Student-Teacher Assessment Turns Kids into Readers

Student‐ and Teacher‐Friendly Assessment that Turns Kids into Readers

7th Annual Western Canadian First Nations Administrators Education Symposium
Enoch Cree Nation, March 9, 10, 11, 2011

Douglas B. Rogers, Ed.D.
Student Learning Assessment and Performance Measures Lead
First Nation Student Success Program
Kwayaciiwin Education Resource Centre
After March 31, 2011: Literacy Education Director, BabyStepsToReading.com
douglasb.rogers@sympatico.ca
416‐697‐0533

“The elementary school must assume as its sublime and most solemn responsibility the task of
teaching every child in it to read. Any school that does not accomplish this has failed.”
‐‐William John Bennett [S] 1

Teachers must understand how children learn to read and write to assess children and adapt
instruction for fastest progress. A child will learn to read and write better if everyone significant
in that child’s life can articulate his current reading and writing performance and how he can
improve, and by everyone, I mean his teachers, parents, and himself from before he begins JK
through high school. I hope that by the end of this presentation you will feel prepared to help
the people in your community to do this.

Right now, many teachers say that they are helping children learn to read by practicing balanced
literacy, but that viewpoint has a significant weakness as an instructional perspective: It does
not explain how children develop reading ability. Drawing on the work of Jean Chall (1966),
balanced literacy practitioners posit that children move through stages, but the viewpoint does
not say how, and it is clear that from very early their lives, children show that they have learned
to read some individual words: A toddler riding with his family recently spoke up from his car
seat. Speaking the longest sentence he could make, he said, “Want fries” as he gazed at the top
of a tall pole at the golden arches advertising a McDonald’s restaurant. [S] And, once that word
is learned, children will remember it a lifetime, or least until a stroke or degenerative brain
disease robs them of the storage or route to that word. It’s not that beginner readers are at a
different stage; they just can’t read many words, yet. There is one more way that beginner
readers differ from mature readers, and we’ll address that later.

Much of what balanced literacy enthusiasts say about reading is wrong! Practitioners say that
they can teach comprehension, but comprehension is an experience. Toddler Dane certainly

1
In this handout, [S] and [pt] indicate when I show a new slide or a new point on a slide when
presenting the paper.

Assessment that Turns Kids into Readers, p. 2

seemed able to understand the threat of monsters when I read Where the Wild Things Are. Four
tots sat in front of me as I performed the story, making sure they could see the pictures. Dane
was transfixed when he saw the first painting of the monsters. Dane was a biter at the ECE
centre, and his mom reported that he fought a lot with his older brother, a preschooler. In fact,
mom reported, they had to let Dane use the broom in the fights to even up the matches. As I
read more of the story, Dane got up on his haunches and leaned toward the book. I flashed on
an image of Neanderthals around a camp fire. Suddenly, Dane rushed forward, and clawed at
the monsters on the page of the book, then hastily retreated to his spot on the carpet. Nobody
had to teach 20‐month‐old Dane to visualize, predict, or infer.

The balanced literacy advocates could be labeled Skillists: They see comprehension as
comprised of skills that must be taught (e.g., Miller, 2002). Eruditionists say that even very
young babies are already thinking well, but they don’t know much (e.g., Hirsch, 2003; Hirsch and
Pondiscio, 2010). Look at these observations from Debra Black’s review of the Philosophical
Baby: [S] "We've discovered very young children–even babies–have powerful learning
mechanisms such as the ability to do statistics, do experiments and use logic. They help them
determine what the world is like. One of the basic questions is how do we get truth about the
world. Well, we have brains that even as young children are designed to let us find out the
truth” (2009). An infant shown a toy train travelling a circle through a tunnel is fascinated at first
but soon loses interest. But if the examiner stops that train in the tunnel, the baby does a
double take. Clearly the infant has predicted that the train will exit the tunnel.

A teacher told me a story recently that shows that the differences between the thinking of
adults and children is less a difference of thinking skills than how much they know. A child like
the lad in the story that follows has not likely been read stories about farms, certainly never
visited one. Here’s how a guide described his first moments on the farm. [S] “Before I was a
teacher, I used to work on a farm giving field trips to classes. I would take classes through the
farm, teaching about the animals, the role of the farm, the farm community, etc., and then we
would pick pumpkins out in the field and go on a nature hike in the back forest. Since we were
just in the greenbelt outside of Toronto, we did get many groups from the city.

“One day, I had a kindergarten class from downtown take the bus up. I knew right away that the
kids didn't have much experience on a farm when they stepped off of the bus, so I tried to make
everything really accessible for them. When we got to the cow, I began to talk about it giving
them facts about the animal as clues as to its identity, and as I did I noticed one kid's eyes
getting big. When I asked if anyone knew what the animal was, he started waving his hand
frantically.

“Now you have to picture the day—it was October, so a bit chilly and the cow's breath was
fogging up. This kid, too, was standing right up near the fence, starring directly up at the cow
that towered over him. No one else had any clue, so I chose him. "I know I know! It's a dragon!"
he shouted completely wide eyed.” Since starting kindergarten, he had heard stories about
dragons, and he made a pretty good guess that this might be one, too. Eruditionists believe that
the main difference between someone who knows almost nothing about, say reading education,
and someone who speaks at conferences is 10,000 hours of quality instruction and study. This
lad may be just 9, 999 hours away from lecturing on the prevention of mad cow disease.


Teachers working from the Simple View of Reading [S], the dominant theory of how people
read, aim to consider both how well children are learning to recognize and spell single words
and how well they can understand and write text. Reading comprehension is simply the product
of one’s proficiency in word recognition and one’s listening comprehension (Aaron, Joshi,
Gooden, & Bentum, 2008; Coltheart, 2006; Roberts and Scott, 2006; Gough and Tunmer, 1986).

Learning to read is really just learning to understand language we see rather than hear (Rose,
2006). [S]

Knowing what happens in the brain helps us assess and teach literacy better. Here’s what they
didn’t show you in teacher’s college or in additional PD you have participated in. [S] A quick
glance at this time line Maryanne Wolf has created shows us that human beings store each
meaning, pronunciation, and spelling of a word in different places in the brain and activate
elaborate cell assemblies to connect all this information as more information comes in through
the retina of the eye, all in the quarter‐second that it takes to read the word we focus on (Wolf,
2008, p. 144). Once we activate the meaning of a word we see, we have accessed the same
language system we use to understand a word we hear.

