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Forty-four million adults in the United States are unable to read a simple story to their children, and 50 percent of adults have literacy skills below an eighth grade level (Literacy Project Foundation, 2015). A contributing factor to this situation is that many secondary students are graduating high school with the inability to read at a college and career reading level. Studies have found that only 36 percent of high school seniors performed at or above the proficient reading level, while 27 percent performed below the basic level (U.S. Department of Education, 2013), and only 44 percent of high school students in the United States met the reading-readiness benchmark on the 2013 ACT college entrance exam (Alliance for Excellent Education, …show more content…
It requires readers to silently read expository and narrative passages that are 400 to 600 words and up to 15 sentences in length within a 35-minute period (Alfassi, 2004; Archer, 2010; Cutting & Scarborough, 2006). Each passage increases in textual difficulty with six to ten comprehension questions that are multiple choice, and questions are answered while the passage is in view (Alfassi, 2004; Archer, 2010; Cutting & Scarborough, 2006). Another commonly used Lexile-linked assessment is the Gray Oral Reading Test-Third Edition. This assessment uses expository and narrative passages like the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test; however, the passages consists of six to seven sentences and are read aloud as quickly as possible (Cutting & Scarborough, 2006; Shippen, Houchins, Steventon, &Sartor, 2005). After the student reads a passage aloud, the passage is removed, and the examiner asks five multiple-choice questions. The assessment ends if the student answers three out of five questions incorrectly (Cutting & Scarborough, …show more content…
Informal assessments determine reading levels as well as provide a personal connection to the text through open-ended questions (Applegate, Quinn, & Applegate, 2002; Bean, Readence, & Baldwin, 2008). One informal method requires students to read a current grade level passage, and if they read 70 and 100 words correctly in one minute with fewer than seven errors, they are reading at grade level (Hawkins, Hale, Sheeley, & Ling, 2011). If they do not meet the requirement, teachers can provide passages that decrease in difficulty until reading level is determined (Hawkins et al., 2011). Content teachers can also use a 400 word passage from their content area and provide the students five minutes to read a passage. Students verbally answer ten short answer questions, and the correct answers are then averaged across the two passages (Alfassi, 2004; Fuchs et al., 2001; Hawkins, Hale, Sheeley, & Ling, 2011; McCallum, Krohn, Skinner, Hilton-Prillhart, Hopkins, Waller, & Polite, 2011). Passage recall is another informal method. Students read a 400 word passage in five minutes and have ten minutes to retell the passage (Fuchs et al.,
With such high numbers of adolescents falling below basic in reading, illiteracy is a battle that must be fought head on. The largest dilemma with the struggle is the number of variations that cause adolescents to become reluctant, unmotivated or struggling readers. Fortunately, a large number of strategies exist to encourage and strengthen readers of all ages, proving that adolescence is not a time to give up on faltering students. Rather, it is a time to evaluate and intervene in an effort to turn a reluctant reader into an avid one (or near enough). Ultimately, educators must learn to properly assess a student’s strengths and weaknesses (Curtis, 2009) and pair them with the proper intervention techniques. If one method does not work, countless others exist to take its place.
Literacy, or the capability to comprehend, translate, utilize, make, process, assess, and speak information connected with fluctuating settings and displayed in differing organizations, assumes an essential part in molding a young's persons trajectory in life. The ability to read speaks to a key factor of scholarly, social, and financial success (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). These abilities likewise speak to a fundamental segment to having a satisfying life and turning into an effective worker and overall person (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1999). Interestingly, recent studies have demonstrated that low reading skills lead to critical hindrances in monetary and social achievement. As stated by the National Center for Education Statistics, adults with lower levels of reading skills and literacy have a lower average salary. Another study evaluated that 17 to 18 percent of adults with "below average" literacy aptitudes earned less than $300 a week, though just 3 to 6 percent of adults with "proficient" reading abilities earned less than $300 a week (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998).
Last school year, I took a college class that required hours of field experience in a high school English class. I was able to observe different English classes and different high school grade levels. What made a big impact on me was to hear some of those high school students struggling with reading more than the third grade students I was teaching that same school year. These students were expected to read and comprehend grade level text when they were reading at an elementary level. Illiteracy “is considered the blackest mark of a person’s finally in school and the greatest failure in the American school system” (Tchudi, and Tchudi 75) and there are around twenty-five million functional illiterates in the United States (75). Why are our middle school and high school students still struggling with reading? What can English/Language arts teachers do to help these struggling readers?
Educators, therefore, strive to create high quality assessments that produce meaningful results. Reviewing the learning objectives for the covered material helps the developer determine the best testing method. Depending on the content area, it may prove beneficial to include a student self-assessment step. It is important to report results in a timely manner. Reporting may be mean sharing with the students, administration, colleagues, or parents. Regardless, careful communication of results are important. After all parties receive results, objectives can ...
Parents are often encouraged to read to their infants and toddlers as it has been proven that reading improves cognitive development and comprehension. Reading with children broadens their knowledge as well as developing pre-reading skills (Steinberg et. al, p.159). But what happens to children once they reach adolescence? How do literacy skills affect them? In this paper I will assess, analyze and provide an evidence based intervention to address a gap in the community based program called Reading is Fundamental (RIF).
Illiteracy in America is still growing at an alarming rate and that fact has not changed much since Rudolf Flesch wrote his best-selling expose of reading instruction
The learner analysis was conducted to learn about the target population that will be using the reading comprehension unit. The main focus of the analysis was to find information that would help create a comprehension unit and help teach students the skills to understand what they were reading. To do this Criterion-Referenced Tests (CRT) scores were examined and a survey was created to investigate teachers’ ideas about reading comprehension.
