CORTNIE BELSER'S MSED PORTFOLIO
Assessing Reading Comprehension
To effectively monitor student growth, assessing reading comprehension through multiple mediums allows teachers to understand and address gaps in students' ability to reach grade-level reading mastery.
Table of Contents
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Introduction to Assessing Reading
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Close Reading, and Text-Dependent Questions
Introduction
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As an English Language Arts instructor, reading comprehension is one of the foundational content skills that is evaluated in diagnostic, formative, and summative assessments in every unit. As a measure of student growth, reading fluency focuses on the ability for students to not only read more complex texts in a shorter amount of time, but analyze these complex texts and demonstrate this comprehension through a variety of methods. To monitor learner's progress of comprehending grade-level texts, I utilize a variety of assessment methods throughout daily and weekly instruction. There is some capacity of reading that occurs daily, whether audiobook, whole-group, partners, or independent; these opportunities provide students with a benchmark on their own reading fluency and comprehension and provides me daily formative assessment on how students are building and practicing reading comprehension skills. To address reading comprehension assessment, there are three reading instruction and independent practice assessments I focus on: student annotations, close reading comprehension, and whole-class reading.
Student Annotations ​
One of the most consistent assessment practices I utilize is student annotations as formative data to highlight how students understand and comprehend a variety of texts. Annotations provide students with the opportunity to draw text-to-concept, text-to-text, and text-to-self connections guided towards a standards-based objective. Moreover, depending on if instruction involves guided whole-class annotations with independent analysis or independent annotations and analysis, I am able to collect data on how students' comprehension of content knowledge and skills before utilizing a more rigorous assessment of reading comprehension. Often times, as students annotate independently, I am rotating around the classroom to either keep a mental notes of student progress or common misconceptions as well drafting written notes to utilize during further planning. This formative assessment allows me to monitor student progress as I use student exemplars or common miscomprehensions examples during think alouds and reteaching prior to further assessment. When a new skill is being taught, I can use whole-class annotations to gauge whole-class progress towards mastery and plan for differentiated instruction.
The documents to the left represent a sample of how I assess annotations. To reinforce student choice and empowerment, I provide open-ended annotation guidelines to focus on dialogue with the text rather than demonstrating comprehension. This student sample shows me assessing reading through annotations as a formative assessment exit ticket. In addition, on page 2, the red box indicates the students attempt to include my previous feedback during the next annotation assessment. This sample demonstrates how I engage students in feedback on annotating to further deepen their understanding and reading comprehension.
Close Reading and Text-Dependent Questions
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Another method of assessing reading reflects the district's Cycles of Professional Learning 1 emphasis on close reading and text-dependent questions. As seventh and eighth graders, my students should be able to effectively cite and analyze the relationship between text and task. In action, close reading occurs by students reading a chunk of a larger text at least 2-3 times to understand literary elements or apply content skills for a focused analysis. As an extension of annotations, close reading is an applied skill that offers insight on student reading comprehension growth. As students close read, I am able to gather qualitative data that can inform my understanding of their current skill mastery and subsequent formative assessment performance. During close reading and text-dependent question responses, I utilize probing questions and anecdotal notes on student work to emphasize critical thinking and applied knowledge for students to redress by the following formative and summative assessments of the skill. While the multiple close reading usually occurs during guided instruction, text-dependent questions data is most relevant from summative assessment materials.
The image to the left shows the close reading board displayed at the front of my classroom. As shown in the image, there are anchor charts in English and Spanish of guided questions I use to assess reading through close reading. I display student work that demonstrates standard mastery and also examples of common misconceptions or depth of analysis during close reading.
The student sample to the left demonstrates an additional way that I assess reading comprehension through close reading for students who require thinking stems to further scaffold comprehension. Since the document provides question stems across Blooms Taxonomy, each section represents a deeper understanding of the text for students. The red box on the first page indicates the student-selected question and response while the red box on the second page is a question I selected for the student to respond to in a short-constructed response. This student work demonstrates how their preparation citing evidence during the first and second read (page 1) supported their analysis on the author's credibility. As an assessment of reading comprehension, this student can further their analysis by integrating relevant and strong text evidence in their analysis and addressing all parts the question.
