Letter Identification Assessment

What does your student know about letters? Which letters can he/she identify? Although research has shown that students do not need to know the names of all letters before they begin reading books, knowing letters helps them communicate with the teacher and each other (Samuels, 1972). Being able to discriminate and quickly recognize important letter(s) is also helpful in attaching sounds to the correct letters when reading words (Neuhaus, 2003). Directions: Ask students to identify all upper case and lower case letters, using the following directions: 1. Place the letter identification sheet on the table in front of the student. 2. Ask, “Can you name these letters? Can you say the sounds they make?” 3. Mask the letters with a sheet of paper showing one row of letters at a time. You may want to point to each letter for the child, or let the child point to the letters naming them. 4. Use the upper case sheet for letter and sound identification. If the student does not automatically say the letter name and sound at the same time. Let the student name the letters then ask him/her to return to the beginning of the sheet, saying the sound for each letter. 5. Use the lower case sheet for letter identification. Sound identification on this lower case sheet is optional. Scoring: Place a check mark in the column if the child identifies the letter or sound correctly. Record any letter or sound the child names incorrectly in the boxes. Count the checks (correct letters or sounds) and total them onto the score sheet. Score as correct for letter identification: 1. An alphabet name. 2. You could also score as correct a response in which a child identifies the letter and a word that has the letter in it (e.g. “There’s a ‘t’ in ‘cat.’”) Score as correct for sound ID: 1. A sound that is acceptable for the letter. 2. A response in which the student says, “It begins like…” giving a word that has that letter sound as its initial letter. Record for further teaching: • The student’s preferred mode of identifying letters (i.e. name, sound, or word that contains the letter). • The letters a child confuses. It is recommended that one of the confused letters is taught to mastery before introducing the other confused letter. Thus, confused letters are kept apart in the teaching program. • Unknown letters. Neuhaus, G. F. (2003). What does it take to read a letter? The International Dyslexia Association quarterly newsletter—Perspectives, pages 27 – 31. Samuels, S. J. (1972). The Effect of Letter-Name Knowledge on Learning to Read. American Educational Research Journal, Vol. 9, No. 1. pp. 65-74

CLASS Assessment

Learning about CLASS

The Classroom Assessment Scoring System® (CLASS) was developed to identify observable teacher-‐student1 interactions, to determine which interactions are effective in driving better developmental and academic student outcomes, and to support teachers as they improve their teaching practices.

1. What is CLASS? What exactly does it measure?

The Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) is an observational tool designed by researchers at the University of Virginia and developed by Teachstone. It measures the quality of adult-child interactions and thus learning environments in child care programs.

2. What research was used to develop the CLASS observation tool?

CLASS domains and dimensions are based on developmental theory and research suggesting that interactions between children and adults are the primary way of supporting children's development and learning, and that effective, engaging interactions and environments form the foundation for all learning in early childhood classrooms. Teachstone used research-based, valid indicators and behavior markers of interactions and environment in their development of the tool.

The Administration for Children and Families selected CLASS, “an instrument that has been validated by over 10 years of research in educational settings,” as a tool for measuring quality in its Head Start programs. Along with the Environmental Rating Scale (ERS) tools, the Office of Head Start (OHS) chose CLASS because it derives from “developmental theory and research suggesting that interactions between children and adults are the primary way of supporting children's development and learning, and that effective, engaging interactions and environments form the foundation for all learning in early childhood .

Blooms Taxonomy

A Quick Strategy for Assessing the Level of Activities Not all lessons or projects involve all levels of Bloom’s. That’s fine, because to engage students in very involved projects all the time would take more classroom time than most teachers have. There is a time and place for more didactic, lower level lessons. A quick way to check on the level of the lesson is to answer these two questions. What will the students (not the teacher) be doing in this lesson, recalling and showing understanding (lower) or analyzing and evaluating to create a product (higher)? Will students be expected to respond with specific, known answers (lower) or will they be asked to generate original thought (higher)? The answers will give us a snapshot of the levels of thought in our lessons. If students are predominately responding with the right answer and are demonstrating that they understand a concept, then the lesson is lower level. If the lesson’s objective is to show that students comprehend the material, then lower level activities are appropriate. On the other hand, if the objective is to extend basic knowledge and apply it to new situations to develop a new product or idea, then the response to the two questions should reflect higher level thought. One way teachers can get an overview of the Bloom level is to review their plan book over the course of a typical week. After asking the two questions above about each lesson, they can mark the lesson either L (low level) or H (high level). Looking over the course of a week or longer will reveal a pattern of lower and higher level activities. It is up to the teacher to decide if the balance is appropriate. The bottom line on all of our teaching is to have students learn, not just for “the test” but for successful performance throughout life. A good balance of lower and higher level experiences will help students develop a solid background of content and skills as well as the analytical and evaluative tools to apply them. Creative projects are a proven way to engage students at higher levels. By using projects in balance with content and skill development activities, we will be preparing our students well for the future. References Anderson, L. W., & Krathwohl, D. R. (Eds.). (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of educational objectives: Complete edition. New York, Longman. Bloom, B. S. & Krathwohl, D. R. (Eds.) (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals, by a committee of college and university examiners. Handbook 1: Cognitive domain. New York, Longman.