Student assessment information should always be what drives a teacher’s instruction. Until taking the Literacy Assessment 637 class I had not been required to administer so many assessments. This class also required me to not only assess my students, but to interpret the data and use it to develop and create remediation activities. The purpose of assessing any student is to gain information about a child and identify strengths as well as deficit areas. This can include formal assessment such a DIBELS, “The Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) are a set of procedures and measures for assessing the acquisition of early literacy skills from kindergarten through sixth grade.” (https://dibels.org/dibels.html), or informal assessment such as observations, checklists and anecdotal records. This class also helped me to understand how critical it is to
According to “The National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL), it has been recently estimated that 14 percent of adults in the United States have a below basic level of prose literacy. Basically what that means is that adults with this level of prose literacy range from being nonliterate in English to only being able to locate easily identifiable information in short, commonplace prose text. For example, people with below basic prose literacy would be able to find out “what a patient is allowed to drink before a medical test”, but generally couldn’t say or find “in a pamphlet for prospective jurors, an explanation of how people were selected for the jury pool.” Shockingly enough, 55 percent of those in the lowest prose-literacy group had not finished high school.” (“The Silent Epidemic -The Health Effects of Illiteracy”) That is a really alarming number! Over half of the people that have the lowest level of literacy didn’t finish high school… wow! “Although statistical rates of functional literacy may vary from one study to another, it is still apparent that a high number of adults in this country are poor readers.” (“Literacy Education”) Illiteracy is becoming such a problem in the world that it is preventing many people from achieving success. This is a situation that needs to be solved, and can be! Possibly through general reading programs for adults and older children, literacy integration programs at work and in businesses, and early action by teaching children to read at an early age.
22). Fluency has four components: rate, automaticity or accuracy, phrasing, and comprehension. (DeVries, 2011, p. 259) Research demonstrates students reading passages repeatedly with a passage or small groups (Armbruster, Lehr, & Osborn, 2008). Readers begin to familiar themselves with words from reading passages. It helps students become a fluent reader. Teachers model how to read fluent student’s gain. As students begin to read silent or independent it will changes the self-esteem in being confident, think, and have less frequent errors. The student will begin to read alone without guidance and volunteer in reading sessions. It is three different levels of reading independent, instructional and frustration level text (Armbruster, Lehr, & Osborn, 2008, p. 27). Independent Level is an easy read for students with 95 % -100% (Armbruster, Lehr, & Osborn, 2008, p. 27). Instructional level text is moderate and challenging the reader to read more difficult words in passages (Armbruster, Lehr, & Osborn, 2008, p. 27). A reader will have 90% success in instructional level text (Armbruster, Lehr, & Osborn, 2008, p. 27). Record, check, chart is an activity students can work independently (DeVries, 2011, p. 272). The student will read a book into a recording device. While following the text from passage, the student listens to the recording and marks words said incorrectly
Rutenberg, D. High School Literacy: A Quick Fact Sheet. National High School Center at AIR, 2009.
Designing test specifications: The second step involved in constructing a test is to clearly state test specifications. The components that would make the construct we are attempting to assess need to be stated in specific terms. Reading comprehension ability was defined as the ability to understand short and long pieces of unfamiliar passages ranging from 20 to 350 words in English and to answer multiple choice questions correctly. It was decided that identifying main idea, recognising supporting details, guessing meaning from context, inferencing, understanding connection of ideas and locating information are the components for
Through assessment students and teachers are able to determine the level of mastery a student has achieved with standards taught. Both formative and summative assessment should be purposeful and targeted to gain the most accurate data to drive further instruction (Ainsworth, 2010). While this syllabus does a good job of identifying the need for both formal and informal assessments, the way in which this is communicated does not provide enough detail for understanding. Simply listing assessment types does not give any insight into how these assessments fit in the learning process of this course. While some of the assessments mentioned could be common assessments chosen by the school or district to gain insight into the effectiveness of instruction, the inclusion of authentic assessments is most beneficial to students and demonstrates learning in a context closer to that of a work environment (Rovai, 2004). Unfortunately, this particular course, according to this syllabus, relies heavily on quizzes and traditional tests and essays to form the bulk of assessment opportunities. While other activities, such as formative assessments, journaling and discussions are mentioned as possible avenues for scoring, they are given a very low percentage of the overall grade. This shows that they are not valued for their ability to show progression and mastery. If this is indeed the case, this puts the students as a
Fulcher, G. & Davidson, F. (2007). Language Testing and Assessment: An Advanced Resource Book. Oxon: Routledge.
They do not possess adequate reading skills to grasp the information or the meaning underlying in the text. For instance, the United States of America, which is one of the developed countries in the world, grapples to cope with this problem. According to the U.S Department of Education, thirty-million Americans are considered illiterate and are unable to complete job applications or understand health care forms. The literacy rates among fourth grade students in America are struggling. Sixty-six percent (66%) of all U.S fourth graders scored “below proficient” on the 2013 National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) reading test are not reading at grade level. Even more alarming is the fact that among students from low-income backgrounds, 80 percent (80%) scored below grade level in reading. Reading proficiency among middle school students is not much better. On the 2013 NAEP reading test, about 22 percent (22%) of eighth graders scored below the “basic level”, and only 36 percent of eighth graders were at or above grade level. Accordingly, over 60 percent (60%) of inmates in the U.S prison system have reading skills at or below the fourth grade level; 85 percent of U.S juveniles in prison are functionally illiterate; percent set of adults with extremely low reading skills live at or below the poverty line; nearly two-thirds of students who reach the