ASSESSMENT OF READING AND WRITING

KAB 3023 Teaching English For Young Learners

Introduction

• Assessment is an ongoing process that includes collecting, synthesizing and interpreting information about pupils, the classroom and their instruction.

• The younger the child, the more difficult it is to obtain valid assessments.

• Early development is rapid, episodic and highly influenced by experience.

• Performance on an assessment is affected by children’s emotional states and the conditions of the assessment.

Defining Performance Assessment

• Performance assessment is a continuum of assessment formats which allows teachers to observe student behavior ranging from simple responses to demonstrations to work collected over time. (Rudner & Boston)

• Performance assessments have two parts: a clearly defined task and a list of explicit criteria for assessing student performance or product.

Performance assessment is built upon these four assumptions:

I. Knowledge is Constructed • Research tells us that students show greater

interest and perform at higher levels of learning when they are required to organize facts around major concepts and then actively construct their own understanding of those concepts. They also retain knowledge better. Active participation is the key to all performance assessments.

2nd assumption

II. The Task is Worthwhile • The ideal performance task is "inherently

instructional, actively engaging students in worthwhile learning activities." (Sweet)

• Performance tasks are therefore open-ended and assess an array of knowledge and skills related to the curriculum. Thus the curriculum powers the test, not the other way around. (Sweet; Kulieke, et al)

3rd assumption

III. Better Assessments Improve Teaching • Assessment's overall purpose is "to provide valid

information for decision making." (Kulieke, et al, ) • When teachers prepare students for a performance

task, they must carefully describe the task and the standards that will be used to evaluate performance.

• When teachers are informed of the learning progress and difficulties of their students they can then make better decisions about content and instruction. (Fuchs):

4th assumption

IV. Meeting Criteria Improves Learning • Students should be active participants in their

own learning.• They perform better when they know what

goals they are working towards, when they have the opportunity to examine models of excellence, and when they understand how their own performance compares to a set of established criteria. (McTighe)

Performance assessment

• Wiggins (1990) writes that "the best tests always teach students and teachers alike the kind of work that most matters; they are enabling and forward-looking, not just reflective of prior teaching."

• The main goals of performance assessment are to gather data on students that focus on growth over time rather than comparing them with each other; to focus on what they know rather than on what they don't; and to meet the needs of diverse learning styles, cultural backgrounds, and proficiency levels.(Tannenbaum)

Designing Performance Assessment Tasks and Criteria

• A well designed performance assessment task begins with the identification of outcomes.

• Assessment tasks can relate to real-life experiences, make connections to personal experiences, and require demonstrations of competency and mastery.

• Ideas for assessment tasks can come from the text, the curriculum, current events, literature, the arts, reference books, even realia such as advertising circulars and menus.

• After the task is created, the assessment criteria are developed. • Their purpose is to link the curriculum to the assessment task. In order

to design effective assessment criteria, consideration should be given to the intended user. They should clearly communicate the standards of achievement.

Assessing reading

• Reading is a complex set of skills that includes specific abilities, such as naming letters of the alphabet and knowing their sounds, as well as broader abilities such as understanding that there are different kinds of print (stories, newspapers, lists, labels, and so on).

….cont.

• The best way to assess children's reading skills at age 3 is to take note of the whole range of their language and literacy abilities.

• To achieve success in learning to read, children must have strong oral-language skills, including a wide and deep listening and speaking vocabulary.

• They must have plenty of exposure to books, both hearing them read aloud and exploring them on their own.

• And finally they need to have plenty of opportunities to write and draw, using a variety of pencils, crayons, chalk, and kinds of paper.

Reading & language skills

• By age 4:• Recognize 10 or more letters of the alphabet• Know some sounds that letters make• Find the front cover of a book and leaf through the pages• Retell a story by looking at the pictures• Recognize one's own name in print• Recite favourite nursery rhymes• Predict what will happen next in a story• Read or recognize print around them in the environment, such as a stop sign• Make scribbles that resemble letters• Make actual letters, such as those in one's name

Reading Assessment Techniques

Reading comprehension • These are the most common forms of published reading tests

available. Commonly, a reading comprehension test comprises of the child being made to read a small text passage, and then the child is asked a few detailed questions related to the text.

• However, there are certain variations to this kind of reading assessment. For instance, instead of being asked detailed questions, the child can be asked to answer certain inferential questions which have to be read –in-between-the-lines in the text passage.

• Another common reading comprehension assessment is the ‘cloze’ task, wherein words are purposefully omitted from the passage and the child will be asked to fill in the blanks with the appropriate words.

…cont.

Language Comprehension • Language comprehension can be measured in the same

way that you would assess reading comprehension. • However, with language comprehension, the child will

not be asked to read any text.• From the instructions to the questions, everything will

be verbally presented to the child. It is wise to compare a child’s reading comprehension with his language comprehension to make sure that he understands the text both ways.

…cont.

Decoding • Oral reading is another form of decoding assessment, but it

isn’t a very ‘clean’ assessment. • Most of the time, children tend to guess words that are

based on the text or clues that are provided by pictures. • This way, the difficulties within the child’s guesses are

plainly visible and their difficulties in decoding are revealed. • However, sometimes the child guesses correctly and so the

teacher will believe that the child decoded the word. Decoding is typically done by measuring the child’s ability to read words out of the context.

…cont.

• Linguistic Knowledge • Semantics • Cipher Knowledge • Phoneme Awareness • Letter Knowledge • Background Knowledge • Phonology • Syntax • Lexical Knowledge • Knowledge of the Alphabetical Principle • Concepts about Print

SCORE SHEETS

• Refer to notes given

USING A READING SCALE

1:Beginning reader• Uses just a few successful strategies for tackling print

independently. Relies on having another person to read the text aloud. May still be unaware that text carries meaning.

2:Not-yet-fluent reader• Tackling known and predictable text with growing

confidence but still needing support with new and unfamiliar ones. Growing ability to predict meanings and developing strategies to check predictions against other cues such as the illustrations and the print itself.

Reading scale3:Moderately fluent reader• Well-launched on reading but still needs to return to a familiar range

of reader text. At the same time beginning to explore new kinds of texts independently. Beginning to read silently.

4:Fluent reader• A capable reader who now approaches familiar texts with confidence

but still needs support with unfamiliar materials. Beginning to draw inferences from books and stories. Reads independently. Chooses to read silently.

5:Exceptionally fluent reader• An avid and independent reader who is making choices from a wider

range of material. Able to appreciate nuances and subtlety in text.

ASSESSING WRITING

• Refer to notes given

Samples of writing

• Sample 1• Sample 2• Sample 3• Sample 4

Conclusion• Recent years have seen a growing public interest in early

childhood education. We must guarantee that assessment reflects our highest educational goals for young children and neither restricts nor distorts the substance of their early learning.

• This brief sets forth the criteria for a comprehensive and balanced assessment system that meets the need for accountability while respecting the well-being and development of young children.

• Such a system can include testing, provided it measures applicable knowledge and skills in a safe and child-affirming situation. It can also include informal assessments, provided they too meet psychometric standards of reliability and validity.