either receive some remedial help or are overlooked.

3. The Role of Teachers… Deliver appropriate instructional methods Reinforce Enrichment Informal classroom-based assessments monitor progress RemediateEvaluate Identify students’ specific strengths & Weaknesses Formal assessments Diagnose Screening

4. A comprehensive reading evaluation includes the following emergent literary concepts: • Oral language • Alphabet • Print • Phoneme awareness • Ability to decode • Read words with irregular spelling patterns • Read fluently • Comprehension of various texts

5. Formal Reading Assessments • Standardized and norm referenced Assessments • Compares student performance among age- or grade-level peers • Objective, Multiple Choice Drawbacks: • Fails to provide information on the student’s actual function in class. • Does not correlate with the concepts and skills taught in the classroom curriculum • Little help in planning or evaluating progress in remedial reading programs.

6. Informal Reading Assessments • Nonstandardized and unnormed evaluation procedures • Helps teachers understand the reading PROCESS instead of the reading PRODUCT. Types: • Curriculum-based measurement • Portfolio assessment • Informal reading inventories

7. Emergent Literacy Assessment Four Dimensions needed to be successful for learning to read: • Oral language 2) Phonological awareness 3) Print awareness 4) Knowledge of the alphabet ***Must be identified and addressed early!!

8. Oral Language • Young readers need fundamental oral language development- specifically receptive & expressive skills. • Messages -> Words -> Sequence of sounds -> Comprehension How to Assess: • Observation in authentic situations (both formal – classroom & informal – playground). • Does the student answer questions in detail or with one word answers? Can she retell a story in sequential order? Can he complete sentences in his own words? Does she ask for help when directions or concepts are misunderstood? Can he answer why, when, what, where questions?

9. Phonemic Awareness Phonological awareness – (ability to notice, think about, and work with the individual sounds in spoken words) - *precursor to phonics • Understanding that the sounds of spoken language work together to make words • Example: How many sounds do you hear in monkey? Assessment: (pg. 196, Fig. 6-1, 6-2, 6-3) Ex. –The DibelsTest– https://dibels.uoregon.edu/ • Can student add, move, or delete any designated phoneme and regenerate a word from the results? • **Growing consensus that the most common source of reading difficulty is a core deficit related to phonological processing.

10. Print Awareness & Knowledge of the Alphabet Print Awareness – Awareness that print contains a message (Figure 6-4, pg. 198) • Concepts of letter, word, picture, and sound • Letters make up words - words make up sentences • Concepts include how print is arranged on a page • Text features (e.g., punctuation & bold face type), Book handling, etc. • Knowledge of the Alphabet – Understanding that words are composed of individual letters. (Fig. 6-5 – 6-7) • Mapping of print to speech • Clear link between a letter and a sound • Identifying (verbally) upper and lowercase letters in isolation and/or in context.

11. Phonics Assessment Phonetic analysis – relationship between sounds (phonemes) and letters or spellings that represent sounds in writing (graphemes) Phonics (word attack or decoding) – ability to pronounce words that are not within sight vocabulary- sound-symbol associations Structural Analysis- word attack approach where words are decoded by subdividing them into meaningful parts (i.e. prefixes, root words, syllabication Assessment - • (p.200 Figs. 6-7, 6-8) In order from single consonant – silent letters • Have students read phonetically correct nonsense words (critical sound-symbol relationships) –can not depend on sight vocabulary

12. Vocabulary - Word Meaning • Students’ knowledge of word meaning is critical for word recognition, word attack, and reading comprehension. • Necessary to identify words that are not within the readers’ sight vocabulary. • Good readers use context clues or word knowledge to assist them to decode unfamiliar words. • Lack of word meaning = no comprehension • Affected by personal experiences, vocabulary of teachers, parents, peers, and significant others, language sources

13. Vocabulary Assessment Vocabulary Development – Assessment focuses on the ability to determine the knowledge of, and the ability to store and retrieve the meanings and pronunciations of, words Word meaning – Figure 6-11 • Flashcards • Word knowledge assessments • Have students read a passage and then define or explain specific vocabulary words within the passage • Advanced students - use of synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, homographs, multiple meanings, abstract and colloquial terms, neologisms , euphemisms, pejoratives, and etymology

14. Word Recognition Sight vocabulary - students’ ability to identify a sequence of letters that forms a word as a single unit without hesitation. Assessment - • When assessing word recognition, provide authentic assessment replications (especially for the exceptional) as well as oral and silent reading. • Use commonly used print for assessments – newspapers, signs, cursive writings, etc. • For the Fry word list and full scope and sequence of vocabulary words at previous grade levels – • http://www.sju.edu/~cspinell/

15. Oral Reading To assess word recognition – use an oral reading sample – • Words per passage – 50 (primary level) – 400 (secondary level) • Choose a new passage that makes sense on its own • Note how students read – such as reading with expression, attending to punctuation, and using context clues. • How do we determine appropriate readability (instructional) level? Word recognition should be 90% accurate (or students will not have sufficient comprehension).

