Assessment

My question about assessment is the following:

What are some effective and efficient formative assessments used to inform reading instruction within ELD classes and intervention reading classes?

In this section, I explore some assessments that could supplement those that we already use in our district: SRI, QRI (in selected cases). In order to use the assessments listed, educators would need to purchase books and develop expertise around these assessments.This outline is not intended to provide enough information for full implementation of these assessments.

An important discovery I made when researching assessment in reading instruction is not related to my question about formative assessment but rather about assessments used to place students in intervention classes. From what I have learned, more research is needed in the area of measurements of texts and measurements of students' reading levels. In an interview with David Pearson, he described the "band of uncertainty" around both the measurements of texts and of students' reading levels. My conclusion is that educators need to use multiple measures when assessing students, particularly when deciding if students should stay in an intervention class.

In this section of the website, I outline resources for the following areas:

• Core Phonics Survey (and additional assessments and tools in the same publication and a related publication)

• CERA

• Summary

• Other Curriculum-Embedded Assessments Including Summary

• Outside Reading Assessments

• Adolescent Reading Inventory

• Miscue Analysis

The assessments in this section are geared to native English speakers and LTELs, not Newcomer English learners, with the exception of the Spanish Core Phonics Assessment. For SIFE students, I recommend literacy assessments in Spanish.

Core Phonics Survey and Additional Assessment Tools in CORE Assessing Reading Multiple Measure

I discovered that the assessment that a number of us in Sequoia Union High School District are already using is one of the most efficient and effective phonics assessments for high school students with significant gaps in phonics. The assessment is called the Core Phonic Survey and is available in the CORE Assessing Reading: Multiple Measures referenced below. Please see the phonics tab to learn about tools to use with this assessment. The two books are comprehensive and clear. Some of the helpful assessments in the assessment book include the following:

1. Core Phonics Survey in Spanish and English (link to this assessment is available online).

2. San Diego Quick

3. CORE Graded High-Frequency Word Survey (K-4)

4. CORE Reading Maze Comprehension Tests (2-10)-The texts seem reasonably age-appropriate but not as appropriate as those in the Adolescent Literacy Inventory.

5. MASI-R Oral Reading Fluency Measures (Grades 1-6)- These texts are short, easy-to-use and reasonably age-appropriate for secondary students.

This is a comprehensive sourcebook that could be quite helpful for secondary teachers who want to learn or review approaches to working with secondary students. I do not recommend using this book to decide what approaches to use since it includes so many approaches. But once a team has decided upon an approach, this guide is helpful. In particular, I would not use this as a guide for deciding upon an approach for teaching reading comprehension for secondary students. On this website, please see the Comprehension section under the Four Resource tab for an overview of the approach I advocate for reading comprehension for secondary students. However, once a teacher has identified an approach for reading comprehension, I think many tools in this book are helpful. For example, TSI (transactional-strategy instruction program) is outlined clearly on pages 642 and 659.

CERA Curriculum-Embedded Reading Assessment

The CERA has been developed by the Strategic Literacy Initiative, and a full explanation of the assessment can be found in Reading for Understanding. The assessment includes an analysis of the metacognitive strategies that students use. I have used this assessment and have found it to be quite helpful. More importantly, it has been created by and is promoted by one of the leading non-profits working with secondary literacy. Strategic Literacy Initiative has provided open source access to these assessments. Please also refer to the main website for Strategic Literacy Initiative for more information about the organization.

Reading for Understanding Downloadable Resources

CERA: Curriculum-Embedded Reading Assessment-Individual Writing Prompts

CERA: Curriculum-Embedded Reading Assessment-Rubric

The CERA incorporates summary and other elements. Summaries can be quite easy to prep though not as easy to read and assess. One challenge of summaries is that it can be difficult to separate a student's writing ability and knowledge of how to write a summary from reading comprehension; however, with effective instruction about how to write a summary and sentence frames, these impediments to accurate assessment can be decreased.

