Objective 8

A third-grade teacher has been conducting a series of ongoing assessments of a student's

oral reading. Shown below is a sentence from a text, followed by a transcription of a typical example of the student's oral reading performance.

After reading the sentence, the student paused and then reread it without the teacher's prompting and self-corrected the errors. Based on this information, the teacher could best meet this student's needs by adjusting instruction in order to:

• enhance the student's oral vocabulary development.

• develop the student's ability to self-monitor comprehension.

• improve the student's decoding skills.

• promote the student's ability to track print.

Answer explanation

The student's oral reading performance in this sample strongly suggests a lack of foundational knowledge in phonics and sight words. The miscues indicate serious decoding difficulties with various phonics elements, including lack of automaticity in decoding common vowel digraphs (reading boats for boots), common consonant digraphs (reading ck for ch), and complex consonant clusters (reading crucked for crunched). The student also misread a high-frequency sight word (through) that should have been mastered by the end of second grade. 

Conversely, this oral reading sample provides no evidence that the student has difficulty tracking print (D). And, by self-correcting his or her errors without prompting, the student demonstrates both understanding of the text's vocabulary (A) and the ability to self-monitor for comprehension (B).

Which of the following types of assessments would best provide information about the comparative reading proficiency of students in an elementary school?

• a test of vocabulary development

• a norm-referenced survey test

• a reading miscue inventory

• a diagnostic portfolio

Answer explanation

Norm-referenced tests are designed specifically for the purpose of comparing students' performance. Norms are statistics that describe the test performance of a representative sample group. 

In general, the tests in A and C are designed to measure the degree to which students meet specific objectives (i.e., they are criterion referenced); therefore, A and C are incorrect. 

A diagnostic portfolio (D) is individually administered and would most likely contain a comprehensive battery of reading assessments designed for diagnostic purposes.

Considerations of validity in test construction relate most closely to:

• how a particular examinee's test performance relates to a pre established standard.

• whether the test questions effectively measure their specified content.

• how a particular examinee's test performance compares to the performance of other examinees.

• whether the test results are likely to be repeatable with a similar examinee test group.

Answer explanation

Validity is the degree to which a test measures what it is intended to measure. 

A is incorrect because criterion referencing is the term used when a student's performance is related to a pre established standard or set of objectives. 

C describes norm referencing. 

D describes test reliability.

If a standardized test is said to lack reliability, the test:

• is not measuring what it is supposed to measure.

• has not proven to be useful as an instructional intervention.

• gives fluctuating scores in different administrations. has poor predictive value relative to students' classroom performance.

• has poor predictive value relative to students' classroom performance.

Answer explanation

Reliability indicates the degree to which a test yields consistent results over successive administrations. If a test yielded fluctuating results, it would be considered to have low reliability. 

A relates to a test's content validity, while D relates to a test's predictive validity. Standardized tests are not intended to be used as interventions (B).

Which of the following informal assessment results provides the clearest indication that a kindergarten child has attained a beginning level of phonemic awareness?

• The student can clap the "beats" or syllables of familiar multisyllable words.

• The student can delete the second "word" or syllable in compound words.

• The student can delete the second "word" or syllable in compound words. The student can delete the second "word" or syllable in compound words.

• The student can substitute phonemes in the medial position of single-syllable words.

Answer explanation

Phonemic awareness is a specific type of phonological awareness involving the ability to distinguish the separate phonemes in a spoken word. 

Identifying the beginning sound of a single-syllable word is typically one of the earliest phonemic awareness skills developed, while substituting medial phonemes (D) is considered a more advanced phonemic awareness skill. 

A and B describe skills at the syllable or word level and are therefore not considered phonemic awareness skills.

One of the most important purposes of a standardized Informal Reading Inventory (IRI) is:

• to establish how prior knowledge and text organization influence a student's reading comprehension.

• to determine how a student uses semantic, syntactic, and other text clues to deduce a word's meaning.

• to analyze how a student's silent reading comprehension is influenced by oral reading fluency.

• to establish a student's independent, instructional, and frustration reading levels.