That’s mature reading, via the direct route. Let’s look more closely at another representation of
the direct route to reading a single word (Rose, 2006, p. 86).


We have a simple test to measure how well a student can read words directly—and I’ll show you
that momentarily.

But what if you can’t read a word via the direct route? You’ll have to use the phonological
recoding or non‐lexical route. You learned a new word this way recently. Let me test you on it:
[S] [pt] Tahrir Square. Still sounding it out? I didn’t think so. This is the other way that beginner
readers differ from mature readers: Beginner readers are not yet skilled at sounding out words.
They don’t know letter‐sound correspondences as well nor how to blend sounds together for a
whole word. And we have a test of ability to recode from the printed form of a word to its
spoken form and connect to its meaning. Let’s test your recoding ability right now. [S of Pre‐test
of Decoding Mastery]

That’s it—the dual route to word recognition—not the triple route or the quadruple route. But
the balanced literacy people recommend training children to use four cueing systems to
recognize words in print (Clay, 1985; Clay and Cazden, 1990; cited in Rose, 2006). They believe
that when children hesitate to read or misread a word that teachers should encourage children
to try again to read the word after using these so‐called cueing systems by asking questions like,
“Does that make sense?” (to encourage use of semantic cueing system), “Does that sound
right?” (to encourage use of syntactic or grammatical cueing system), “Could the word you read
look like that?” (to encourage use of the visual cueing system), and “Could the word be spelled
that way?” (to encourage the use of the phonological cueing system). As we’ll see shortly, the
science suggests that we can help children read and understand better following a different
procedure when children misread a word.


So now you have a theory based on research—and it will really help you assess and teach
language arts better. It will show, concretely and in enough detail that you will leave the
presentation feeling that you have an up‐to‐date, scientific, evidence‐based understanding of
how to assess students to help them read and write better, from JK to grade 12.

Let’s look at what really makes kids better decoders and better comprehenders.  To help
students understand increasingly sophisticated text, the main way we can help them learn
about a new topic is to ensure that they begin with material that they can largely understand
already so that they can learn a little new material at a time. Toward the end of the presentation
we’ll look at how to promote the development of linguistic comprehension. But until students
can read the words on the Pre‐test of Decoding Mastery, the more important job in literacy
instruction will be to help the student learn to read single words.

Throughout our assessment, then, we will consider both how well the student is developing
word recognition and listening comprehension or verbal knowledge.

Reading diagnosis, then, explores [S]
 current reading performance (word recognition and reading comprehension),
 listening comprehension, and
 related factors that we may have to take into account in reading instruction (e.g.,
autism, hyperactivity, intellectual deficit, depression, attitude toward school, and so
forth).

Analogously, writing assessment explores [S]
 handwriting,
 spelling,
 conventions of standard written English,
 listening comprehension,
 genre writing, and
 related factors.

This approach to language arts assessment has four features important to realizing my aim to
help the students learn to read and write well: [S]

1. Teachers can learn quickly how to implement the assessment to students from junior
kindergarten through high school.
2. The costs of implementing the assessment are modest.
3. Teachers need little time to conduct language arts assessments of all their students,
starting with those most at‐risk of failing to learn to read and write.
4. The assessment shows students, parents, and teachers precisely the instruction and
practice that will lead to each student’s learning to read and write better, faster.

The assessment procedure is presented chronologically from younger to older students, but
once teachers are familiar with implementing it, they will be able to proceed more quickly by
changing the order of testing and omitting some parts. I will tell you how you can get copies of
the materials I show you today so that, if you care to, you can begin to implement the
assessment immediately: [S]


 Environmental Print Reading Test (Rogers, 2011)
 Knowledge of Text Conventions Subtest (Rogers Phonics Test, 2011)
 Alphabet Knowledge Subtest (Rogers Phonics Test, 2011)
 San Diego Quick Assessment (La Pray and Ross, 1969)
 leveled readers to determine independent and instructional reading levels
 Basic Sight Word Test (Dolch, 1942)
 Rogers Phonics Test (2011)
 Pre‐test of Decoding Mastery (Rogers Phonics Test, 2011)
 Fundamental Code Phonics Subtest (Rogers Phonics Test, 2011)
 Variants Code Phonics Subtest (Rogers Phonics Test, 2011)
 Phonemic Awareness Subtest (Rogers Phonics Test, 2011)
 leveled readers to determine listening comprehension level
 Reading Comprehension Exploration Test (Rogers, 2011)
 Ontario Writing Exemplars Project (Ontario Ministry of Education, 1999) Writing
Assessment

Determine Each Student’s Current Reading Ability [S]
To begin to explore whether we should pay particular attention to the word recognition or
listening comprehension aspects of reading—or both—we start the reading diagnosis by
assessing the student’s current ability to read single words. If the student has just begun junior
kindergarten, or if you know that the student is a beginner reader, begin by administering the
Environmental Print Reading Test. [S] [See handout.]

The Environmental Print Reading Test [pt] is a simple tool to help a teacher determine if a
particular student has learned to read any words so far. Simply ask the student to look over the
3‐page test and read any words he recognizes. If the student can read a word, he can learn to
read more, and those words can be used to teach the recognition of more printed words. If the
student doesn’t seem to read a word—yet—the teacher can try teaching one, picking a word
prominent in the child’s environment and important to him.

If a student seems to read few or no words, the assessment should explore other early
accomplishments in learning to read and write. Administer the Knowledge of Text Conventions
Subtest [S] from the Rogers Phonics Test to explore how well the student is learning the
meaning of words teachers use as they teach children to read and write. The subtest also
reveals if the student has learned where on a page to begin to read and other information
crucial to progress. The student is shown a page similar to this [S]

word
A
Here is a sentence.
____________________________________________
Once upon a time, three pigs went out into the world. The first pig decided to build
himself a house of straw. The second pig decided to build herself a house of sticks. The third pig
decided to build herself a house of bricks.

The examiner queries the student like this [S]
• “Point with your finger at a letter that is all by itself.”


