aimswebPlus Literacy Assessments and Scoring Unpacked

Kindergarten

Early Literacy Percentile (ELP) includes the following assessments.

Letter Naming Fluency (LNF):  measures a student’s ability to name visually presented uppercase and lowercase letters. 

Letter Word Sound Fluency (LWSF):   measures a student’s ability to say the sounds of individual letters, vowel-consonant (VC) pairs, and consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) word blends. 

Grade 1: 

Early Literacy Percentile (ELP) includes the following assessments.

Nonsense Word Fluency (NWF):  measures a student’s ability to say the individual letter sounds of unfamiliar vowel-consonant (VC) and consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) nonsense words.

Word Reading Fluency (WRF): measures a student’s familiarity with regularly and irregularly spelled words commonly used in kindergarten and Grade 1 classroom materials.

Oral Reading Fluency (ORF):  measures a student’s ability to read (fictional) texts aloud accurately and within an expected time frame. 

Although not part of the Early Literacy Percentile, Letter Naming Fluency (LNF) is administered in Grade 1 as it meets a priority indicator for early reading universal screening as per the State of New Jersey.

Letter Naming Fluency (LNF):  measures a student’s ability to name visually presented uppercase and lowercase letters. 

Grades 2-3: 

Reading Percentile (RP) includes the following assessments.

Reading Comprehension (RC):  measures a student’s ability to read grade-appropriate informational and literary texts and demonstrate accurate understanding in multiple components of reading comprehension. 

Vocabulary (VOC):  measures the range of a student’s knowledge of grade-appropriate words. 

Oral Reading Fluency (ORF):  measures a student’s ability to read (fictional) texts aloud accurately and within an expected time frame. 

SCORING:

Students take multiple assessments in the literacy domain.  Each subtest measures a specific skill, and scores on each test are used to calculate an Early Literacy Percentile in Grades K/1, and a Reading Percentile in Grades 2/3. These percentiles measure student performance on a combination of critical skills. Students in grades K-3 take multiple subtests in order to receive a composite score, indicated above.

National Percentile Rank:  A student’s national percentile rank is a norm-referenced performance measure.  It compares a student’s score with a national reference of scores of students in the same grade, who were tested on the same content, during the same timeframe.  Percentile rank is useful for understanding a student’s reading ability compared to other students in the same grade nationally. Based on the number of correct responses, each student is assigned a percentile rank in the fall, winter, and in the spring. Percentiles range from 0-99. 

Performance Band Details: There are five performance bands.

• Well Below Average (1-10%)

• Below Average (11-25%)

• Average (26-74%)

• Above Average (75-89%)

• Well Above Average (90-99%).