Reading & Reading Comprehension Strategies for Teaching Struggling Readers

The following is a list of ways you can help your struggling reader. These teaching strategies may be implemented in a school, a home or a homeschool setting. Reading the words from left-to-right can be a difficult task for struggling readers. Often, the words appear to move around, or the space between words is unclear. It helps to use a finger or a card underneath the words to help your eyes "track" and focus on each word and letter you are sounding out. This will train your eyes to focus on the word you are reading instead of skipping around, looking for other clues to simply guess at the word. Reading Strategies for the Struggling Reader - readers often have many amazing strengths, such as building things; putting puzzles together; abilities in art, drama, and music; and they are very creative. Make sure to focus on those strengths and allow them experiences and success in those areas. In order for someone to improve fluency, reading must become automatic. This happens when the struggling reader is able to see the word and quickly identify the patterns and sounds. This can be accomplished by teaching the person the patterns of English (the Five Phonetic Skills) and how these patterns affect the vowels; the more they work with these patterns, the more they will develop this automatic orthographic reading ability, and their fluency will increase. When you approach a word you do not know, it helps to look through it, identify the vowels, and decide what they are saying before you sound out the word (this helps if you know the phonetic skills to prove the vowels). Once you know the vowel sounds, the hardest part is done! Then, sound out the word from the beginning all the way to the end, without stopping or guessing a couple of times, and you will get it! One of the best reading comprehension strategies is to make connections with what you are reading. Can you relate to any of the characters or to the story? If you make a connection to yourself, it is called a text-to-self connection; if you make a connection from the story you are reading to another story you have read, it is called a text-to-text connection; and, if you make a connection to something you have seen on the news or to an experience someone you know has had, it is called a text-to-world connection. Helping a struggling reader involves encouraging them to make as many connections as they can. The more connections they mae, they better they will remember and comprehend the story. Asking questions is another great reading comprehension strategy. If you ask questions about what is happening in the story, a character's feelings, or wonder what will happen next, you will be engaged in your reading, and that will help you understand on a deeper level. When you are sounding out a word and you are having a hard time, check to see if there are any Cs or Gs followed by an I or an E. Remember that those vowels change the sound of C and G to their soft sounds, as in the words city, cent, gentle, and giraffe. If your struggling reader recognize a word on one line and not on another, this could be an indication of a phonological weakness known as dyslexia. The best thing to do is to observe your child and see if this is a pattern that happens often when they reads. Be patient. It is just as frustrating for them that they don't recognize the word as it is for you. Help them sound it out and look for the vowel sound(s) and patterns in the word. Remember, someone who has dyslexia must see a correct representation of the word almost 30 times more than the average reader in order for it to be stored into long-term memory! As a struggling reader encounters a new word, one reading strategy is to look up the meaning of that word. If you attach meaning, then you are more likely to remember it and to be able to decode it. After you decode the word, practice writing it and using it in a sentence. Many people who struggle with reading have low self-esteem and feel stupid. They may have been called "stupid" or "lazy." All research has been conclusive in proving that difficulty with reading has nothing to do with intelligence. If you know people who feel this way, let them know that their reading struggles have nothing to do with their intelligence and they simply need to be taught in the way their brains learn. This can be one of the most empowering pieces of information they ever receive. "That's the real problem with kids who struggle with learning. ... Some kids feel like they're stupid. I want them to know that they're not. They just learn differently. Once they understand that and have the tools to learn in their individual way, then they can feel good about themselves." "Automatic word recognition, which is dependent on phonics knowledge, allows readers to attend to meaning; likewise, slow belabored decoding overloads short-term memory and impedes comprehension." One strategy is to say the word you are writing out loud two times as you are taking spelling tests. This enables you to feel the sounds you are making in your mouth and voice box, and you will catch all of the phonemes that you might miss by simply hearing the word spoken. Those who struggle with reading and processing language also have a difficult time with organizationand processing spoken directions. One of the best strategies is to encourage the person to make up checklists outlining each step of a particular task. This is why a phonics program must be systematic and simple — it must progress logically for the learner in order to have it make sense and to help them retain the information. If you are working with struggling readers who have a processing disorder such as dyslexia, remember that they often need more time to complete tasks. It takes a great amount of effort for them to concentrate so intensely when reading and processing language — allow them the time they need, and be patient. There is a buzzword in education called "invented spelling," which basically means that children are not required to spell correctly but are allowed to express themselves freely and creatively, unencumbered by spelling rules. It comes with the best intentions: "When a first grader picks up a pencil and musters the courage to write his very first sentence, you’re not going to harp about the misspellings." But allowing this freeform spelling method for right-brained children, beyond the beginning stages of reading and writing, can have disastrous consequences. Because right-brained children have such a good visual memory, they may have difficulty relearning the correct spelling. There must be a balance, and giving them a strong phonetic and spelling foundation will help ensure future reading success. Struggling readers are often also easily distracted. They are highly sensitive to stimuli and change their attention with each new sound or movement. It is best if they sit away from high-traffic areas, such as doors leading out of the classroom or near the teacher's desk, where students are constantly coming and going. The front of the room is optimal, so that they are as close to the teacher as possible in order to help eliminate interference when trying to listen to instruction. Reading is an intense activity for some and requires them to create their own stimuli to help increase brainwaves to match up with the task at hand. Students often do this by wiggling around, bouncing their foot, or tapping their fingers. Let them. It actually helps their concentration for the task instead of hindering it. "Children with high ability typically are independent, self-directed, willful, dominant nonconformists. These children are not passive – they are often difficult to be around, because they want to 'run the show.' Yet this same quality also makes them most interesting and stimulating to be around."

