Reading Assessment

Question 1

Factors for Reading Problems

Answer 1

1. Neurological - how a student process word sounds determines ability to be a good reader or a poor reader
2. Familal - poor reading skills runs in families (also environmental influence = a poor reader won’t read to their child)
3. Social/Cultural - varies based on circumstances (ie, socioeconomical disadvantaged groups/cultural differences)
4. Instructional - undervalued in school (need to be taught explicitly for several years)

Question 2

Learning Disability (LD)

Answer 2

• more difficulty learning certain skills/academic content (nothing to do with intelligence)
• identified as
• ->dyslexia (difficulties with reading process)
• ->deficits in auditory language processing (affects fluency/accuracy in reading words, which also affects comprehension)

**most common source of LD is poor skills in decoding letters to sounds in the single-word level

Question 3

Learning to Read Requirements

Answer 3

1. Phonological awareness (recognizing sound structures of spoken language)
2. Phonemic awareness (recognizing/manipulating individual speech sounds or phonemes
3. Alphabetic principle (letters are related to individual sounds)
4. Orthographic awareness (recognition of printed language structure)
5. Comprehensive monitoring strategies (techniques that them them attend/retain information read)

Question 4

Norm- Referenced Test

Answer 4

• formal assessments that compare a student’s performance to that of the general population of the same age/grade based on standardized items
• –>Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scales of Intelligence (WPPSI), Wechsler Intelligence Scales for Children (WISC), Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS)
• scores range from average or normal

Question 5

Criterion-Referenced Test

Answer 5

• formal standardized test
• measures student’s performance compared to the criteria
• compares current performance to previous performance on the same test to evaluate progress
• –>Texas Primary Reading Inventory (TEA), Academic Intervention Monitoring System (AIMS), Academic Competence Evaluation System (ACES)

Question 6

Informal Reading Assessment

Answer 6

• not standardized

* used to monitor student progress

Question 7

Portfolio Assessment

Answer 7

• way for a teacher to collect a cumulative, concrete record of what the student can do
• provides progress/concrete results of learning and skills progressing over time
• benefit for students lacking verbal skills

Question 8

Constructed-Response Measurement

Answer 8

• responses are not open-ended (guides their construction of a response - gives them a framework)
• benefit for students who have difficulty organizing their thoughts, struggle identifying main idea from details, selecting information to include and what to omit
• helps provide practice for structural elements
• monitors progress by observing improvements in organization, clarity and details

Question 9

Running Record

Answer 9

• assess’ current reading performance of a student
• ->Early Emergent readers: assessed every 2-4 weeks
• ->Emergent Readers: assessed every 4-6 weeks
• ->Early Fluent Readers: assessed every 6-8 weeks
• ->Fluent Readers: assessed every 8-10 week
• Books/passages are picked based on student reading level (teacher observes and makes notes of correct/incorrect answers)

Question 10

Miscue Analysis

Answer 10

• focuses on the type of errors readers make to understand their reading skills/strategies to make sense of a text
• three cueing systems
  1. grapho/phonic (letters to sounds- how words look)
  2. syntactic (sentence structure, word order, grammar-how words sound and organzied)
  3. semantic (meanings we recognize from words-what words mean)

Question 11

Validity

Answer 11

• instrument measures what its supposed to measure

* required for designing assessment instruments

Question 12

Reliability

Answer 12

• instrument is consistent across all testing/administration

* required for designing assessment instruments