The student work samples above demonstrate two levels of mastery while assessing reading comprehension through text-dependent questions. After annotating and close reading for general comprehension, text-dependent questions deepens student understanding. During this formative assessment of reading comprehension of two chapters, the first student does not demonstrate mastery of the text as he fails to articulate key details that can be drawn directly from the text. Alternatively, pages 3 and 4, represent another student's work that is more representative of a student who is moving towards standards mastery. Both students can strengthen their text-dependent question responses by citing direct quotes as it is stated in the text to as they draw an analysis.
Think Aloud and Group Reading
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As a practice to assess reading comprehension, I routinely model metacognitive critical thinking as well as allow student-led think alouds to occur. Each week, as students learn a new concept or skill, I will conduct a whole-class or small-group think aloud to model the expectation of how students should apply comprehension skills to demonstrate mastery understanding across a variety of texts. To reinforce previous skills, each student-led think aloud provides informal formative feedback on what concepts and what students are demonstrating progress. Additionally, while the student conducting the think aloud offers insight on their own higher-level thinking, I also record information on how other students are engaging, responding, and posing questions following the think aloud and use these notes to look more closely at their independent practice.
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The process of whole-group reading guides teacher and student decision making as students demonstrate not only their comfortability with reading aloud but also their comprehension of the text during reading discussion. As we read whole-group or small-group, I keep track of how many times a student read aloud and formative feedback on their read aloud fluency or comprehension. Through incorporating checks for understanding during whole-group reading, I collect formative assessment data, in real time, that can impact the rest of instruction. During a lesson, I am able to utilize whole-group reading comprehension to structure how I will rotate to students during independent practice, targeting students who struggled either during the read aloud or discussion of reading comprehension.
The image to the left is a sample of how I utilize think aloud to build and assess reading comprehension that can be differentiated across classes. I utilize think alouds to provide students an exemplar model of how to move across Bloom's Taxonomy of comprehension. As depicted in the image, 1-2 times a week, I use the document camera to annotate ,answer, and analyze a text along with students. During this time, students are expected to be silent during the first 1-2 minutes of my think aloud, to not only record my reading analysis but pay attention to my reading fluency, how I engage with unfamiliar words, and apply context clues and skills to strengthen reading comprehension assessment questions. After a think aloud, I can interpret student notes to compare instruction with what content is also on their page, as this allows me to better understand pacing and potential gaps in learner reading comprehension.
The document to the right is a sample of how I informally assess students during whole-class or small-group reading. As students read aloud, I annotate based on their stamina performance (the length of verbal reading) as well as their fluency score (how well and cohesive they read). While some students, such as T.H. can read for longer lengths as well as with a strong fluency flow, I have students such as K.H. that may volunteer to read, but struggle with pronouncing unfamiliar words or following a comprehension of a text for more than a few paragraphs. As I assess reading, these informal formative assessments allow me to monitor specific students' progress and differentiate reading comprehension instruction based on this data.
Accommodations in Assessing Reading Comprehension
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Another method to engage learners in their own growth is meeting students at their current academic needs. For many students reading below grade-level, they can perform an academic skill or task if provided additional layers to complement gaps in content knowledge or skill. While most instances of reading accommodations occur through IEP, 504 ,or ESOL differentiation, there are occasions where I provide all students with the ability to self-select their learning engaging tool through their own self-assessment.
This student sample is representative of 15 percent of my student population who receive fill-in-the-blank or guided assistance on in-class formative assessments. As shown in the image to the left, I provide a word bank for students to read, analyze, and demonstrate comprehension of vocabulary or notes of the week. By providing a word bank, I accommodate students with disabilities and ESOL students who require additional supports to perform on grade-level assessments.
To support reading fluency of ESOL students, they are placed in heterogenous reading groups at least twice a week. As shown in the image, peer reading provides an accommodation for students with disabilities or ESOL students to receive one-to-one attention prior to their formative reading assessment. Here, a student with a 504 plan with an accommodation to read aloud is paired with an ESOL student. As I circulate the classroom, I am able to record how both students needs are being met as they read aloud together through checks for understanding, annotations, and other reading comprehension formative assessments.