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Reading Assessment in the Content Areas

Aguilar Fall 2011TED 406 Teaching Secondary Reading

One of the common faults of teachersis “teaching” students things They already know.

Boring….

How can we find out what students know, are able to do, and are interested in?

We can assess students for all of these…

First, a Word on Assessment…

• There are many kinds of assessments…• Formal and informal…• Summative and formative…• Commercially-published and teacher-made…

• Assessment• Gathering of information on students• Strengths and areas of needs in all areas of concern

• Testing (Part of the assessment process)• Standardized, chapter tests, spelling test• Formative, functional, behavioral, criterion, norm

Assessment v. Testing

Assessments Vary…

• Different assessments exist for different reasons and have different characteristics…

Formal Informal

Commercially Published

Teacher-Made

Assessments Vary…


Formal Informal


Standardized: SAT, GRE, CTBS, NAEPCriterion-Referenced: CST, Periodic Assessments

Teacher-Made

Assessments Vary…


Formal Informal



WorksheetsSmall group activities

Teacher-Made

Assessments Vary…


Formal Informal




Teacher-Made

Chapter Tests, Labs, Reports, Essays, Projects

Assessments Vary…


Formal Informal




Teacher-Made

Chapter Tests, Labs, Reports, Essays, Projects

Quizzes, white boards, thumbsup/down, think/pair/share, Quick Write

…And have different purposes…

• Standardized tests are intended to compare the performance of an individual to a group, or a group to a group Normal Curve

• Criterion-Referenced tests are intended to measure the performance of individuals on a common, pre-determined task. (Everyone can get a 100%.)

Standardized Tests are Problematic

If I were to put up a chart showing Reading Achievement among U.S. 17-year-olds from 1971 to 2008, what wouldyou expect it to show?

Would you believe me if I told that 17-year-olds in 2008 scored 1 point higher than 17-year-olds in 1971?

Standardized Tests are Problematic

Grade 8 NAEP Performance

Grade 12 NAEP Performance

What does this tell us?

The average 8th grader reads at a “basic” level.

The average 12th grader reads at a “basic” level.

Or…

Not much.

Standardized Tests are ProblematicCampbell’s Law:“The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.”Donald T. Campbell, “Assessing the Impact of Planned Social Change,” in Social Research and Public Policies: The Dartmouth/OECD Conference, ed. G.M. Lyons (Hanover, NH: Public Affairs Center, Dartmouth College, 1975), 35.

Assessments have different purposes…

• Only Teacher-Made tests are intended to provide teachers the information they need in order to optimize instructional design…

• In order to find out about your students’ knowledge, skills, interests, strength, and weaknesses… YOU must assess them.

There are lots of ways to do that…

• For Task 3. Learning About Students: Content Literacy Pre-Assessment, you will use a Cloze Test.

• Vocabulary knowledge is often used as a proxy for reading ability. Why?

• For a Cloze Test, students provide the word they think best fills in each blank in 200-300 word passages.

Cloze Test

• By asking students to fill in the blanks for several leveled reading passages, we can identify students’ – INDEPENDENT, – INSTRUCTIONAL, and– FRUSTRATION reading levels by grade

Percent of Correct Responses Level

70-100 Independent

35-59 Instructional

0-34 Frustration

Grade 6 Grade 7 Grade 8 Grade 9 Grade 10

Grade 11

Grade 12

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

IndependentInstructionalFrustration