L12/ Reading Assessment Techniques

Reading Assessment Techniques
Reading comprehension assessments are the most common type of published reading test that is available. The most common reading comprehension assessment involves asking a child to read a passage of text that is leveled appropriately for the child, and then asking some explicit, detailed questions about the content of the text (often these are called IRIs). There are some variations on reading comprehension assessments, however. For example, instead of explicit questions about facts directly presented in the text, the child could be asked to answer inferential questions about information which was implied by the text, or the child’s comprehension might be tested by his or her ability to retell the story in the child’s own words or to summarize the main idea or the moral of the story. Another common reading comprehension assessment is called a "cloze" task — words are omitted from the passage, and the child is asked to fill in the blanks with appropriate words. Also, young children’s reading comprehension can be assessed by asking them to read and follow simple instructions, such as, "Stand up" or, "Go look out the window."
Reading comprehension should not be confused with reading accuracy, another very common form of reading assessment. In a reading accuracy assessment, a child is asked to read a passage of text clearly, without making any mistakes. The mistakes that the child does make are analyzed to find clues about the child’s decoding strategies (not comprehension strategies). Very often, an assessment combines these two different assessments into one assessment — the child reads a passage out loud while the teacher makes note of errors the child makes (sometimes called a "running record"), and then the child is asked some comprehension questions about the passage.