Announcing New Independent Reading Quick Assessments for Grades K-2
We are excited to announce new Reading Quick Assessments in Goalbook Pathways for grades kindergarten through second that help teachers develop foundational reading skills in early readers. Our Reading Quick Assessments have proven to be invaluable at all grade levels for reading, writing, and math. Our desire is to continue to add value to teachers’ experiences by giving them yet another lens into student reading performance. With this release, we prioritized engaging texts and questions and intentionally focused on specific reading skills so that teachers can deliver reading instruction in the most effective ways possible.
Reading instruction in kindergarten through second grade is critical to student success beyond elementary school.
“[B]y third or fourth grade, students are performing well below their peers, and it is too late to modify beginning reading instruction to promote the acquisition of initial reading skills. What is needed for prevention of reading failure is to begin early…”
-Good, Gruba, & Kaminski, 2002
Kindergarten through second grade are critical years for students who are learning how to read. It is during these years that reading foundations are established; if teachers are to effectively lay these foundations, it requires them to employ various instructional practices that assess multiple elements of foundational reading skills. Reading assessments at the early primary level contrast greatly from reading assessments in higher grade levels in more ways than text complexity. For instance, a student’s reading fluency and decoding skills may not be very well developed, so assessing their comprehension skills may be difficult if they can’t access the text they are reading. The converse may also be true: a student may have solid fluency and decoding skills, but assessing comprehension may be difficult if the questions aren’t engaging or rigorous. It is for these considerations that we are introducing Reading Quick Assessments for kindergarten through second grade that assess independent reading skills AND comprehension for early readers.
Teach comprehension skills with a variety of engaging and developmentally appropriate assessment items and texts.
One unique aspect of our K-2 Reading Quick Assessments is the diversity of question types. During the process of developing these assessments, our content designers applied the UDL principle of multiple means of expression by deliberately crafting questions that required students to demonstrate comprehension in ways other than multiple choice questions. The assessment items have a range of questions that are developmentally appropriate and vary in style from question to question so that students stay engaged with the task. Students will be expected to express their comprehension in many different ways:
- Eliminating erroneous details by crossing out images that are unrelated to the text
- Identifying key details by choosing and coloring them among a group of images
- Comparing and contrasting with written responses
- Expressing comprehension by drawing and labeling images
With every literary feature in Goalbook Pathways, we strive to prioritize the UDL guideline of providing multiple means of engagement. This absolutely applies to the texts that are included with these Quick Assessments. The texts included with the informational reading standards (RI.) are about relevant and interesting topics that align with the developmental interests of the grade level they belong to, such as a Reading Quick Assessment about wild animals. Similarly, the literary reading standards (RL.) include interesting texts that take students on adventures. The texts that accompany the Quick Assessments are refreshing and engaging; they are also appropriately complex by matching the developmental level of students and standards requirements.
Teachers have two options for assessing comprehension.
The new independent Reading Quick Assessments will exist alongside teacher-directed Reading Quick Assessments wherein teachers read the text to their students and students answer questions about the text. Teachers now have two ways of addressing the same standard, giving them a clearer view of reading growth. The range of reading levels of the K-2 independent Reading Quick Assessments is appropriate for younger students because they contain appropriately-leveled decodable words and are deliberately matched with the standard being assessed.
Our goal is to continue to support teachers in their development of instructional best practices for reading. We understand how critical it is to establish reading foundations for emerging readers, and it is for that reason that we will continue to innovate around the resources we develop for primary teachers.
Check out some of the new Independent reading Quick Assessments in Goalbook Pathways!
Reading Quick Assessment: RI.1.2 Retell Key Details of a Text
Reading Quick Assessment: RL.1.3 Describe Major Events in a Story
Reading Quick Assessment: RI.2.2 Identifying Main Topic of Paragraph
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References:
Good, R. H., Gruba, J., & Kaminski, R. A. (2002). Best practices in using Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) in an outcomes-driven model. In A. Thomas & J. Grimes (Eds.), Best Practices in School Psychology (pp. 721–735). Bethesda, MD: National Association of School Psychologists.