Reading Comprehension Activities

While almost all of us can read, the speed with which we can read and comprehend what we are reading is very important. Hence, as a teacher, it is very important that you ensure that the students in your class take up reading comprehension as an important subject early on so that they do not face problems as they grow older. Here are some reading comprehension activities that you can use in your class to help increase the interest of the students in the subject. Book Reviews I feel that this is one of the best reading comprehension activities. Here, a student is asked to pick and read a book of their choice. After reading, they have to present a review of the book to the entire class. The review can contain a small recap of the story, but other than that, the students have to speak on their own as to how they felt the book was. They have to provide inputs as to why they felt the book was good or why was it not up the mark. They can also be asked to justify why they would recommend this book to a friend and also if they have learned something from the book. The advantage of this activity is that only the students read the book, they are forced to read it to understand and talk about the book. They have to talk about the book and not about what is in the book. This will also help increase their communication skills and will also provide them the confidence to address their classmates or a gathering. These days, with the advent of the Internet, students belonging to a higher grade can be asked to post their reviews on Amazon or GeoCities. This will help increase their sense of accomplishment. Secret Story Words I read a very interesting activity that was submitted by Janice Roehr to a newsletter. After reading out a story to the class, she writes down names, place and vocabulary words from the story on small pieces of paper and pins them on the backs of the students. The students then wander around the class and ask for clues as to what is pinned on their backs from fellow students who can respond to an answer in either yes or no. Once a student has identified the word, they have to return their seats and write down the significance of the word in the story. This is a brilliant idea that will compel students (the younger the better as they will be more enthusiastic) to listen to every detail in the story. For the students in higher grades, you can select a difficult story with a large number of characters and difficult words. Title Predictions Another interesting activity was submitted by Donna Florek to a newsletter. Before reading out a chapter to the class, she reads out the title of the chapter and encourages the students to predict as to what is going to happen and what questions will be answered in the chapter. The teacher records these on the blackboard and crosses them individually as and when they the predictions come true or the questions are answered. At the end of the chapter the students can discuss as to why some of the predictions did not come true or why some questions were unanswered. For this activity to be a success, it is very important that none of the students have read the book or are aware of the story. This is a great activity that will help ensure that the students are in tune and totally engrossed on the story. This activity can also be followed with the 'Alternative Endings' activity described below. Alternative Endings Another activity that you can introduce in the higher grades is to ask students to come up with alternate endings to a story that they have read with reasons to justify the proposed ending. These will help students focus on the story and also use their imaginations to come up with alternate endings. At the end of the class, you can ask the students to vote if they preferred the alternate ending proposed by a student or were satisfied with the author.

