high-stakes testing: The premise of high-stakes testing is that consequences good or bad, such as promotion or retention decisions, are linked to a performance on a test. It is intended to provide the public with a guarantee that students can perform at a level necessary to function in society and in the workforce.
authentic assessment: this means that students are doing reading and writing tasks that look like real life tasks, and students are primarily in control of the reading or writing task. These two criteria often lead to a third: students develop ownership, engage thoughtfully, and learn to assess themselves.
retelling: story retelling is a skill where a student is able to not only retell this simple sequence of story events, but is also able to include understanding of the story and characterization.
formative assessment: these assessments are used to gather information. A formative assessment is when the information gathered is used to adapt instruction to meet students’ needs. It is on-going to determine students strengths and how learning progresses. this helps to identify specific learning needs of all students.
self-assessment: this is when students assess their own learning. Students will answer questions such as “where am I going? “Or “where am I now?” These questions lay the foundation for students to identify their strengths and weaknesses and help provide a plan for intervention.
formal assessment: formal tests maybe norm referenced or criterion referenced. Many of the recent standardized tests give both norm referenced and criterion referenced results of students performance. Norm referenced test results, in particular, appeared to meet stakeholders needs for making comparisons.
standardized tests: these are machines scored instruments that sample reading performance during a single admission. Standardized test scores are useful in making comparisons among individuals or groups at the local, state, or national level.
norms: Norms represent average scores of the sampling of students selected for a testing according to factors such as age, sex, race, grade, or socioeconomic status.
Reliability: this refers to the stability of the test. Does it measure in ability consistently over time or consistently across equivalent forms? The reliability of a test is expressed as a correlation coefficient.
validity: this refers to how well a test measures what it is designed to measure. The test should have construct validity, to establish construct validity the test developer must show the relationship between a theoretical construct such as reading and the test that proposes to measure the construct. It should also have content validity, that reflects how well the test represents the domain or content area being examined.
types of test scores: there are two types of test scores, they are percentiles and stanines.
- percentiles: refer to scores in terms of the percent of a group the student has scored above. Percentile norms are developed by examining performance only within a single grade level. Percentile scores provide information that helps teachers interpret relative performance within a grade level only. They are also easily interpretable.
- stanines: this is one type of a standard score. A standard score is a raw score that has been converted to a common standard to permit comparison. Standard scores have the same mean and standard deviation, which allows teachers to make direct comparisons of student performance across tests and subtests.
types of assessments: there are two types of tests that are addressed in the book, they are survey tests and diagnostic tests.
- survey test: this represents a measure of general performance only. It does not yield precise information about an individual’s reading abilities. Surveys are often used at the beginning of the school year as a screening test to identify children who may be having difficulties in broad areas of instruction.
- diagnostic test: a type of formal assessment intended to provide more detailed information about individual students’ strengths and weaknesses. These results are often used to profile a student strengths and weaknesses of reading performance. Some diagnostic tests are individual; others are designed for group administration.
criterion-references tests: Formal assessment designed to measure individual student achievement according to a specific criterion for preferments.
informal assessments: informal measures of reading that you’ll do you spell information about student performance without comparisons to the performance of a normative population.
informal reading inventory (IRI): and individually administered in formal test, usually consisting of graded word lists, graded reading passages, and comprehension questions that assess how students orally and silently interact with print.
Three Reading Levels
- independent reading level: Students can read comfortably on their own. They recognize almost all words; their accuracy rate is 95 through 100%. The reading is fluent and they comprehend what they’ve read.
- instructional reading level: Students can read with support but not on their own. They recognize most words; their accuracy rate is 90 through 94%. Their reading may be fluent, but sometimes it isn’t. With support from the teacher or classmates students can comprehend what they’re reading, but if they’re reading independently their understanding is limited.
- frustrational reading level: books at the frustration reading level are too difficult for students to read successfully, even with assistance. Students don’t recognize enough words automatically; their accuracy is less than 90%. Their reading is choppy and word by word, and it often doesn’t make sense. Students also show little understanding of what’s been read.
miscue: oral reading errors
miscue analysis: informal assessment of oral reading errors to determine the extent to which readers use and coordinate graphic-sound, syntactic, and semantic information.
running record: A method for marking miss cues of beginning readers while they read.
analyzing running records: The teacher calculates the words read correctly, analyzes the student’s errors, and identifies patterns of errors. The teacher also gives close attention to self corrections.
words per minute (WPM) or words correct per minute (WCPM): this involves children reading aloud for one minute from materials used in the reading lessons. As the student is reading the text the teacher crosses out any word read incorrectly.
Dynamic indicators of basic literacy skills (DIBELS): this includes a series of oral reading skill assessment. Short measures are used to monitor early literacy skills and provide feedback to inform instruction.
portfolios: A con pie elation of an individual students work in reading and writing, devised to reveal literacy progress as well as strengths and weaknesses.
anecdotal notes: brief, written observations of revealing behavior that a teacher considers significant to understanding a child’s literacy learning.
checklist: A checklist consists of categories that have been presented for specific diagnostic purposes. She’s a checklist vary in scope and purpose; they can be relatively short and open ended or longer and more detailed.
interviewing: The teacher interviews students by asking questions, to get a deeper understanding of what they are thinking and feeling.
Classroom Application
This chapter had a lot of information and I kind of felt overwhelmed. However, all of it is concepts and skills that I will use in my classroom daily. Learning about surveys was interesting to me because we just learned about universal screening in one of my TED classes. It helped me learn what a survey is because I had an idea of what universal screening was! This understanding is very important to my career because universal screening will be used every year!
Payge Rivord 