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?
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How is this different?
I already do this type of assessment with a running record as described by Marie Clay in Reading Recovery training. The only difference -- we do not tape record. I agree with your argument of speed vs. fluency -- and in our district we keep trying to explain to the bulk of our teaching staff the difference. It's nice to see another person support this tenet -- but I guess I still prefer my Reading Recovery running record. Nancy
Score 4 and Reading Recovery
Thanks for noting the similarity with Reading Recovery. I'm definitely a fan. If you take a good look at the Score 4 assessment tool sample on the website, you'll probably notice a few more differences, but they are basically the same idea. As long as we get at the important stuff, I'm glad we have choices of how to do it. As long as the "how to" (practical application) is being driven by a "what to" (methodology), and the "what to" is driven by a "why to" (theory), we are in good shape. Good Luck, Jill
Intervention
The assessment is a good, simple idea. The trick is to provide the quality intervention you mention. What would that look like? Just another comment: reading at 250 words per minute is adequate. Less than that is probably not. Where would the difficulty of the text come in here, like Lexiles or some other accepted readability scale? Would the book the student was reading be at grade level or at their independent reading level, so as not to slow reading for decoding and miss all meaning? It sounds great, but the process is much more complicated than is being presented. Frank
What happens after an appropriate assessment
Reading at 250 words per minute is far better than adequate. Did you mean 150? I'm thinking that between 160 and 200 is what a successful adult (and young adult) reader should be doing. I'm also thinking that if I'm working with a struggling reader, the stories will be at least one grade level below his grade (or more if necessary). The stories used by Score 4 Reading have all gone through a readability statistics program. I agree with you that the process is very complex. The underlying theoretical assumptions that are driving the application are highly complex. But what is so sweet about the Score 4 method is that the application itself is fairly simplistic. Jill
What really works
I have read your material and I totally agree with all of it. When I first started teaching many years ago, we did not have all of these assessment tests, etc.. and I started the Title I reading program in our school and taught in it for 30 years. I learned very quickly that every year when I would get new students, I would assess them by doing exactly what the young man suggested. It worked very well and I could have that done in a week on all of my classes. Now, it is test, test and wait on the results. Your methods are actually going back to the basics and what really and truly works. It definitely is research based and evidence-supported and most of us who used this method years ago can attest to this. Congratulations and keep me posted.
Oweita Calvert