Assessment Plan

Assessment:

     I am going to focus my assessment plan on reading.  I feel that reading is very important skill to focus assessment on because it is a skill that is the basis for all of the other fundamentals of school.  Reading is something that we have to do on an everyday basis. 

    In order to know where a student stands with his/her reading skills we have to assess the reading skills first.  The first form of assessment I would do is a running record.  A running record is a great way to quickly assess what the student’s skills are.  To complete a running record I would have my student read a passage or a book.  As the student is reading aloud I would have a copy of the passage/book and make notations while the student is reading.  While at my student teaching placement I administered a running record nearly every week.  I did this with the kindergarten student I taught.  I wanted to see if his/her reading accuracy had improved over the weeks that I was student teaching.

     Another way to assess a student’s reading abilities is comprehension questions.  Comprehension questions allow the instructor to see how well the student is comprehending what he/she is reading.  For younger students the instructor can ask the questions directly after reading the book.  This could be done verbally or with sign, depending on the student’s communication mode.  For older students they could be given a quiz after reading the book or a chapter.  I think that it is important to start implementing comprehension questions in the classroom at an early age because as a student progress in the schooling process comprehension questions will show up all the time and not just in the student’s reading class. 

     Another informal assessment that I would complete in my classroom is the Basic Reading Inventory.  This assessment determines three reading levels; independent, instructional, and frustration. It also helps identify the student’s strengths and weakness in word recognition, comprehension, and listening. This assessment is criterion based.

     A formal reading assessment that could be completed in the classroom is the Metropolitan Achievement Test.  This test assesses word recognition, reading vocabulary, and reading comprehension. 

     I think that it is very difficult to choose which reading assessment to use in your classroom, there are so many to choose from.  On the DESE website you can find a very large list of both informal and formal reading assessments that you can use in your classroom.  The assessments that I listed are just a few.  I think that it is important to complete reading assessment so that you can gain a better knowledge of how your student functioning in the classroom with his/her reading skills.