Reading assessments

There are many forms of literacy assessments used at my school. Right off the bat the teachers conduct running records with the students. They do this so they know what level the students read at. It helps the students find an appropriate level of reading for the students. We use these records to place students in reading groups. Running records are also a good way to monitor the students’ progress within the reading groups. They will allow us to notice if the books are too easy or hard for the students and it will also show us if a particular students makes great strides and should be moved into a higher level group more quickly. We also used Aimsweb in our school. This assesses letter sounds, letter naming, phoneme segmentation, and nonsense words. They are given one minute for these tests. For example, one of the sections asks the student to read as many letters as they can in a minute. The teacher proctoring the assessment marks the mistakes and then scores the final results.

There have been many gaps between the assessments that we have given our students. The running records, for instance, provide evidence of what a student knows about letter, sound, and word recognition to help them understand the text. This assessment tests some of the reader’s comprehension of the text. The Aimsweb assessment does not test for any comprehension whatsoever. As a result of these two tests there is a student in our class who is one of the top three most advanced readers but he placed in the “red zone” for the Aimsweb testing. I think it is important to assess all of these reading strategies and it is also important to take all of them into account, not just one. It is important to use all of the assessments together so that all aspects of reading ability are covered. These assessments should be used as tools to help your students, not just as a way to “place” them. Using multiple assessments lets the teacher see more specific areas that a student might need help on. For example if the student can read fluently he could still have trouble comprehending what he is reading but it is important for these two aspects to work cohesively.