Reading Strategies for Struggling Readers

Are you having problems reading? Is your speed just not fast enough? Well then you need some steps to improve your reading speed. - reading strategies for struggling readers. Have you ever come across a non-reader? Maybe you have heard of phrases like "I hate to read, it's very boring.' or 'I never touch a book that's gargantuan to begin with.' And you probably don't think about it again, relegating it to the simple theorem - 'To each his own'. Let's look at this from the reader's point of view. Do you know that there are some people who struggle with even simple reading, let alone speed reading? You might have experienced this in your school life - students in class who would absolutely struggle through their reading tests. If they were asked to stand up and read in class, they would get nervous and then drag through the piece with a lot of 'umms' and 'errs' much to the annoyance of the teacher. They were left to wonder how it was possible, that while they struggled through the first paragraph of the page, others had finished the entire essay. Now here's what the thing is - people who struggle with their reading have not developed the 'reading strategies' that other 'readers' have, without even realizing it. Therefore there is a need to have effective reading strategies for struggling readers. The good news is that it is possible to have and teach these. Some of the best reading strategies have been developed over the years, and that is what we will be discussing in this article. Reading Strategies - After it is learned that a person (usually a child), has a problem while reading, the most important thing that a parent can do for him/her is to start teaching him these reading strategies as soon as possible. This is because these strategies are most effective when taught at a young age. The degree of difficulty in learning these increases with age. Thus it is most effective when reading strategies are taught and applied at a young age. Reading strategies for the struggling readers can be divided into two parts: Decoding Strategies Comprehension Strategies Decoding Strategies This involves teaching the student phonemic awareness. Which means teaching the students the literal pronunciation of words by breaking them down into bits and pieces. By learning the bits and pieces that make up a whole word, it is possible for readers to be able to pronounce words that are difficult, unfamiliar and long-because they have good phonemic awareness. When a reader skips words or 'fades out' words or uses a wrong pronunciation, or avoids reading completely - there is a need to teach him phonemics. Thus teaching readers the 'sound' of a language (phonemes), becomes very important. After this has been taught, they need to be coached in their use and made to practice. Teaching the students the sounds of the letters helps tremendously when teaching them phonemes. They learn how to pronounce several combinations of these letters and also learn the fact that letters aren't always pronounced the way they look. Readers also compare words that they don't know with familiar words to understand the difference. Thus it is necessary to have a lit of simple and difficult words to 'look' and learn from. One can also use chunking as one of the effective strategies. In this the reader can chunk unfamiliar words. Chunk together parts of a word and then try to pronounce them in parts. Once the entire word has been read in chunks, then try and club the different chunks of the word together to pronounce the entire word. This needs a lot of practice. Comprehension Strategies Comprehension means understanding something. While reading a text, a good reader will subconsciously use comprehension skills, so that when you ask him what the text was about, he will be able to answer it. But a struggling reader does not read to understand, he will simply read a text to get it done with, so when he is asked about the text, he will rarely be able to answer in deep. Comprehension strategies include teaching the stragglers to re-read a text. Not to be confused with simple reading a text again but rather making a deliberate attempt to understand it. This can be made easier if the reader reads the text with a goal in ind-he has to find the answer to a question. So when he reads with an objective, he will pay more attention and learn to read better. Also rephrasing and then stating a text will help them to read better. When a reader who struggles, reads a text and then relates it back in his own words, his entire concentration is on understanding the text to rephrase it. Other Strategies Use different strategies like videos and audio tapes to teach the student phonemes. Let him read a very simple text to a younger class so that he becomes confident. Provide him with a partner who can help him read. Form a 'readers play', where readers will come together and read/perform their texts. They'll make it more interesting by adding costumes, different voices etc to it. Struggling leaders work best when they have one to one training - so try to find a coach for them. Give positive feedback whenever possible and reward them when they are successful, this will help the stay motivated. Make them write out the words and pronounce out loud so that you can correct if wrong. They can also make a note of the word if it looks different and is pronounced different, for better understanding. Start using the decoding and comprehension strategies in daily life, when they learn to use it in daily life, they'll no longer have a block towards them and will learn faster. Even if you know a struggling readers who would probably have difficulty reading through this article, (rather ironic, isn't it?) be sure that it won't be a problem for long. After you've taken tips from these reading strategies, there will be no looking back. So read well and teach better.

