Announcing New Reading Quick Assessments
We recently added more Reading Quick Assessments to Goalbook Pathways so teachers have more than one Quick Assessment to choose from when they are assessing reading standards. These additional resources approach the same standards from another dimension to give teachers a more accurate picture of student needs. Additionally, our content designers approached these new Quick Assessments with an intentional focus on questions with varying levels of rigor so teachers can see the depth at which students are grasping concepts.
When we first introduced Reading Quick Assessments, our partners made it clear to us that they were valuable resources used to scaffold instruction to higher levels of rigor. They are short, standard-aligned, and have rich engaging passages. Reading Quick Assessments are great for quizzes, pre- and post-assessments, and exit tickets because they have a range of DOK levels and question types that assess the skills connected to the standard. They are also useful to teachers because they include a rubric and an answer key so teachers can give student a clear criteria for success.
The definition of academic reading habits has expanded; our multidimensional Quick Assessments address the major shifts in the standards.
“However, the standards alone will not bring rigor to our classrooms. The implementation of these standards requires practical tools to develop local curricula and assessments and to promote classroom discourse aligned to higher levels of cognitive demand.”
Karin Hess, EdD. Leading Researcher and Writer at the Center for Assessment (Dover, NH)
As teachers build their effectiveness around delivering standards-aligned instruction, it becomes increasingly important for them to pay close attention to varying levels of rigor. The challenge is that the definition of what an appropriately rigorous instructional reading level is has evolved with the new standards. Students are no longer merely required to prove they comprehend a text by retelling what they read; instead, the demands students have around reading require them to build knowledge and develop key reading skills.
The major shifts in the standards call students to…
- … build knowledge through exposure to complex non-fiction texts.
- … determine word meaning and build vocabulary using context.
- … synthesize information from complex texts to make meaning of various themes, contexts, or concepts.
- … extract evidence from text to construct arguments.
- … draw conclusions based on inferences about complex texts.
These new dimensions to the definition of reading proficiency are why our Reading Quick Assessments offer a broad variety of reading passages and assessment items. If students are going to make significant reading growth, then teachers must assess all of the skills connected to the standard and do so with questions that range from the lowest to the highest levels of Webb’s Depth of Knowledge.
Assessment is not purely evaluative; it is an opportunity for students and teachers to learn and engage with texts.
Information that is not attended to, that does not engage learners’ cognition, is in fact inaccessible. It is inaccessible both in the moment and in the future, because relevant information goes unnoticed and unprocessed
-UDL Principle of Engagement
Students are most engaged with learning activities when they are interested in the content. The reading passages in our Reading Quick Assessments are engaging because they are relevant and interesting to students. So many of our partners have given us feedback about how the topics of our nonfiction texts pique the interest of their students and serve as a great start to academic discussion in their classrooms. They’ve also let us know that the fiction texts within the Reading Quick Assessments are thematically rich and developmentally appropriate for their students. Our content designers were very intentional about choosing texts that addressed the shifts within the standards, but, more importantly, they prioritized releasing texts that specifically connected to student interests.
Our hope is that teachers identify the best application for these new Reading Quick Assessments in their classrooms. For many, this means using them to practice close reading strategies, which prioritize multiple read-throughs, and it is for purposes like these that we made sure all of the Reading Quick Assessment texts were tailored to student interests.
Designing assessments is challenging — Goalbook is here to help.
It is challenging to find or create standards-aligned tasks at varying levels of rigor, particularly when it comes to DOK Level 3 questions. Creating rigorous questions means unpacking a standard and getting to its core purpose, extracting all the skills that it takes to meet that standard, and finally designing questions that address these skills at varying levels of rigor. It is a complex process to go through for even one of the standards and a nearly impossible task to create multiple questions and tasks for every standard and skill.
Our content writers have done the work of unpacking the standards and crystallizing them into the questions found on Reading Quick Assessments so teachers have more time to do the work of delivering high-quality instruction. Reading Quick Assessments make it easy to design a backwards plan with rigorous activities because they are comprehensive in their approach to assessing specific skills at varying levels of rigor.
There are 48 NEW Reading Quick Assessments in Goalbook Pathways. Check out some of our new 3 through 12 Reading Quick Assessments by following the links below:
- Grade 3- Answer questions by referring explicitly to the text: RL.3.1 #2
- Grade 4- Support inferences with details and examples from text: RI.4.1 #2
- Grade 5- Compare and contrast two or more characters or events in the story: RL.5.3 #2
- Grade 6- Explain how a central idea is conveyed through key details: RI.6.2 #2
- Grade 7- Provide an objective summary of central ideas and key details: RI.7.2 #2
- Grade 8- Cite the most relevant evidence to support explicit analysis of text: RI.8.1 #2
- Grade 9 & 10- Objectively summarize an informational text and cite supporting evidence: RI.9–10.2 #2
- Grade 11 & 12- Cite evidence to support an explicit analysis of informational text: RI.11–12.1 #2
References
Hess, Karin . “A Guide for Using Webb’s Depth of Knowledge with Common Core State Standards.” Education.ohio.gov, The Common Core Institute, 2013, Accessed 1 Sept. 2017.
National Center on Universal Design for Learning: UDL Guidelines
