I had a remarkable conversation with a thoughtful and sarcastic twelve year old recently. He was from New Zealand and I interrupted him while he was reading a book and laughing. We spoke about the book and then we talked about reading assessment.

 

Yes, I said reading assessment. I asked him how I could know if someone needed help with reading. He hesitated for only a moment and said, “Well, ask someone to read a couple of paragraphs; actually, maybe it would be a very, very short story, and then ask him to tell you what it was about.” It just seemed so obvious to him that I thought I would keep this going. So I asked him if I should care about anything besides understanding the story, like speed or making mistakes. He was quick with his answer. “Reading is supposed to be fun, so it shouldn’t be hard to do.”

 

“So should I time him to see how long it takes?” I asked.

 

He said, “Yes, but make sure he doesn’t know you’re timing him, or he’ll probably be nervous or just try to read too fast and you won’t know how he reads just regular for him.” (He also wanted to know why I couldn’t figure this out for myself.)

 

This gets better. Without any prompting, he explains to me that just how fast he reads won’t be enough information. I should think about how smooth it is. Or whether “it sounds like he understands in his voice.” He went on to say, “What if he reads fast but sounds funny?”

 

This boy was defining the difference between words per minute and fluency. If he gets it, how come we don’t? Why are we telling our students to read quickly and then defining this as fluency? I propose that we use an assessment tool that takes into consideration comprehension, accuracy, fluency, and rate; and all in one assessment. Check out the assessment tool on this website. Since the goal of reading is to comfortably understand the text, why not assess with an assessment tool that checks for the goal? And what if we do this every 15 to 20 hours after using a quality intervention so there is a real chance for the intervention to work?