Additional Curriculum-Embedded Assessments (primarily for content classes)

William Brozo in RTI and the Adolescent Reader: Responsive Literacy Instruction in Secondary Schools recommends a number of effective curriculum-embedded assessments. Brozo suggests that educators think beyond separate settings for secondary intervention classes. Thus, curriculum-embedded assessments become critical if interventions take place primarily in content classes, possibly in a co-teaching setting (with a content and reading teacher).

With the class size limits of 170 students, the contract limit in the school district where I teach, some of these might be challenging to implement without a co-teaching model. Individual teachers would need to see if these assessments are possible to integrate into their instruction, given other essential content assessments and assignments that are essential to their content areas. I think the suggestions are quite promising, particularly since they are relevant to students reading below a sixth grade level. Many suggestions I see for assessments within content areas are appropriate for students reading about two years below grade level but not for students reading significantly below grade level.

The following (and others) are included in RTI and the Adolescent Reader:

• • Content reading inventory-I was able to find one open source sample of a content reading inventory similar to the one that Brozo recommends. It is math sample.

  • Cloze/Maze Passage

  • Vocabulary Self-Awareness Check

  • Cloze Bubble Map

Outside Reading Assessments

Authentic Assessments for the English Classroom includes many different authentic assessments that English teachers can use. I spent a morning at East Side Community, the school where the teachers who wrote this book teach. Please see a description of the school in the school models section. In East Side Community, independent choice reading, including significant choice reading conducted outside of the school day, is core to their program. Even if schools do not opt to make independent, choice reading an important part of their program, elements of this approach could be used to enhance any outside reading program in an intervention, ELD/ELA, or English class. I was unable to find any open source examples of the assessments in this book. The book contains a number of useful assessments and tools such as the following:

• Reading Conference Prep Sheet

• Ten Ways That Parents and Families Can Help Their Children Become Better Readers

• Student samples of strong and weak examples of Final Independent Reading Project

• Rubrics for the assignments they give

• Sample questions for round tables that are part of their portfolio grading system (and that include independent reading)

Adolescent Reading Inventory

An alternative to the QRI is the Adolescent Literacy Inventory (image below) published in 2011. The focus of this website is reading instruction for students who have not yet reached a a sixth grade reading level and below, and this assessment begins at the sixth grade. I was unable to ascertain if this assessment can be used for students reading below a sixth grade level. Since I feel that this assessment is so promising, I decided to include it in this section of the website.

One significant advantage I see of this assessment over the QRI is that the texts are aligned to secondary texts and interests. In terms of students' identity as readers, it is critically important that students feel respected during assessment procedures. Having used the QRI and having studied a number of the selections in the Adolescent Literacy Inventory, I feel that the Adolescent Literacy Inventory is more appropriate for high school students in terms of content. The QRI does have some limited high school texts, but they are for students reading at a high school level, and we use this assessment for students who are reading far below grade level. Additionally, the Adolescent Literacy Inventory includes an Interactive Assessment of Metacognition and has tools to assess students' proficiency reading in different content areas. The section describing how to use the data from the assessment is clear and helpful.

Further research would need to be conducted to ascertain if this assessment could be used or modified for use with secondary students reading below a sixth grade level.

Miscue Analysis

During ((the process of)) my research, a number of academics and educators suggested I explore the possibility of secondary reading teachers using a miscue analysis system that is widely used in elementary schools. This cueing system includes the following:

the semantic system (What does language mean?)

the syntactic system (How are words put together?)

the phonological system (How is meaning communicated through sounds?)

(Fountas & Pinnell, 1998, as cited on Florida's Department of Education's website)

Nicole Delaney has created a helpful prezi about miscue analysis that is available online.

Fountas and Pinnell's assessment system, which includes this miscue analysis, is used widely in schools in New York. I was not able to discuss the specific use of miscue analysis with any secondary teachers, and I also was not able to find any specific research about using miscue analysis with high school students. This is an idea that would require further research and training.