Boys' barriers to learning and achievement

Looking for the root cause of many boys' underachievement and subsequently the simple answer or 'Quick Fix', has become something of a preoccupation over the past few years. Here, School Improvement Officer Gary Wilson explains why he believes that neither of these particular tasks can ever bear fruit With barriers to boys' learning ranging from a lack of independence prior to starting school, to the perception of many boys that reading is a female province – not forgetting the fact that most boys are significantly less developed linguistically – boys in the early years of schooling already face several major barriers. Early years There are many messages for parents that need to be expressed very clearly in order that, for example, we no longer see boys standing arms akimbo in the cloakroom at the end of their first few days in school, waiting to have their coats put on! Early language development often manifests itself, as one reception teacher told me, 'If he wants something from another pupil and he can't talk he can't negotiate, if he can't negotiate then he can't get what he wants. If he can't get what he wants then he grabs it.' The fact that girls, we are told, have superior listening skills even in the womb, and the fact that they use between ten and thirty times as much language in their play, doesn't just mean that they beat boys hands down from the foundation stage to English A level, it impacts in many other ways too. Writing skills and learning outcomes A significant barrier to many boys' learning, that begins at quite an early age and often never leaves them, is the perception that most writing that they are expected to do is largely irrelevant and unimportant. How can this possibly be, you may protest? Well, the NUT study in recent years that highlighted the fact that up to 60% of writing done in schools is copied from boards or from books could be a contributory factor. As indeed might the now well-understood need for boys in particular to know the big picture. Why are we writing this? What is the purpose and what is the audience? As with virtually every other classroom-based activity, clear learning outcomes for boys are absolutely vital. As a colleague of mine (Wendy Bradford, co-author of Getting it Right for Boys and Girls) says, 'Boys are the best barometers of good teaching.' Very often, if a boy doesn't see the sense and purpose in doing something then he blooming well won't engage with it at all. Moreover, if he doesn't have the opportunity to talk through and share ideas before he puts pen to paper, he will find the task extremely difficult. Gender bias Gender bias in everything from resources to teacher expectations has the potential to present further barriers to boys' learning. None more so than the gender bias evident in the ways in which we talk to boys and talk to girls. We need to be ever mindful of the frequency, the nature and the quality of our interactions with boys and our interactions with girls in the classroom. A potential mismatch of teaching and learning styles to boys' preferred ways of working continues to be a barrier for many boys. Of vital importance in this area is engaging boys in dialogue about how they learn, as well as ensuring that a balanced approach is incorporated in the classroom. It is not just about simply stereotypically labelling all boys as kinaesthetic learners and attempting to teach them all that way. Reflection and evaluation The process of reflection is a weakness in many boys, presenting them with perhaps one of the biggest barriers of all. The inability of many boys to, for example, write evaluations, effectively stems from this weakness. Opportunities for reflection need to be created throughout any lesson. 'Multiplenaries', as I choose to call them, are important for all learners, but absolutely vital for boys. Self-esteem issues Low self-esteem is clearly a very significant barrier to many boys' achievement in school. If we were to think of the perfect time to de-motivate boys, when would that be? Some might say in the early years of education when many get their first unwelcome and never forgotten taste of failure, being taught to read and write, when they are far less ready than the girls in their class. Others might say Year 7 or 8 might be a good time... bang them in sets for at least half the week! Create sink groups of boys then pretend to them that they have a real chance of moving upwards through a 'flexible' system. They might believe in the system... and themselves, for a while, but not for long. Addressing issues of self-esteem are vitally important and yet not a regular feature of many schools' daily activities. Peer pressure Peer pressure, or the anti-swot culture, is clearly a major barrier to many boys' achievement. Those lucky enough to avoid it tend to be good academically, but also good at sport. This gives them a licence to work hard as they can also be 'one of the lads'. A cracking sense of humour can also help. I find manifestations of this culture, endemic in most of our high schools for many years, now appearing as early as Year 2 in schools. To me one of the most significant elements of peer pressure for boys is the impact it has on the more affective domains of the curriculum, namely expressive, creative and performing arts. It takes a lot of courage for a boy to turn up for the first day at high school carrying a violin case. A major concern indeed, as it is precisely these areas of the curriculum that help us to create a more caring masculinity. Turning out decent young men really ought to be at least half of the focus of the work we do with or for boys. Finding ways of dealing with peer pressure, through for example, peer befriending, peer mediation, and through policy and practice, has to be a top priority in schools. Talk to them! There are many barriers to boys' learning (I'm currently saying 31, but I'm still working on it!) and an ever-increasing multitude of strategies that we can use to address them. I firmly believe that a close examination of a school's own circumstances is the only way to progress through this maze and that the main starting point has to be with the boys themselves. They do know all the issues around their poor levels of achievement. Talk to them first. I also believe that one of the most important strategies is to let them know you're 'on their case', talking to them provides this added bonus. Teaching Expertise magazine, Issue 9 Autumn 2005

Reading and Writing at home

Which will your child learn first: to read or to write? Most children develop these skills at the same time. The following are some things you can do to help your children become readers and writers: Read aloud every day. Set aside a regular time for reading that your children can count on. Find other times to read; for example, when you're waiting at the doctor's office. Read aloud the items you use in daily life: food labels, directions for baking a cake, and birthday cards. Listen to your child pretend to read a book from memory. Have plenty of children's books around your home. Keep books where children can reach them. Go to the library regularly. Look for secondhand books at yard sales and thrift shops. Encourage family and friends to give books as gifts. Stock up on writing and drawing supplies. Store things to write on: paper, pads, and a chalkboard. Store things to write with: crayons, markers, pencils, and chalk. Store supplies for making books: cardboard, a stapler, a hole punch, and laces. Save items to cut and paste: junk mail, catalogs, coupons, and old magazines. Keep magnet letters on the refrigerator. Store alphabet stamps and a stamp pad. Let your children see you read and write. Read aloud a favorite poem. Read the caption under an interesting photograph in a newspaper or magazine. Read aloud the words on food packages, menus, signs, and billboards. Write important dates on the calendar. Ask your child to help you make up a shopping list or write a letter. Source: Reading Is Fundamental.