• “Point to the word that is all by itself.”
• “Point to a sentence.”
• “Show me where to begin to read here.” [Touch into the middle of the text below the
line on the student copy.]
• “If I read this word first [touch the word Once], show me the words I would read next “
• “When I get here, [Touch the end of the first line], point to where I should go to read
more.

The teacher can also administer the Alphabet Knowledge Subtest [S] of the Rogers Phonics Test
to assess if the student can name and write the letters of the alphabet, because doing so is
crucial to learning to read and write. Students should form each letter quickly, automatically,
and legibly, the same way every time. Teachers need to know how well their students can
handwrite because students will learn phonics faster if they can write for the lessons or
explorations that the teacher provides.

When a teacher suspects or knows that a child can already read some words, [S] she can start
the reading diagnosis by asking the student to read a simple graded word list, like the San Diego
Quick Assessment [pt] (La Pray and Ross, 1969), to [S] quickly begin to learn the most important
information: What is the difficulty level of text that the student can read relatively easily,
making the text suitable for instructional use or, indeed, the level of text the student can read
very easily, making the text suitable for reading independently? [We want to identify text that
the student can read easily because reading a lot of text easily is a powerful way to learn to read
better (Allington, 2006)]. Here is the grade 6 list:
 bridge
 commercial
 abolish
 trucker
 apparatus
 elementary
 comment
 necessity
 gallery
 relativity

Follow these procedures to administer the San Diego Quick Assessment,
 Beginning with a list two grades below the student’s class placement, ask the student to
read aloud each word on a list.
 Go to even easier lists, if necessary, until a student reads all the words correctly.
 On the Teacher’s Copy, record phonetically all mis‐readings.
 Stop the testing when the student makes three errors on a list.

The results of the San Diego Quick Assessment tentatively identify the student’s current reading
achievement levels: [S]
 A student's independent reading level is the grade level of the hardest list on which he
misreads one or fewer words.
 A student's instructional reading level is the grade level of the list on which he misreads
two words.


 A student's frustration reading level is the grade level of the list on which he misreads
three words.

Such results give crude, tentative estimates of instructional and independent reading levels, so
the teacher will want to determine more precisely the book level a student can read
instructionally and independently.

Determine Book Reading Levels (instructional and independent reading
levels) to Match Readers with Text of Appropriate Difficulty
Teachers can ask students to read short books from a set of levelled readers [S] like those
available at www.readinga‐z.com or passages from an informal reading inventory (IRI) to
precisely match the current reading ability of a student to reading material of just the right
difficulty level. Students will read more if they can read easily.

 An assessment of instructional and independent reading levels is more reliable when it
is based on reading text, not just isolated words on a list. The teacher will also code the
student’s oral reading mistakes to understand how the student attempts to read single
words via both the direct route—accessing the meaning of the word directly from its
printed form—and the indirect route—sounding out the word so that, if it is in the
student’s listening vocabulary, it will activate the meaning. This information will be
useful in tweaking instruction in word recognition. The teacher also asks questions to
probe how well the student understands the passage, looking for information useful to
helping the student develop greater understanding. Direct the student to read aloud a
book below the level that the San Diego Quick Assessment identified as her instructional
reading level. You can use the handout “Book Level Comparison Chart for readinga‐
z.com and Other Leveling Systems”—please see attachment—to choose a book that the
student can probably read pretty easily, which is where you want to start so you do not
discourage the student.

The Learning A‐Z organization provides books that can be used for assessment from when
students are just beginning to read until they can read introductory materials, at least, about
any topic.
 Go to www.readinga‐z.com and sign up for a free trial account.
 Once you’re on the site, click on the “ASSESSMENT” tab at the top of the screen.
 Under the blue file folder tab “Level Assessment,” the second tab on the left side of
your screen, choose “Benchmark Books.”
 Scroll down to the level with the books you want, and click on a fiction or non‐fiction
Benchmark Book.
 Under the green lettering on the right side of your screen, “Book Resources,” click on
“Single‐Sided Color Book” (under “Book Options”), and print it. Now you have a copy of
a whole book. Or, under “Projectable Resources,” choose “Projectable Book.”
 At this point, you may wish to close the book after printing, and choose to print two
more documents under “Lesson Resources”: “Running Record Form,” on which you can
record the student’s oral reading, and “Benchmark Quick Check,” a few questions you
can ask the student to gauge his comprehension. The Benchmark Quick Check is also
available for viewing on a computer monitor or via a projector.


We recommend this procedure to determine a student’s instructional and independent reading
levels:
 As the student reads aloud the passage, record on a copy of the reading the child’s
reading errors—remember: readinga‐z.com provides for each benchmark book a
convenient version of the text on which to code the student’s oral reading behaviour—
by circling words he omits, inserting a caret mark and writing out any word the student
adds to the text, writing above each mistake a phonetic representation of that word
attempt, and bracketing text you read for the student after he paused for more than a
few seconds. (You may also want to underline text the student repeats and put a check
mark or sc beside any words initially read incorrectly but self corrected, but don’t count
these as errors.) You may not need the student to read an entire long book. After the
student reads a minimum of 100 words, you could direct the student to complete the
book silently and ask the questions when he’s finished but, generally, the more oral
reading you assess, the more you learn that can help you differentiate instruction.
 Don’t take the time to determine the use of cueing systems because good readers don’t
guess words much and when they are unable to directly access the meaning of the
word, they are capable of phonologically recoding a word to its spoken form. Indeed,
poor readers rely on context more than good readers and guessing words is seldom
successful (Torgesen, Wagner, and Rashotte, 1999, p. 4). Good readers tend to use
context as a check on reading accuracy. This monitoring of comprehension occurs very
rapidly—automatically—with the eyes sometimes jumping back (regressing) to look
more closely at text read previously.
 Ask the student questions to estimate the student’s comprehension. (Under the
readinga‐z.com tab Assessment, click on “List of Benchmark Quizzes” to find
comprehension questions for each text you use in your assessment.)
 Calculate the percentage of words read correctly and the percentage of comprehension
questions answered correctly.
 Continue asking the student to read texts from higher book levels until the student
reads with less than 95% correct word recognition or answers fewer than 70% of the
comprehension questions. That level represents the student’s frustration reading level.
 Identify the instructional reading level (i.e., the highest level at which the student reads
the words with between 95 and 97% success and answers the questions with at least
70% accuracy).
 Identify the independent reading level (i.e., the highest book level that the student
reads with at least 98% word accuracy and 70% comprehension). Beginner readers may
have no independent reading level: They will learn best if all their reading is supported
by instruction.

