Sara Johnson

Introduction

 

With increased emphasis being placed on the science of reading, it is important I have experience with reading assessments so I can better assess my own students in my future classroom. This early preparation will help me achieve the frameworks set up in Domain One of TESS. For example, as it is specified in Domain One, having a knowledge of students can be very beneficial towards the learning process and student proficiency in the classroom. Knowing your students reading level is crucial if you hope to understand what you need to do in the classroom for your students to have the best growth in their learning. If you assume their reading and comprehension levels are on grade level, you may start somewhere they are not ready to be at. This will make learning more difficult for them, which will then make them shut down and disengage before you can attempt to help them. To design coherent instruction and assessments for my future students, it is important I know where they are when it comes to reading levels and comprehension.  Reading, vocabulary and comprehension levels can make a huge difference in the way a student performs in school, and to get a better understanding of how to assess those, I chose one of my students in my internship to administer three reading assessment tests too. 

The Student

     

For confidentiality, I will refer to the student I chose as `Sally”. Sally is currently in tenth grade, an English language learner , and trying to make improvements in her academic life. She was failing my mentor’s class last semester due to lack of effort, but is actively trying to get her grade up and participate more. My mentor has said he has seen specific improvements in Sally’s work ethic and her attempt to understand what is going on in class. When first getting to know Sally, I learned that she does not like English class or reading because she does not like to read and thinks it is boring. As we began reading The Joy Luck Club in class, I noticed Sally hated reading out loud, and would always try to avoid it when it was her turn in the groups. I decided to give the reading assessments to Sally to gain a better insight in what aspects of reading were difficult for her and most likely the cause of her dislike. 

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The Assessments 

 

The three tests I decided to give Sally were the San Diego Quick Assessment, the Core Vocab screening test, and the Core Reading Maze Comprehension Test. We did these tests over the span of two days, taking the first two the first day, and the comprehension test the second day. After explaining to her briefly what the process would look like, I administered the San Diego Quick Assessment, which is designed to assess recognition of words out of context in order to measure proficiency. The test is scored by the number of errors made when the student reads alouds a list of words separated by grade level. Three errors are known as the “frustration level”, and that is when the test is stopped. The student’s reading level is the word list before the frustration level. It is important to start the student below their actual grade level, so I started Sally at the eighth grade level. Sally struggled to pronounce a majority of these words, so I had her attempt grade seven. Still mispronouncing most of the words on the seventh grade list, I dropped down to the fifth grade list. Sally got all but one correct, so we moved back up to sixth grade. Sally mispronounced exactly three words, which makes this grade her frustration level, and fifth grade her reading level. One thing I observed was that if a word was pronounced differently than how it appeared, or had a challenging ending such as “ous” or “gue”, Sally tended to miss it. This test alone reveals a lot about Sally and her reading abilities. For example, it explains why she did not like to read The Joy Luck Club in class: since the latter book is at a tenth grade level, it is extremely challenging for her to read. Now that I had her grade level identified, I chose to assess Sally’s vocabulary and comprehension. 

For a vocabulary assessment, I gave Sally the Core Vocab screening test. This test presented Sally with a word in a box, and three words off to the side, and required her to circle the word that she recognized as a synonym for the word in the box. She is scored based off of how many she gets correct on one sheet. Since Sally’s reading level is fifth grade, I decided to begin her test at a third grade level. We completed a third, fourth, and fifth grade vocab assessment, and Sally did well on all three. She knows the vocabulary for these grade levels fairly well, and this assessment seemed to be easier for her than the San Diego assessment. A lot of the words on this particular assessment were verbs or descriptive words, and Sally was able to recall synonyms very well. Even though Sally is doing well on the tests, she is far behind the on grade level she should be at. After checking reading and vocabulary, my next step was to test Sally on comprehension.

For the comprehension test, Sally was given the Core Reading Maze Comprehension test, and asked to read a short passage. In the passage, she encountered multiple sentences with a missing word and three options to choose from. These options were bolded and placed in parentheses, and as Sally was reading, she had to read all three and circle the word that she felt best completed the sentence. Sally read a sixth grade level comprehension test, which was a story about a news station at a school. Overall, Sally did exceptionally well. She only missed two words in this passage and completed it within the correct amount of time. This means Sally is able to read a story and choose a word that best completes a sentence. She understood what was happening in the story even though not all of  the words were filled in yet. Taking all these assessments into consideration, it is clear to me that Sally reads at a middle school level. I am curious how much of that is due to her not being a native English speaker, and how much of that is due to a lack of attention of teaching reading in the classroom. Given this information, I have thought about an intervention plan that could help Sally and anyone in my class who struggles with reading. 

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Intervention Plan

 

As is the case with any skill, for Sally to develop as a reader, she requires constant practice. A great place to start would be to get Sally reading some high-interest texts that are on her reading level. Reading, vocabulary, and comprehension work can also be incorporated in daily classroom tasks and assignments. Daily bell ringers are a great way to work on vocabulary development. Tasks like word ladders are fun for students to engage with, and they are easy to look up and obtain for teachers. A word ladder is a puzzle that is solved by changing one letter in a word to create an entirely new word and match a given definition. For example, the student would change “walk” to “talk” if the given definition was “speak”. Word work like this can make a huge impact on the overall success of students. While these will be useful for everyone in the classroom, it should also be recognized that students will read on a variety of different grade levels, and learn at different paces. One of the ways teachers can incorporate everyone learning is to start teaching students morphology, the study of words and how they are formed. Around the time I gave Sally these assessments, I was introduced to the idea of morphology, and think it could really help students improve their vocabulary and comprehension. Teachers can teach morphology to their students and give them different levels of words based on what grade level a student is on. Working with students on vocab in class is also important, but another great way to improve reading and comprehension is to get students reading. Students need to be reading engaging books that match their specific reading level so they can learn from them and build up their vocabulary. In my future classroom, I will have a classroom library with high-interest books and give students the opportunities to check out the books to read and reflect. Teachers should demonstrate knowledge of their students by having a wide variety of grade level books they can enjoy. It is important not only to know your students reading levels, but also what type of books they would enjoy reading. Giving them the option to choose from a selection of books keeps them more engaged and interested in their reading. Allowing them to pick a book they enjoy will hopefully encourage them to read more books like that, which will improve their vocabulary and overall ability to read. 

Another way to bring practice into the classroom would be the use of a word wall, where when students do not know a word, they can learn the meaning, find an image associated with it, and post it up on the wall under the correct alphabet letter. By doing so, they stand to learn the new word, while allowing their classmates to learn with them. All of these examples would be a great way to improve reading, vocabulary, and comprehension not only for Sally, but all of her classmates as well. Giving these tests to Sally was a great opportunity to learn how to assess a student's reading, and this knowledge will be very beneficial as I enter into my own classrooms.