Assessing Reading Proficiency

Reading ability is very difficult to assess accurately. In the communicative competence model, a student's reading level is the level at which that student is able to use reading to accomplish communication goals. This means that assessment of reading ability needs to be correlated with purposes for reading.

Reading Aloud

A student's performance when reading aloud is not a reliable indicator of that student's reading ability. A student who is perfectly capable of understanding a given text when reading it silently may stumble when asked to combine comprehension with word recognition and speaking ability in the way that reading aloud requires.

In addition, reading aloud is a task that students will rarely, if ever, need to do outside of the classroom. As a method of assessment, therefore, it is not authentic: It does not test a student's ability to use reading to accomplish a purpose or goal.

However, reading aloud can help a teacher assess whether a student is "seeing" word endings and other grammatical features when reading. To use reading aloud for this purpose, adopt the "read and look up" approach: Ask the student to read a sentence silently one or more times, until comfortable with the content, then look up and tell you what it says. This procedure allows the student to process the text, and lets you see the results of that processing and know what elements, if any, the student is missing.

Comprehension Questions

Instructors often use comprehension questions to test whether students have understood what they have read. In order to test comprehension appropriately, these questions need to be coordinated with the purpose for reading. If the purpose is to find specific information, comprehension questions should focus on that information. If the purpose is to understand an opinion and the arguments that support it, comprehension questions should ask about those points.

In everyday reading situations, readers have a purpose for reading before they start. That is, they know what comprehension questions they are going to need to answer before they begin reading. To make reading assessment in the language classroom more like reading outside of the classroom, therefore, allow students to review the comprehension questions before they begin to read the test passage.

Finally, when the purpose for reading is enjoyment, comprehension questions are beside the point. As a more authentic form of assessment, have students talk or write about why they found the text enjoyable and interesting (or not).

Authentic Assessment

In order to provide authentic assessment of students' reading proficiency, a post-listening activity must reflect the real-life uses to which students might put information they have gained through reading.

It must have a purpose other than assessment
It must require students to demonstrate their level of reading comprehension by completing some task
To develop authentic assessment activities, consider the type of response that reading a particular selection would elicit in a non-classroom situation. For example, after reading a weather report, one might decide what to wear the next day; after reading a set of instructions, one might repeat them to someone else; after reading a short story, one might discuss the story line with friends.

Use this response type as a base for selecting appropriate post-reading tasks. You can then develop a checklist or rubric that will allow you to evaluate each student's comprehension of specific parts of the text. See Assessing Learning for more on checklists and rubrics.

Using Textbook Reading Activities

Many language textbooks emphasize product (answers to comprehension questions) over process (using reading skills and strategies to understand the text), providing little or no contextual information about the reading selections or their authors, and few if any pre-reading activities. Newer textbooks may provide pre-reading activities and reading strategy guidance, but their one-size-fits-all approach may or may not be appropriate for your students.

You can use the guidelines for developing reading activities given here as starting points for evaluating and adapting textbook reading activities. Use existing, or add your own, pre-reading activities and reading strategy practice as appropriate for your students. Don't make students do exercises simply because they are in the book; this destroys motivation.

Another problem with textbook reading selections is that they have been adapted to a predetermined reading level through adjustment of vocabulary, grammar, and sentence length. This makes them more immediately approachable, but it also means that they are less authentic and do not encourage students to apply the reading strategies they will need to use outside of class. When this is the case, use the textbook reading selection as a starting point to introduce a writer or topic, and then give students choices of more challenging authentic texts to read as a followup.

Developing Reading Activities

Developing reading activities involves more than identifying a text that is "at the right level," writing a set of comprehension questions for students to answer after reading, handing out the assignment and sending students away to do it. A fully-developed reading activity supports students as readers through prereading, while-reading, and post-reading activities.

As you design reading tasks, keep in mind that complete recall of all the information in a text is an unrealistic expectation even for native speakers. Reading activities that are meant to increase communicative competence should be success oriented and build up students' confidence in their reading ability.

Construct the reading activity around a purpose that has significance for the students

Make sure students understand what the purpose for reading is: to get the main idea, obtain specific information, understand most or all of the message, enjoy a story, or decide whether or not to read more. Recognizing the purpose for reading will help students select appropriate reading strategies.

Define the activity's instructional goal and the appropriate type of response

In addition to the main purpose for reading, an activity can also have one or more instructional purposes, such as practicing or reviewing specific grammatical constructions, introducing new vocabulary, or familiarizing students with the typical structure of a certain type of text.

Check the level of difficulty of the text

The factors listed below can help you judge the relative ease or difficulty of a reading text for a particular purpose and a particular group of students.