[S] The immediate, practical use of the oral reading analysis is that a teacher can assign reading
that will help the student become a stronger reader through independent reading and know
precisely the readability of text suitable for guiding the student’s reading. [pt] The information is
also useful to consider information useful to helping the student do better lexical and non‐
lexical word recognition and to decide how to help the student develop into a better
comprehender. [pt]

Here is a summary of the word recognition accuracy and comprehension that signal a student’s
independent and instructional reading levels:


• The highest readability level of text the student can read with at least 98% word
recognition is his independent reading level
• The highest readability level of text the student can read with at least 95% word
recognition is his instructional reading level
• Poorer performance will frustrate the student.

Richard L. Allington (2009) presents convincing evidence that reading more text at the
independent level—easily—permits fastest progress, concluding “High levels of reading
accuracy produce the best reading growth” (p. 46). [S]

Ehri, Dreyer, Flugman, and Gross (2007) describe a fine experiment that leads them to favour
lots of easy reading as the route to reading better: [S] “The reading achievement of students
who received Reading Rescue tutoring [a program that emphasized lots of easy reading and
phonics lessons] appeared to be explained primarily by one aspect of their tutoring
experience—reading texts at a high level of accuracy, between 98% and 100%” (p. 441). Further,
[S] “These findings indicate that high text‐reading accuracy during tutoring was the strongest
predictor and the only unique predictor of students’ reading achievement at the end of first
grade” (p. 440). This study shows this; so does other work going back decades, including Betts’
work quantifying the original designations of independent and instructional reading levels—
from 1949!

There’s no doubt that the marvelous, parallel‐processing brains children use to read their first
text do attend to sense and grammar as they read, but these processes largely occur below
consciousness. Perhaps the reason why there is so little evidence for the efficacy of teaching
cueing systems is that the practice reduces the time that teachers help children read text, and
that time‐on‐task is the most important factor in helping children read better.

Establishing the independent reading level using one levelling system can help a teacher find
other material that a child can also read easily. As Singer pointed out years ago (1975), if the
student or teacher examines a sample of text identified as appropriate for independent reading,
an eyeball estimate will be good enough to recognize other reading material of similar difficulty.
Teachers can also seek reading material of appropriate readability by referring to a chart that
shows the different designations of several book‐leveling systems for books of comparable
readability.

One of the best kinds of instructional reading help is helping a student read instructional‐level
text or even independent‐level text. How can a tutor best help a student while he reads easy
text? [S] When he makes an error, correct it and have him say the word and reread the sentence
(Heubusch and Lloyd, 1998). Grossen and Carnine [S] (1990) say that “every oral reading error
should be corrected, not just the ones that alter the meaning” p. 18). [S] After he reads the
passage or short book, study each word misread by talking about how the letters spell the
sounds of the word and reading the word several times (Stuart, 2003, p. 3). [S] Then the student
should re‐read the book for further experience reading with high word recognition accuracy
(Allington, 2009).

How can we ensure our students do greater amounts of easy reading? [S]


 Match each student with text he can read easily and arrange for lots of reading,
including having students read in trios, assigning text that the weakest reader of the trio
can read easily.
 Arrange for students to read to a buddy.
 Encourage students to read to parents and volunteers.

Do you find it hard to believe that reading must be so easy for children to make optimal
progress? Consider some information Allington presents (2009, pp. 51‐52). Would you want to
read a book where you had to struggle to read words every page? Reading the Secret Life of
Bees at 99% word recognition accuracy would mean that in 300 pages you would encounter
more than 1000 words that you couldn’t read correctly or only by slowing to decode! [S] [pt] A
child reading the Magic School Bus series—each book is about 40 pages long—with 95% word
recognition accuracy would encounter 250 words that he couldn’t read easily! [pt] Even at 99%
word recognition accuracy, he would still meet almost 50 words hard to read, if he could read
them at all!

Determine the Students’ Ability to Read Words on Sight and to Sound
Them Out

If the student is reading below the fourth grade level, the teacher should look closely at his
ability to read single words. [S]

Progress in reading is inhibited as long as students cannot read most words directly and quickly.
If a student often misreads the most common words of English, [S] many of which are less
phonetically regular than many English‐language words, the teacher will want to take a closer
look. Administer the Basic Sight Word Test list of high‐frequency words to show whether a
student needs additional help in learning to read these common words (Dolch, 1942). [Please
see the handout “Basic Sight Word Test,” which presents a five‐level version of the Basic Sight
Word Test for easy recording by the teacher.]

Here are the ten most commonly printed English words:
• the
• to
• and
• a
• I
• you
• it
• in
• said
• for

Simply ask the student to read each word, beginning with the pre‐primer list or a PowerPoint
presentation of those words. When the student makes an error, you may wish to write the
child’s reading error phonetically to consider later how well he can recode words from the
printed form to the spoken form, but you are primarily interested in learning how well the
student can rapidly read the most common words of the language. Note if the child reads the
words slowly because readers need to read them rapidly.


How common are these words? The 100 most common words make up about 50% of English
printed materials, and the 220 most common words on the Basic Sight Word Test comprise
perhaps two‐thirds of the running text in a community newspaper. The Dolch words are among
the first that a student does and should be able to read directly, that is via the direct route, the
lexical route, to word recognition (Coltheart, 2006).

The Basic Sight Word Test is identified as a list of words that children should know by early
grade 3. That may have been true when Edgar Dolch compiled his list in 1936, but many now
expect that students can read all these words by the end of grade 1. If students are to learn all
220 words during the 35 weeks of a school year, they must learn slightly more than 6 words a
week, not an unrealistic goal, especially if there is lots of easy reading going on in the classroom
and teachers use a word wall for study and drill or display the lists themselves—and ensure that
students know why they’re working to read these words. [S] [S] Such procedures will help the
student develop the ability to directly activate the word meanings for each of these high‐
frequency words.

