Transcript Chapter 9 Fluency Assessment

Chapter 9: Fluency
Assessment
Teaching Reading Sourcebook
2nd edition
Fluency Assessment
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Consists of collecting information about
students’ oral reading accuracy, rate, and
prosody;
Provides an overall estimate of a student’s
reading proficiency;
Is a strong predictor of success in reading
comprehension;
Is a key to preventing reading difficulties;
Provides information to guide instruction and
improve student outcomes.
Assessment of Oral Reading
Fluency
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The combination of oral reading rate and
accuracy is the oral reading fluency (ORF).
The assessment tool that is used most for
measuring ORF is Curriculum-Based Measurement
(CBM).
ORF CBM provides a reliable and valid way to
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identify students who are at risk for reading failure;
identify which students are not making adequate progress
given the instruction they receive;
identify students’ instructional level;
identify which students need additional diagnostic reevaluation.
Administering an Oral Reading
Fluency CBM Assessment
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The student reads for one minute from an
unpracticed, grade-level passage.
The teacher follows along with a copy of the
passage and marks any student errors.
The ORF is determined by subtracting the number
of errors from the total number of words read. This is
expressed as words correct per minute (WCPM).
To monitor progress, the scores can be recorded on
a graph.
The graph’s visual form is helpful in interpreting the
scores and in helping students see their growth.
Oral Reading Fluency
Performance Expectations
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One way to set standards for fluency performance
is to compare students’ ORF scores to the National
norm.
National norms provide WCPM scores for students
in grades 1-8 during three different assessment time
periods a year. (fall, winter, spring)
The norms are listed as percentile scores. (90,75,
50, 25, and 10)
These norms can help indicate whether a student’s
fluency growth meets grade-level expectations or is
increasing at a normal rate.
Diagnosis of Dysfluent Reading
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Teachers must gather more in-depth
information to determine the area of weakness
that is causing the fluency problem.
Common causes of dysfluency include deficits in
phonemic awareness, decoding, vocabulary,
language syntax, and content knowledge.
A “speed-accuracy” trade off occurs when
students
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slow down because they are too concerned with
accuracy;
make many mistakes in an attempt to read text
too quickly.
Assessment of Prosodic
Reading
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Unlike rate and accuracy, prosody is more
difficult to measure reliably, but it is often
important to assess.
To measure prosodic reading, the teacher
listens to a student orally read an
independent-level passage and then
compares the characteristics of the student’s
prosodic reading to a rating scale or rubric.
Prosodic reading rubrics may include stress,
phrasing, intonation, expression, pauses,
attention to punctuation, etc.
When to Assess
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Except for first grade, students should be screened
at the beginning of the year and monitored three
times a year. (fall, winter, and spring)
Monitoring for those not making adequate progress
should be at least one or two times a month.
Less is known about the usefulness of ORF
screening and monitoring of adolescent students.
The average levels of oral reading fluency stabilize
at around 150 WC for students at the end of 6th-8th
grades, when reading grade level texts.
ORF and Upper Grade
Students
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Some researchers believe that Maze CBM may be a
better predictor of upper-grade students’ future
reading performance than ORF CBM.
In Maze CBM, a student reads a passage silently
rather than aloud; at about every seventh word the
student must choose the word that makes the most
sense in the sentence from a group of three
possible words. This cloze type assessment
appears to be slightly more valid than ORF for its
relationship to comprehension.