16. Types of Reading Assessments • Reading Error Pattern Analysis – the study of the mistakes students make while reading orally (how students process reading material) Fig. 6-13 – Common oral reading errors. • Miscue Analysis – focuses on both word analysis and comprehension with an emphasis on the types of errors (qualitative – meaning-related rather than quantitative -grammatically correct) pg. 211 • Running Records – monitoring students’ oral reading by closely monitoring and recording their errors while they read. • Used to evaluate text difficulty and match book levels for instruction and independent reading, to group students, to keep track of individual progress. Tips – pg. 213 • Fluency

17. Fluency Reading fluency – the development of speed after accuracy is assured. • Should be assessed regularly in the classroom • Easy, efficient, valid, and reliable • Use to monitor an individual student, assessing the whole class, and comparing individual to group • Assessment only requires the student to read orally • Reading rates & Norms (pg. 217, fig. 6-17 – 6-19) *Students who have low fluency tend to have poor comprehension and are likely to remain poor readers throughout their lives.

18. Reading Material and Strategies on Fluency • Instructional materials matter • Remember reading levels: • Independent Level – 95% accuracy • Instructional Level – 90-95% accuracy • Frustration Level – less than 90% accuracy Collect Data - • Studies show that there is greater student achievement when teachers are meaningfully involved in collecting and evaluating student data. • Teachers spend an average of only 2.25 minutes per student collecting a one-minute reading sample (including preparing, administering, scoring, and graphing the progress).

19. Reading Material and Strategies on Fluency • Instructional materials matter • Remember reading levels: • Independent Level – 95% accuracy • Instructional Level – 90-95% accuracy • Frustration Level – less than 90% accuracy Collect Data - • Studies show that there is greater student achievement when teachers are meaningfully involved in collecting and evaluating student data. • Teachers spend an average of only 2.25 minutes per student collecting a one-minute reading sample (including preparing, administering, scoring, and graphing the progress).

20. Do you know? • What is the difference between word recognition and vocabulary? Word recognition – able to identify the word without hesitation, Vocabulary – knowing the meaning of the word • What is the frustration % level for oral reading? Instructional? Independent? Frustration – less than 90%, Instructional – 90% - 95%, Independent – more than 95% • Name 2 types of oral reading assessments. Miscue analysis, Reading error pattern analysis, running records, fluency • What 2 cognitive tasks are involved in reading that compete for each other? Word recognition and comprehension

21. Reading Comprehension Assmt. Page 221 Text comprehension is: • Understanding, remembering, and communicating what has been read. • Making connections at the literal, interpretive, and application levels • Understanding literary elements, text patterns, text organizations, and author’s purpose. • The FIVE levels of reading comprehension are: understanding facts, reorganizing, inferring, evaluating, and criticizing.

22. Components of Reading Comprehension Page 221 Text comprehension is: • Understanding, remembering, and communicating what has been read. • Making connections at the literal, interpretive, and application levels • Understanding literary elements, text patterns, text organizations, and author’s purpose. • The FIVE levels of reading comprehension are: understanding facts, reorganizing, inferring, evaluating, and criticizing.

23. Explicit Implicit, & Critical Comprehension Page 223-224 • EXPLICIT comprehension: the ability to grasp reading matter at a literal or factual level. [i.e.: main idea]. • IMPLICIT comprehension: ability to interpret or infer information, draw conclusions, make generalizations, summarize, etc… • CRITICAL comprehension: most abstract of the 3. The ability to “read between the lines, “ to judge and evaluate printed text. • See pages 224-225, Figures 6-24 and 6-25 for checklists.

24. Cloze Procedure Page 224 • Assess word prediction abilities, to measure comprehension, and determine how students use context clues to identify words. • Students read a passage and supply the missing word from previous knowledge {skill is analyzing text and structure}. We lived in ___ large, brown cardboard box ___ we ate as many ___ of food as we ___ find. • It focuses on comprehension versus fluency and is untimed. [see figure 6-26 on page 226]. • Teachers can construct their own Cloze Procedures using any text (page 225) and administer any time (page 225).

25. Maze Procedure Page 227 • Assessment technique that is similar to the cloze procedure, but this method offers students choices for the missing words rather than relying on previous knowledge. [only one choice is correct] • Valid indicator of RC for a child who has word retrieval problems. ELL/ESL students benefit from this method. • See Figure 6-27 on page 227. • Example, “We lived together in (a / of / it ) large, brown cardboard box ( and / are / any) we ate as many (scraps / sent / scarf) of food as we (could / cold/ cough) find.

26. Think Aloud Procedure Page 228 • A method of attaining insight into the reader’s approach to text processing. • Students read a text aloud and stop at the end of each sentence and think aloud about what they’ve read, and what strategies they are using to understand the text. • The teacher then asks questions about the passage that relate to content, structure, and difficulty level. • Sample Think-Aloud Questions: • How does the student use existing information? • Can the student relate existing information with new information? • Can the student predict or anticipate upcoming events in a story?