If the student often misreads phonetically regular words, and, again, this is particularly likely in a
beginner reader, the teacher should administer the Rogers Phonics Test to assess the student’s
phonics skills (i.e., knowledge of letter‐sound correspondences and the ability to blend them to
sound out a word). Using this test allows the teacher to see how well a student is able to use the
other procedure for reading single words, the route to word recognition that we all use when
we don’t recognize a word on sight: We try to determine the spoken form of the word from its
printed form; in other words, when we can’t read a word on sight, we sound it out, we
phonologically recode the word from print to speech (Coltheart, 2006); we use the non‐lexical
route, as illustrated earlier by Rose (2006, p. 86). [S]

The teacher must decide whether to administer the Pre‐test of Decoding Mastery, the first
subtest of the Rogers Phonics Test, a list of polysyllabic non‐words (pseudo words) that are
spelled phonetically. [S] If the teacher knows that the student is very unskilled at looking at a
word in the English language and reading the word aloud with a credible pronunciation, the
teacher should skip asking the student to read the Pre‐test of Decoding Mastery. Children who
can read the words on the pre‐test will almost certainly be able to decode words that are in
their listening vocabulary, even when they have never previously read them, just as we read
Tahrir Square the first time we saw it in print. The pre‐test is used only to quickly identify
students who are so proficient at using the phonological route to reading single words that
there is no need to administer the rest of the phonics test. Teachers can focus on helping such
proficient decoders increase their comprehension and ability to learn from text.

Next, the teacher should administer the Fundamental Code Phonics Subtest [S], to determine if
the student knows the most common letter‐sound correspondences for our English dialect and
can apply them to read words with the most common spelling patterns (e.g., sib, slin, nope, and
so forth). [Please see handout, “Rogers Phonics Test.”] [The next few slides show some details
from the subtest.] Students who perform perfectly have mastered, or nearly mastered,
automatic word recognition, so teachers should administer the Variants Code Phonics Subtest.
[S] Simply ask the student to read aloud each word and record phonetically all errors. Every item
the student fails on that subtest indicates a less common letter‐sound correspondence that the


student does not seem to know and cannot use to sound out words and, thus, should be
considered for exploring or re‐teaching.

For students who are unsuccessful on many of the phonic analysis test items or are unable to
read the basic sight words, the teacher should continue testing by looking at the child’s
phonemic awareness skills [S] with the Phonemic Awareness Subtest. [Please see handout.]
[Two slides show details from this subtest.] When students have phonemic awareness they can
isolate and manipulate the sounds of the language. Although recent research (e.g., Castles et al,
2009) shows that alphabet knowledge, phonemic awareness, and phonics are best taught
simultaneously, teachers gain useful knowledge when they identify students who are just
beginning to have this knowledge and skill. Teachers can, for example, help students improve
their spelling of and reading of words and syllables by singing the alphabet song and listening to
a lot of alphabet books repeatedly, spelling and decoding words in the consonant‐vowel‐
consonant pattern (e.g., mat, tas), and reading decodable books with the phonic elements
taught to date.

Students with automatic word recognition—who can easily read all the Dolch words, for
example, and the pseudo words of the Pre‐test of Decoding Mastery—enjoy reading casually.
Third graders who can recognize automatically any word in print that they know when they hear
it or speak it may read a hundred Animorphs books over a summer vacation. Other children will
be excited by opportunities to read books [S] from the Goosebumps or Choose Your Own
Adventures or Magic School Bus or Junie B. Jones series. When students have strong word
recognition skills, they find reading an interesting book for recreation is as easy and enjoyable as
watching a TV sitcom or playing a computer game. They are reading casually, not intending to
apply the information learned while reading or even to remember it for long. Rather, they focus
on their immediate sensations of being amused or frightened or sating curiosity.

Determine the Student’s Listening Comprehension Level [S]
When students demonstrate automatic word recognition, teachers must shift the focus of
reading assessment from students’ progress in learning to read to students’ ability to learn from
reading. The assessment focus will become considering how well students understand what
they hear and read and how well they can read to learn more and express themselves in print.

The Simple View asserts that reading comprehension is the product of a student’s ability to read
single words and his listening comprehension. [S] As Rose (2006) put it, [S] learning to read is
just learning to understand language we see rather than hear. Junior kindergarten students can
read very few words, but they can understand a lot of language about many topics if, for
example, they listen to someone talking about these topics. If we assess their linguistic
comprehension, we can determine the level of text that they could read if they learned to read
the individual words. We use the same procedure to assess the listening comprehension of
kindergarten children as we do older students: We simply read passages—like the leveled books
on the readinga‐z.com site—of increasingly higher readability and ask them to summarize them
or ask them questions about the material until we find the hardest passage for which they can
still demonstrate about 70% comprehension. [S]

Even if a student can directly read thousands of words and efficiently sound out new words, he
may still struggle with school work, so a teacher will want to consider the student’s ability to


understand discourse, including text. Once a teacher finds the highest readability text that a
student cannot adequately read and understand—the frustration level at which he answers the
questions with less than 70% success—she can look more closely at what is inhibiting his
understanding. Why do some kids not understand school texts? [S] Use this procedure to find
out: Read the passage or book to the student and then ask the questions. Ask the student to
define some of the words. Hart and Risley (cited in Hirsch, 2003, p. 16) suggest that students are
unlikely to adequately understand a reading passage unless they already understand some 90‐
95% of the vocabulary. (Hirsch expresses it this way: [pt] “Vocabulary experts agree that
adequate reading comprehension depends on a person already knowing between 90 and 95
percent of the words in a text. Knowing such a high percentage of words allows the reader to
get the gist of what is being said and therefore to guess correctly what the unfamiliar words
probably mean.”) To help a student study a topic for which the textbook is too hard for the
student to understand, the teacher would have to help him find more introductory text or other
media. Students will have difficulty understanding passages on topics about which they know
little. Before they can understand such materials, they will need to fill in gaps in their
background knowledge. That’s why schools must support every topic of curricula with rich
materials about those topics: DVDs, books to read to students, books kids can read themselves
to research to do and present projects, all to explore this remarkable world in which we live, all
to help them develop more verbal and non‐verbal knowledge of our world. As we saw earlier,
helping to boost students’ comprehension is not teaching them skills: Dane didn’t need any
visualization training to anticipate that Sendak’s monsters could mean trouble.

The highest readability level of text at which the student can answer at least 70% of the
questions is his listening comprehension level. [S] If it is higher than his current independent
reading level, the teacher knows that if she can help the student improve his word recognition,
the student will be able to read and understand more advanced material.