How is the information organized? Does the story line, narrative, or instruction conform to familiar expectations? Texts in which the events are presented in natural chronological order, which have an informative title, and which present the information following an obvious organization (main ideas first, details and examples second) are easier to follow.
How familiar are the students with the topic? Remember that misapplication of background knowledge due to cultural differences can create major comprehension difficulties.
Does the text contain redundancy? At the lower levels of proficiency, listeners may find short, simple messages easier to process, but students with higher proficiency benefit from the natural redundancy of authentic language.
Does the text offer visual support to aid in reading comprehension? Visual aids such as photographs, maps, and diagrams help students preview the content of the text, guess the meanings of unknown words, and check comprehension while reading.
Remember that the level of difficulty of a text is not the same as the level of difficulty of a reading task. Students who lack the vocabulary to identify all of the items on a menu can still determine whether the restaurant serves steak and whether they can afford to order one.

Use pre-reading activities to prepare students for reading

The activities you use during pre-reading may serve as preparation in several ways. During pre-reading you may:

Assess students' background knowledge of the topic and linguistic content of the text
Give students the background knowledge necessary for comprehension of the text, or activate the existing knowledge that the students possess
Clarify any cultural information which may be necessary to comprehend the passage
Make students aware of the type of text they will be reading and the purpose(s) for reading
Provide opportunities for group or collaborative work and for class discussion activities
Sample pre-reading activities:

Using the title, subtitles, and divisions within the text to predict content and organization or sequence of information
Looking at pictures, maps, diagrams, or graphs and their captions
Talking about the author's background, writing style, and usual topics
Skimming to find the theme or main idea and eliciting related prior knowledge
Reviewing vocabulary or grammatical structures
Reading over the comprehension questions to focus attention on finding that information while reading
Constructing semantic webs (a graphic arrangement of concepts or words showing how they are related)
Doing guided practice with guessing meaning from context or checking comprehension while reading
Pre-reading activities are most important at lower levels of language proficiency and at earlier stages of reading instruction. As students become more proficient at using reading strategies, you will be able to reduce the amount of guided pre-reading and allow students to do these activities themselves.

Match while-reading activities to the purpose for reading

In while-reading activities, students check their comprehension as they read. The purpose for reading determines the appropriate type and level of comprehension.

When reading for specific information, students need to ask themselves, have I obtained the information I was looking for?
When reading for pleasure, students need to ask themselves, Do I understand the story line/sequence of ideas well enough to enjoy reading this?
When reading for thorough understanding (intensive reading), students need to ask themselves, Do I understand each main idea and how the author supports it? Does what I'm reading agree with my predictions, and, if not, how does it differ? To check comprehension in this situation, students may
Stop at the end of each section to review and check their predictions, restate the main idea and summarize the section
Use the comprehension questions as guides to the text, stopping to answer them as they read

Strategies for Developing Reading Skills

Using Reading Strategies

Language instructors are often frustrated by the fact that students do not automatically transfer the strategies they use when reading in their native language to reading in a language they are learning. Instead, they seem to think reading means starting at the beginning and going word by word, stopping to look up every unknown vocabulary item, until they reach the end. When they do this, students are relying exclusively on their linguistic knowledge, a bottom-up strategy. One of the most important functions of the language instructor, then, is to help students move past this idea and use top-down strategies as they do in their native language.

Effective language instructors show students how they can adjust their reading behavior to deal with a variety of situations, types of input, and reading purposes. They help students develop a set of reading strategies and match appropriate strategies to each reading situation.

Strategies that can help students read more quickly and effectively include

Previewing: reviewing titles, section headings, and photo captions to get a sense of the structure and content of a reading selection
Predicting: using knowledge of the subject matter to make predictions about content and vocabulary and check comprehension; using knowledge of the text type and purpose to make predictions about discourse structure; using knowledge about the author to make predictions about writing style, vocabulary, and content
Skimming and scanning: using a quick survey of the text to get the main idea, identify text structure, confirm or question predictions
Guessing from context: using prior knowledge of the subject and the ideas in the text as clues to the meanings of unknown words, instead of stopping to look them up
Paraphrasing: stopping at the end of a section to check comprehension by restating the information and ideas in the text
Instructors can help students learn when and how to use reading strategies in several ways.

By modeling the strategies aloud, talking through the processes of previewing, predicting, skimming and scanning, and paraphrasing. This shows students how the strategies work and how much they can know about a text before they begin to read word by word.
By allowing time in class for group and individual previewing and predicting activities as preparation for in-class or out-of-class reading. Allocating class time to these activities indicates their importance and value.
By using cloze (fill in the blank) exercises to review vocabulary items. This helps students learn to guess meaning from context.
By encouraging students to talk about what strategies they think will help them approach a reading assignment, and then talking after reading about what strategies they actually used. This helps students develop flexibility in their choice of strategies.
When language learners use reading strategies, they find that they can control the reading experience, and they gain confidence in their ability to read the language.