27. Retell Procedure Page 228-230 (see figures 6-29 & 6-30 on page 229) • Students demonstrate their understanding of reading material by retelling or paraphrasing the passage. • Can be oral or written: both engage student in holistic comprehension and organization of thoughts vs. just isolated pieces of information. • The teacher can obtain qualitative, quantitative, and organization measures for determining whether students understand the story structure and can accurately recall details from the story in a logical, proper sequence. • When necessary, teachers can guide by asking: “What comes next?” or “Then what happened?” • Students must be able to explain the passage in their own words. • Not necessarily a good indicator for children whose first language is not English or for students who have an expressive language disorder.

28. Metacognition Page 230 • The awareness of one’s own thinking processes • The strategies used • And the ability to regulate these to ensure successful learning (what to do when you don’t know what to do). • Reading is a metacognitive act that allows the reading to monitor comprehension during reading (consciously or not). • Students who have difficulty with reading and comprehension often do not understand or do not use metacognitive strategies.

29. Metacognition Cont. Page 230 • Metacognition = thinking + reflective processes. • An understanding of when, where, and how to apply, regulate, and monitor strategy use. • FIVE primary components of using metacognitive strategies: 1) preparing and planning for learning; 2) selecting and using learning strategies; 3) monitoring strategy use; 4) orchestrating various strategies, and 5) evaluating strategy use and learning. • Skilled readers ask specific questions such as, “Why am I reading this?” “When I don’t understand something, what can I do to get back on track again?” “Can I summarize the major points made in this text?” • Teachers can asses students’ knowledge of strategic reading process by using the metacomprehension skills of self-assessment in Figures 6-31 and 6-32 on page 231.

30. General Reading Assessment Measures Page 232 • Portfolio Assessments: the collection and evaluation of students’ authentic work. (natural settings) • Reading Inventories: informal RI consist of graded reading passage help to determine students’ independent, instruction, and frustration levels in word recognition and comprehension • CBMs: provide a means to frequently measure students’ curricular progress and are easily administered, scored, and graphed. • Performance Assessment: provides an opportunity to evaluate reading skill development using authentic tasks.

31. Portfolio Assessment Page 232-234 (see pg 233 figure 6-33 and page 234 figure 6-34) • Continuous process of gathering genuine evidence of efforts, progress, and achievement. • Provides links to important literacy experiences and assessment links. • The goal is to be responsive to what students are doing. • Very flexible technique; excellent for communication between special education and regular education teachers when a child is mainstreamed. • Clear purpose: content predetermined and clear. • Depends on: intended audience; what needs to be known about the students’ learning; will it display progress or corroborate other evidence; what evidence must be included; should best work be included or a progressive record of growth (or both); and should only finished pieces be included or items in progress.

32. Informal Reading Inventory Page 234-237 • (IRI) Consists of graded classroom word lists and reading passages with comprehension questions for each passage. • Graded word = determine which passage to administer (decoding) • Graded passages = students understanding of words in context, attention to meaning, and strategies for coping with unfamiliar words. • Student is to summarize the text or answer questions about it, not just read fluently. • Performance levels: independent, instructional, frustration, listening determined by # of words read accurately and the % of comprehension questions answered correctly.

33. Informal Reading Inv. Cont. Page 235 • See page 234 for How to construct an informal reading inventory. However, there are IRIs available for use, like the DRA2. • See page 236 for How to administer an informal reading inventory. • See page 236 for Scoring criteria for determining independent, instructional, and frustration levels. • Commercially Prepared IRIs: Critical Reading Inventory, Analystical Reading Inventory, Informal Reading Inventory, Basic Reading Inventory, Classroom Reading Inventory, Stieglitz Informal Reading Inventory, and Qualitative Reading Inventory. • Readibility levels may vary from subject to subject.

34. Readability Exercise Page 237 *Use Figure 6-35 on page 239 to find the readability level of whatever text you were given. The *** is at a readability level of &&& The *** is at a readability level of &&& The *** is at a readability level of &&& The *** is at a readability level of &&& The *** is at a readability level of &&&

35. Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM) Page 237-239 • Specific set of standardized procedures that are used to assess students’ achievement in their academic curriculum. • A Reading CBM establishes district or classroom performance standards and generally monitors progress toward individual long-range (or short-term) goals. • Teachers can create their own CBM for reading or use various commercial CBMs. The same format for the DRA2 is used. Computer software is also available. • A sample CBM is in Figure 6-36 on page 241.

36. Performance-Based Assessment Page 242-244 • Measures specific skill components and evaluated demonstrations of reading abilities. • Students read a passage for a purpose; use one or more cognitive skills as they construct meaning from the text; and write about or perform a task about what they read. (see figure 6-38 on page 242). • Can be used in program planning and evaluation (Let’s review figures 6-39 & 6-40 on page 243). X • Rubrics can also be used to rate reading performance assessment activities (Review figure 6-41 on page 244).