If a student’s independent reading level is sixth grade or higher, his general language
comprehension is sufficient to learn about any topic—providing that he starts with material at
an appropriate introductory level so that he already knows some 90% of the word meanings of
the text (or other discourse, for that matter).

Determine How to Help the Student Read to Learn [S]
If students can recognize the words in the text—read them aloud, for example, with mostly
correct pronunciation—they will understand the text at least as well as they would understand if
someone read it to them. The appropriate response if students cannot understand text that you
are using in their classroom —even if you read it to them—is to provide them with material at a
more introductory level.

However, there are other ways, too, that teachers can explore how students are attempting to
understand text and, possibly, help them understand it better. To assess how well students are
able to read text to learn or to report to others something they’ve learned—as for situations like
learning biology for a high school science credit or reporting progress to a manager they work
for in a bank—the teacher must observe students while they research, read, and write, and ask
them questions:

The points made in the discussion that follows have been incorporated into the Reading
Comprehension Exploration Test, which teachers can complete to note a student’s current


reading performance to plan how to help them learn even better from their reading. [See
handout.]

When the student is puzzled while reading, does he routinely try harder to understand? [S]
 Does the student reread puzzling text?
 Does the student skip a few words to see if it makes sense when one reads on a bit?
 If still puzzled, does the student seek out material at a more introductory level?

Does the student show an understanding of how to learn effectively? [S]
 Does the student pause in reading to ask questions to determine if he has been able to
build a mental representation of the passage topic? If he can’t visualize and summarize
the topic with the appropriate words, he has not really understood or remembered the
material.
 Does the student use a dictionary to clarify the meaning of the puzzling words in the
passage?
 Does the student seek to talk about material read to better understand and remember?
 Does the student highlight what must be remembered to limit material to review for a
test or just to remember for life?
 Does the student use mnemonic tactics, such as creating acronyms, to remember
information (e.g., Remembering the word HOMES can help one name the great lakes)?
 Does the student use study procedures, such as previewing text, setting questions
before reading, trying to answer the questions after reading, and reviewing the text to
re‐study points still not understood?
 Does the student know that he should pay vigilant attention when his teachers teach a
guided or directed reading lesson before assigning reading, that such lessons may help
him fill in some of the background material and vocabulary he must know to make sense
of the reading?
 Does the student realize that there are ways other than reading to learn information
(e.g., Does the student know that if he cannot read the words, he can still learn the
information if he can get someone to read and discuss the text with him)?
 Very importantly, does the student understand that if he reads widely on many topics
he will learn more information and vocabulary so that he will be able to listen to or read
more and more material, including text that is increasingly sophisticated (Rogers, 2002)?
 Does the student take responsibility for studying by practicing good study habits (e.g.,
setting aside adequate time to study for tests and to prepare projects)?
 Does the student make notes, document sources, make graphic aids, outline, draft, and
revise writing as a way to learn?
 Perhaps most importantly, does the student know that if he cannot understand the text
(or lecture or videotaped material), he will be able to understand a more introductory
presentation of the information and begin to learn about the topic?

A rational reading assessment will also include a look at a student’s ability to locate information
(Rogers, 1984) [S]. Can the students find the text he must read to learn?
 Teachers should determine if a student can use book parts, for example, to find the title
of a work, as well as the author, publisher, city of publication, edition, copyright date,
and so forth. Can the student quickly locate and understand the function of book parts


such as preface, foreword, introduction, table of contents, list of figures, chapter
headings, subtitles, footnotes, bibliography, glossary, index, and appendices?
 Does the student locate information in a dictionary (e.g., use guidewords and a thumb
index, locate root words, use the pronunciation guide, select the word meaning
appropriate to the passage)?
 Does the student use encyclopedias and other reference works?
 Does the student use information retrieval tools such as an electronic card catalog in a
library, an online database, or an Internet search engine?

Teachers can also assess students’ specific ability to understand the graphic aids that authors
often use to augment text when they try to communicate their thoughts.
 Does the student read graphs, charts, tables, cartoons, pictures, diagrams? Some
standardized reading tests assess such skills, but simple questioning can reveal whether
a student is skilled at interpreting such graphic aids [S] (Rogers, 1984).

Determine How to Help the Student Write—and Write to Learn

Just as assessing reading is more powerful when we assess students while they are reading
words and trying to understand text, the assessment of writing will be more powerful if we
observe students while they are writing. Consider a brief piece of writing that a teacher might
help students write as early as kindergarten. After reading There Was an Old Lady Who
Swallowed a Fly, [pt] the teacher gives each child a big piece of paper shaped like a stout lady.
[S] The children are encouraged to brainstorm and write a page for an expanded book about
other things that lady might have swallowed. As the children learn to spell from copying text,
inventing spellings based on memories of the visual appearance of the word and knowledge of
letter‐sound correspondences and orthographic patterns, the teachers can scrutinize the
students’ work to decide how to help them write better.

Books that we read to children can often lead to interesting writing projects for even our
students just beginning to learn English language arts. [S] Students who had listened to Eric
Carle’s The Grouchy Ladybug were asked to write and illustrate their most vivid memory of the
story and to tell about a time they were grouchy. [S] [S]

Students will learn to write fastest if they are helped to write projects like one sketched below
about interesting animals in this part of North America. [S] [pt] Reading about this writing
project will help you in planning lots of the kinds of writing that will help students become
better at reading and writing. This work will stretch out over a couple of weeks and give all the
children in a grade 3 or 4 class many opportunities to read and write.

The teacher provides both a purpose and an audience for the writing. After reading Judith
Viorst’s Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, finishing with the
memorable phrase “even in Australia,” the teacher shows the students where Australia is on a
globe. She tells them that a third‐grade teacher in Australia has proposed a project: Her
students will write and illustrate a book about the animals the students would see if they visited
Australia; she hopes Canadian kids will write a book describing the animals students would see if
they visited northern Ontario.


The teacher proposes that the entire class will collaborate with the teacher to create a page
together about an animal that visitors might see. Then the students will work in pairs to create a
page for the book they will write together and send to the class in Australia.

The teacher has assembled a lot of material about animals of Canada. There are DVDs and books
ranging in difficulty from short and simple enough for the weakest readers in the class to so high
in readability that it will be best if the teacher reads them to everyone.

