What to Know About Reading Assessments

Assessments are tools to identify students’ strengths and weaknesses and help determine next steps for instruction. They are a critical component of the structured literacy approach, which requires frequent checks on what skills a student has mastered and where they still have gaps.

Without assessing students, teachers must lean on assumptions about what students know, what they’re still learning, and what to teach next. Essentially, teachers are left lost in the woods. 

No single assessment will provide insight into all of the reading-related skills that students need to learn. That’s why teachers (and in some cases other educators such as school psychologists, speech pathologists, and reading specialists) administer a variety of assessments throughout the year.

Assessments can be formal or informal. Formal assessments are standardized, meaning they’re administered and scored in a consistent way. The results are typically reported as percentiles or standard scores, and allow you to compare students (or larger entities like schools or states) to one another. These include state standardized tests and many commercially produced assessments like the IOWA Assessments.

Informal assessments evaluate an individual student's skills, performance, and progress. The results do not compare a student against a statistical norm. There are many types of informal assessments, including teacher observation, end-of-unit tests, pop quizzes, etc.

To get a bit more specific, here are three additional buckets reading assessments tend to fall into:

1. Screeners: A screener is a quick timed or untimed assessment to determine mastery of foundational skills. It is generally a formal assessment and the purpose is to flag students who may need additional support. Screeners are universally administered, meaning every student in a class or cohort is assessed. They’re given at intervals across the academic year, usually at the beginning, middle, and end. Teachers, coaches, interventionists, or other professionals may administer screeners, depending on the school’s capacity and protocols.

A screener for reading can provide preliminary data to indicate if the student’s deficit is in word recognition, language comprehension, or both.

Four Step Assessment Decision Chart

By applying the Simple View of Reading to assessment data, you can identify your students’ skill gaps and respond with appropriate interventions. This chart will help you target your support.

Letter Naming Fluency Assessment

In this video, reading specialist Alison Ellis, of the Prather-Brown Center in Frederick, Oklahoma, conducts a short assessment with first grader Jax on letter names, then discusses his progress with him so he has ownership in developing his reading skills.

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Alison Ellis: All right, Jax, how are you doing today, buddy?

Jax: Good.

Alison Ellis: Good. Okay. We're going to go over some of these letters and you're going to tell me the name of the letter today. All right?

Narrator: Today reading interventionist Alison Ellis is giving a quick one-minute assessment to first grader Jax to monitor his progress in naming letters automatically and correctly.

Alison Ellis: Alright, I'm ready when you are.

Jax: Ready. 'A', 'f', 'g', 'y' ...

Narrator: This is a skill they've been working on in their intervention block because letter naming is associated with proficient reading. As Jax reads the letters, Ms. Ellis records how he's doing.

Jax: 'A', 'm', 'g', 't', 'u', 'e' ...

Narrator: When Jax is done, Ms. Ellis will give him immediate positive feedback and share his results.

Jax: 'C', 'n', 'j', 'v' ...

Alison Ellis: Alright, we're going to stop there. Good job. So you read 43 words today or letters, excuse me. Okay, so we are going to talk about if we've made progress since the last time we did that. And so the last time we did that, you in one minute, you read all the way up to 37. And then what did I just say you did today? You remember what I said?

Jax: No.

Alison Ellis: 43. So did you make progress? Yes, you did. You did better today than you did last time. So we're going to go past that 40 mark on this second bar and we're going to color that all the way up to that mark.

Narrator: They use a bar graph to record how many letters he named accurately. This helps both of them see his growth and keep track of his progress. In the final part of this assessment session, Ms. Ellis will talk through each error with Jax, giving him time to think about each letter he missed and make corrections. This time and conversation are key because Jax is included in developing his own reading skills.

Alison Ellis: Good job. You made progress, buddy. Oh, right. So this is a letter that you got confused on. And what is the trick that we learned about recognizing our 'b' from our 'd'? We make our bed (Jax holds up his 'b' finger and his 'd ' finger ). So, what is this letter right here?

Jax: 'B'.

Alison Ellis: It is a 'b'. Good job. Okay, and then you got this one right here, but you stalled. That means you had to think about it for just a second. And this is a capital 'c'. That's a capital 'c'. And then the lowercase 'c' looks just the same, only a little smaller. Okay, so those are both 'c's, right?

Narrator: Jax is learning that accuracy, which is naming the letter correctly, and the rate, which is naming the letter without stalling, are equally important to becoming a skilled reader. Ms. Ellis will use the data gathered during this assessment for future lessons with Jax.

Alison Ellis: You did a lot better than you did last time. Thanks, Jax. Have a good day.

Narrator: Enjoyed this video? Don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel @RUTeaching. For more information, please visit ReadingUniverse.org. Special thanks to Prather-Brown Center, Frederick Public Schools, and the Oklahoma State Department of Education. Reading Universe is made possible by generous support from Jim and Donna Barksdale, the American Federation of Teachers, the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation, and three anonymous donors. Reading Universe is a service of WETA, Washington, DC, the Barksdale Reading Institute, and First Book.

Alison Ellis: I am Alison Ellis, and this is Reading Universe.

Letter Sound Fluency Assessment

Here Ms. Ellis and Jax use a bar graph to record how many letter sounds he reads correctly, which helps both of them see his growth and keep track of his progress. 

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Alison Ellis: This time, instead of naming the letter, I want you to tell me the sound that letter makes. Okay. And I'm going to time you again. You can start when you're ready.

Jax: Ready.

Alison Ellis: Okay.

Jax: /p/ /qw/.

Narrator: Reading interventionist Alison Ellis is giving a quick one-minute assessment to first grader Jax to monitor his progress in reading letter sounds automatically and correctly. This is a skill they've been working on in their intervention block because if Jax is to become a fluent reader, he'll need to be able to look at a letter and instantly recall the sound it makes.

Jax: /K/, /m/, /z/, /q/, /m/, /d/

As Jax reads the letters, Ms. Ellis records how he's doing. When Jax is done, Ms. Ellis will give him immediate positive feedback and share his results.

Alison Ellis: There we go. I'll stop there. Good job. You got 25 sounds today. That is remarkable. That's a lot more than you got last time. The only error you made today was with your "b" and your "d." ... and a 'd' says ...

Jax: /D/

Alison Ellis: Right. Okay. And again, that's some of the confusion that we've been working on and we'll continue to work on. So, now it's time to graph your progress. And the last time we did this for a minute, you had 19.

Narrator: Just like when assessing letter-naming fluency, Ms. Ellis uses a bar graph to record how many letter sounds Jax reads correctly. This helps both of them see his growth and keep track of his progress. This time and conversation are key because Jax is included in developing his own reading skills.

Alison Ellis: Alright, buddy. Good job, good job. And then we're going to keep practicing and we'll check your fluency again next time. Have a good day.

Narrator: Enjoyed this video? Don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel @RUTeaching. For more information, please visit ReadingUniverse.org. Special thanks to Prather-Brown Center, Frederick Public Schools, and the Oklahoma State Department of Education. Reading Universe is made possible by generous support from Jim and Donna Barksdale, the American Federation of Teachers, the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation, and three anonymous donors. Reading Universe is a service of WETA, Washington, DC, the Barksdale Reading Institute, and First Book.

Alison Ellis: I am Alison Ellis, and this is Reading Universe.

More to Come!

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