Answer explanation

Standardized Informal Reading Inventories (IRIs) are administered individually to students to establish the students' reading levels. The results of this type of assessment provide evidence to guide the selection of reading materials for students for instruction and/or interventions and to guide students in their selection of materials for independent reading. 

A is incorrect because the results of IRIs do not provide information about how a text's organization or a student's prior knowledge affect the student's comprehension.

IRI results are also not helpful in determining what types of clues students use to determine the meaning of unfamiliar vocabulary (B) or in analyzing the relationship between a student's silent- and oral-reading proficiencies (C).

An advantage of using assessment tools such as portfolios and scoring rubrics is that they:

• provide more objective results than do multiple-choice tests

• promote student participation in self- assessment activities.

• ensure consistency among different evaluators.

• offer more reliable assessment data.

Answer explanation

Typically, the development of student work portfolios involves students in selecting and self-assessing some or all of the materials that are included in their individual portfolios. Students can use scoring rubrics to self-assess and guide their work. 

The other responses are incorrect because students and teachers can develop their own criteria for selecting student work for a particular portfolio and can develop their own scoring rubrics for evaluating that work; thus, the results of this form of assessment are neither more objective (A), nor more consistent (C), nor more reliable (D) than the results of standardized assessments.

Which of the following best describes the primary advantage of having a student read a passage silently and then provide a "retelling" as a means of assessing the student's comprehension, rather than having the student answer questions?

• A retelling is open-ended and requires the student to construct a description of the passage more independently of the examiner.

• The results of a retelling are more objective and easier to quantify than the results of direct questioning.

• The procedure involved in retelling tends to be more familiar to a wider range of students, including English Language Learners.

• A retelling can provide information about the student's inferential comprehension skills, which questioning cannot provide.

Answer explanation

Having a young student provide a "retelling" (or having an older student construct a summary) of a text removes clues or scaffolds from the assessment that teacher questions often provide and ensures that a student's responses are based solely on his or her reading of the text. 

Some disadvantages of retellings include that the results are not easy to quantify (B) and the procedure is often unfamiliar to students, particularly to students who are new to U.S. schools (C). Also, since retellings are unstructured and usually elicit only explicitly stated details about the text, this type of assessment is not necessarily effective in assessing a student's inferential comprehension skills (D).

Which of the following criteria would be most important to consider when selecting "leveled texts" for use in assessments and guided reading with beginning-level readers?

• The texts should use repeated words and natural oral language structures.

• The texts should require readers to use problem-solving to connect text to illustrations.

• The texts should emphasize use of literary language and dialogues.

• The texts should feature a range of punctuation and context-specific vocabulary.

Answer explanation

Beginning readers need lots of practice reading a variety of texts written at their independent reading levels to reinforce their knowledge of phonics and sight words already taught, build their automaticity, and improve their reading fluency. Leveled texts are series of texts constructed using controlled vocabulary and syntactic structures. Within a particular level, the texts share many of the same vocabulary words and follow basic syntactic structures, both of which gradually increase in difficulty in successive levels. Matching students to appropriate-level texts is key to providing beginning readers with effective practice opportunities. B is incorrect because the primary goal of using these texts with beginning readers is to reinforce students' decoding skills and promote reading fluency, not to promote their use of picture clues. They are also not designed to promote students' knowledge of literary language or devices (C). Because of their controlled nature, leveled texts feature a limited range of punctuation, and they purposefully introduce only a few new content vocabulary words per text (D).

In order to select a trade book that emphasizes predictability, a teacher should ensure that:

• the text includes some pictures or illustrations.

• the concepts in the text are at an appropriate level of difficulty for the target student(s).

• a phrase, rhyme, or sentence is repeated throughout the text.

• the length of the text is not likely to exceed the attention span of the target student(s).

Answer explanation

Reading aloud predictable texts to pre alphabetic and emergent readers is an effective way to promote young children's motivation to read and their development of concepts of print. The portion of the text that is predictable is generally a phrase, rhyme, or sentence that is repeated throughout the text, much like the refrain of a song. This repeated text is easy for young children to learn quickly, which allows them to "read" along with the teacher. 

A, B, and D all describe other important features common to books written for young children. However, these are not features that make the books predictable.