The teacher passes out pads of Post‐It notes and suggests that each student make notes about
what they learn about bears from the DVD of a Discovery program that she shows to introduce
the topic of brown bears, the topic of the first page of their book—or PowerPoint—for the
students in Australia. After showing the DVD, the teacher reads a few introductory books about
bears to the students. On another occasion, the teacher and students visit websites run by zoos
to see what zoos say about brown bears. All the while the students are recording notes and
temporarily posting them in a notebook so they don’t lose them.

After exploring the topic for a while, the teacher says, “Let’s start our writing. Who has some
interesting information that we might share with children in Australia, children who have never
seen a brown bear.” She listens as her students read aloud from their Post‐It notes. “Hmm,” she
says, “What if I start to write down everything you say as you tell it to me? Would that make a
good report?” The teacher engages the children in the idea that the class needs to decide how
to organize the information so that it is easy for readers to read through it. “Let’s draft our title
right on the chart paper,” she says, “I’ll write The Brown Bear” at the top. What should we tell
first about the bear?” The teacher coaches the children to decide that telling what a brown bear
looks like is a good place to start the report. “Let me make an outline here: I’m going to create a
table with a column called appearance. We’re probably going to write several paragraphs, so I’ll
make a chart for our points. [s] Everyone who has a Post‐It note about appearance, please come
up and attach it to my appearance column.” Once the teacher has all the notes displayed in the
column about appearance, she can go on to say, “Let’s talk about our topic sentence. What is
the main idea of this paragraph we’re going to write about the appearance of brown bears?”
Talking with the students, working from their notes, the teacher gradually writes for the
students a whole paragraph about the appearance of brown bears.

You can imagine the similar work to write notes for the organizer and then to draft with the
students the additional paragraphs about the diet, habitat, and family life of brown bears. The
students can also suggest an illustration for the entire page about the brown bear.

Once students have written with the teacher, they can begin to read and view materials with a
partner to research the other animals that will be included in the book about animals one might
see in northern Ontario. In turn, they will make notes and organize them on a chart like they
completed with their teacher. After the teacher vets the chart, the students are ready to draft
their paragraphs.

Over and over again, teachers will help their students become stronger readers and writers by
working through projects with them: science fair projects, diaries about pre‐contact life in
Canada, newspaper accounts of survival in the wilderness sparked by novels like William Stieg’s
Abel’s Island, and so forth. Students can work in pairs or groups or individually. Along the way
they can read one another’s work. They can examine the rubric the teacher uses to assess their


work. When students study the rubric their teacher used to mark their work—perhaps like the
one below by Westby and Clauser (2005, pp. 288‐289)—they can see more clearly how to write
better for the next project. Students can help the teacher to create the rubrics. Students can
help one another proofread and edit good copy for display for parent nights. Project by project,
students will become more literate.


Two documents on the Ontario Ministry of Education website will be of particular help in
assessing and teaching writing. [S]

The document at http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/curriculum/elementary/task18.pdf, [pt] The
Ontario Curriculum Exemplars Project Writing Exemplars: Year‐end Writing Tasks, shows the
procedures teachers followed to guide students’ writing for several projects and the materials
that they used, a project for each grade. Teachers can work through one of these exemplary
projects. The sixth grade project takes the students through a process to help them summarize
what they read about Nunavut, a common school assignment from middle school through
university and into the work world.

The Ontario Curriculum Exemplars—Grades 1‐8 Writing at [pt]
http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/curriculum/elementary/writing18ex.pdf shows examples of
work created by students from grades 1‐8. Not only does this document show real student
work; it shows the assessment of the level of writing demonstrated in each example of student
work. The examples of student work make it easier to compare how a particular student is
progressing in learning to handwrite, spell, punctuate, capitalize, paragraph, take notes, draft,
revise, and edit writing, against provincial expectations. Comparing these exemplars to the work
your student writes can help you assess current writing capacity and make it easier the
instruction that will help the student write better.

Teachers and parents can consider the language arts expectations for third and sixth grade
students another way, too, by visiting eqao.com, the site of the Education Quality and
Accountability Office for the Ontario Ministry of Education. Past tests are posted, complete with


the rubrics used to score them and examples of actual student work marked with those rubrics.
Some of the rubrics focus on the content of the writing; others focus on how well the student is
observing the conventions of standard written Canadian English. Ontario aims for 75% of its
students to attain level 3, and studying the work on this site makes it easier for teachers and
parents to see what level 3 and 4 writing looks like. Teachers who help students work their way
through some of the test items are helping their students develop the qualities necessary to
communicate effectively in writing.

Teachers must take certain steps to assess writing in ways that are not conflated by students’
reading ability. This is not always done. For example, students’ writing scores on the EQAO tests
depend partly on how well the students are able to read the material used in the test items.
Some low scores will be due to reading difficulties more than writing difficulties. The easiest way
to get a cleaner look at writing is to ensure that a student’s independent reading level is at least
as high as the material in the writing test items or, at a minimum, to read to the student all text
in the test item and the instructions for completing it. Teachers can arrange for students to
participate in the lesson and writing assignment of the Ontario Writing Exemplar Project at the
same grade level as their independent reading level. An exemplar writing project could also be
chosen at the student’s listening comprehension level, if someone reads for the student
throughout the writing assignment.

Teachers will also assess their students’ writing more effectively when they teach writing more
effectively. For example, students will be more likely to show their best writing if teachers show
students examples or exemplars of the kind of writing they are doing, the rubrics that the
teacher will use, and the marks assigned for the writing.

Assess Factors Related to Literacy Learning [S]
Once teachers have identified what children know already and what they must still learn,
teachers can consider factors that may necessitate modifying instruction. Literacy proficiency is
influenced, for example, by children’s ability to listen and speak. A child with a small vocabulary
during his preschool years, for instance, may, even if he learns word recognition effectively,
slump in fourth grade or later (Chall et al, 1990, cited by Hirsch, 2003, p. 10) because he may not
know the meaning of words he can read. He can read the words aloud correctly but doesn’t
understand the text. We can explore a child’s oral language capacity by simply asking children to
summarize or answer questions about informal reading inventory passages we read to them.
(Children showing pronounced difficulty talking should be referred to a speech and language
pathologist.)

These are other factors that should be taken into account as the teacher plans language arts
instruction:
 Physical disabilities
 Developmental disorders (hyperactivity, autism, and so forth)

Differences in memory and rates of automatic naming may also explain differences in the pace
of learning to read and write, and university reading clinics often administer tests to measure
these constructs. The Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (CTOPP) is frequently used
when children learn language arts very slowly despite instruction. The CTOPP may be used, for
example, to assess phonological memory via measures of recall of both digits and phonemes. If
the student seems to be able to hold less information in working memory, perhaps that slows


phonological recoding or learning to connect the written form to the spoken form. Slower rapid
automatic naming (of digits, colours, and objects) may make it harder for all the information to
get into working memory from the places in the brain where the forms, sounds, and meanings
of words are stored. Science has reached no firm conclusions about how to remediate these
observed differences, but teachers who assiduously encourage their students to read easily at
their independent level, who help students read at their instructional levels, who systematically
explore with students how the sounds of the English language are spelled, who help students
learn to read directly the most common words of the language, and who help them to develop
their listening comprehension and writing skills are already providing the kind of instruction that
the clinics advise. More elaborate assessments are not necessary for a fundamental literacy
assessment useful to classroom teachers.

The case history of language development gathered from interviewing the child and parents and
guardians in the literacy assessment may also reveal information that will lead to
recommendations to adapt the language arts instruction: The teacher may choose to speak into
a microphone for the benefit of a child with hearing loss. She may schedule shorter, more
frequent lessons and motivate with concrete reinforcers like candy to help an active child learn.
A teacher may arrange extra lessons for a child who learns more slowly.

As teachers adjust reading instruction as they learn of relevant related factors, they can
continue to observe students’ reading, writing, and general behaviour to further refine the
literacy lessons.

Write a Learning Plan for Each Student [S]
The last component of an effective system of student learning assessment of English language
arts is, I think, a learning plan, or life plan, an LP, for each student. I envision a record that would
be passed from teacher to teacher so that each reception teacher could quickly learn key
information about a student new to her so that she could begin immediately to provide
appropriate instruction.

Several components would make the LP worth the work. The basic information should certainly
identify the most important information relevant to literacy learning:
 current reading performance (word recognition and reading comprehension),
 handwriting,
 spelling,
 conventions of standard written English,
 genre writing, and
 related factors

Here there will be statements like “Albert achieved a level 3 for writing he did on the grade 4
Ontario Writing Exemplars Project assignment”—whether Albert is in grade 2 or 6.
In conjunction with materials like the handout “End‐of‐Year Reading Level Targets for the
Primary Grades,” teachers can use these results to arrange for more instruction for students
who are falling behind their peers.


The LP should be more than this. It should be a digital file, including a portfolio of the students’
work. It could even include the cover and comments about every book a student has read. It
should include year‐by‐year statements by students of their plans for living a good life in the
upcoming year.

Conclusion

You’ve explored a comprehensive approach to assessing the reading and writing performance of
students: [S]
 assessment of beginner readers and writers,
 the growing word recognition prowess of students,
 limits to students’ ability to comprehend discourse,
 how well students are learning to write, and
 related factors that educators must consider in planning instruction.

If schools assess and instruct language arts effectively, the students will show their literacy
proficiency on any tests we put them to. [S]

Students will learn best when they and the people who care for them, most especially their
teachers, have a solid, modern, scientific understanding of the reading process. If you can fill in
the blanks in this next paragraph, you’re well on your way to that understanding—and to being
able to ensure that your students can articulate it, too.

Capable readers can look at words and understand them as easily as they do when they _____
them. Mostly readers look at a word and connect directly to the word in their _____ vocabulary:
They can understand language through their eyes as well as language they hear. When readers
see a word they don’t recognize on sight, they can figure out quite accurately the _____ form of
the printed form. If the word is in their listening vocabulary, they will recognize this word
because their brain will have connected the spoken form with the word meaning stored in their
_____. Reading is the product of our ability to _____ single words and to _____ them. If
students can read the text aloud but can’t summarize it or answer questions, they need to find
more _____ materials, either simpler books or other media.


References

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Reading Disabilities Based on the Component Model of Reading. Journal of Learning
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Allington, Richard L. (2006). What Really Matters for Struggling Readers. 2nd ed. Boston:
Pearson‐Allyn and Bacon.
Allington, Richard L. (2009). What Really Matters in Response to Intervention. Boston: Pearson‐
Allyn and Bacon.
Black, Debra. (2009 August 16). What's going on in the brain of a baby? Conversation with Alison
Gopnik about The Philosophical Baby. Toronto Star. Retrieved from
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The Genesis Of Reading Ability: What Helps Children Learn Letter–Sound
Correspondences? Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 104, 68–88.
Chall, Jeanne S. (1966). Stages of Reading Development, 2nd ed. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace.
Coltheart, M. (2006). Dual Route and Connectionist Models of Reading: An Overview. London
Review of Education, 4, 1, 5‐17.
Dolch, E. W. (1942). Basic Sight Word Test. Champaign, IL: Garrard Press.
Ehri, Linnea C.; Lois G. Dreyer; Bert Flugman; Alan Gross. (2007). Reading Rescue: An Effective
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Grossen, Bonnie and Douglas Carnine. (1990, Winter). Translating Research on Initial Reading
Instruction into Classroom Practice. Interchange, 21, 4, 15‐23.
Hirsch, E.D., Jr. (2003, Spring). Reading Comprehension Requires Knowledge—of Words and the
World. American Educator, 10, 12, 13, 16‐22, 28, 29, 44, 48.
Hirsch, E.D., Jr. and Robert Pondiscio. (2010). The American Prospect, 21(6), p.13.
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in response to the paper circulated to speakers on 24th February 2003, prior to the DfES


Phonics Seminar on March 17th 2003. Retrieved January 26, 2011, from
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Attachments:

Basic Sight Word Test (Dolch, 1942)
Book Level Comparison Chart for readinga‐z.com and Other Leveling Systems
End‐of‐Year Reading Level Targets for the Primary Grades
Environmental Print Reading Test
Reading Comprehension Exploration Test
Rogers Phonics Test
San Diego Quick Assessment Graded Word List
WCFNAES Paper complete version
WCFNAES PPT complete version

Student-Teacher Assessment Turns Kids into Readers

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