Reading to Learn

Reading is an essential part of language instruction at every level because it supports learning in multiple ways.

Reading to learn the language: Reading material is language input. By giving students a variety of materials to read, instructors provide multiple opportunities for students to absorb vocabulary, grammar, sentence structure, and discourse structure as they occur in authentic contexts. Students thus gain a more complete picture of the ways in which the elements of the language work together to convey meaning.
Reading for content information: Students' purpose for reading in their native language is often to obtain information about a subject they are studying, and this purpose can be useful in the language learning classroom as well. Reading for content information in the language classroom gives students both authentic reading material and an authentic purpose for reading.
Reading for cultural knowledge and awareness: Reading everyday materials that are designed for native speakers can give students insight into the lifestyles and worldviews of the people whose language they are studying. When students have access to newspapers, magazines, and Web sites, they are exposed to culture in all its variety, and monolithic cultural stereotypes begin to break down.
When reading to learn, students need to follow four basic steps:

Figure out the purpose for reading. Activate background knowledge of the topic in order to predict or anticipate content and identify appropriate reading strategies.

Attend to the parts of the text that are relevant to the identified purpose and ignore the rest. This selectivity enables students to focus on specific items in the input and reduces the amount of information they have to hold in short-term memory.

Select strategies that are appropriate to the reading task and use them flexibly and interactively. Students' comprehension improves and their confidence increases when they use top-down and bottom-up skills simultaneously to construct meaning.

Check comprehension while reading and when the reading task is completed. Monitoring comprehension helps students detect inconsistencies and comprehension failures, helping them learn to use alternate strategies.

Goals and Techniques for Teaching Reading

Instructors want to produce students who, even if they do not have complete control of the grammar or an extensive lexicon, can fend for themselves in communication situations. In the case of reading, this means producing students who can use reading strategies to maximize their comprehension of text, identify relevant and non-relevant information, and tolerate less than word-by-word comprehension.

Focus: The Reading Process

To accomplish this goal, instructors focus on the process of reading rather than on its product.

They develop students' awareness of the reading process and reading strategies by asking students to think and talk about how they read in their native language.
They allow students to practice the full repertoire of reading strategies by using authentic reading tasks. They encourage students to read to learn (and have an authentic purpose for reading) by giving students some choice of reading material.
When working with reading tasks in class, they show students the strategies that will work best for the reading purpose and the type of text. They explain how and why students should use the strategies.
They have students practice reading strategies in class and ask them to practice outside of class in their reading assignments. They encourage students to be conscious of what they're doing while they complete reading assignments.
They encourage students to evaluate their comprehension and self-report their use of strategies. They build comprehension checks into in-class and out-of-class reading assignments, and periodically review how and when to use particular strategies.
They encourage the development of reading skills and the use of reading strategies by using the target language to convey instructions and course-related information in written form: office hours, homework assignments, test content.
They do not assume that students will transfer strategy use from one task to another. They explicitly mention how a particular strategy can be used in a different type of reading task or with another skill.
By raising students' awareness of reading as a skill that requires active engagement, and by explicitly teaching reading strategies, instructors help their students develop both the ability and the confidence to handle communication situations they may encounter beyond the classroom. In this way they give their students the foundation for communicative competence in the new language.

Integrating Reading Strategies

Instruction in reading strategies is not an add-on, but rather an integral part of the use of reading activities in the language classroom. Instructors can help their students become effective readers by teaching them how to use strategies before, during, and after reading.

Before reading: Plan for the reading task

Set a purpose or decide in advance what to read for
Decide if more linguistic or background knowledge is needed
Determine whether to enter the text from the top down (attend to the overall meaning) or from the bottom up (focus on the words and phrases)
During and after reading: Monitor comprehension

Verify predictions and check for inaccurate guesses
Decide what is and is not important to understand
Reread to check comprehension
Ask for help
After reading: Evaluate comprehension and strategy use

Evaluate comprehension in a particular task or area
Evaluate overall progress in reading and in particular types of reading tasks
Decide if the strategies used were appropriate for the purpose and for the task
Modify strategies if necessary
Using Authentic Materials and Approaches

For students to develop communicative competence in reading, classroom and homework reading activities must resemble (or be) real-life reading tasks that involve meaningful communication. They must therefore be authentic in three ways.

1. The reading material must be authentic: It must be the kind of material that students will need and want to be able to read when traveling, studying abroad, or using the language in other contexts outside the classroom.

When selecting texts for student assignments, remember that the difficulty of a reading text is less a function of the language, and more a function of the conceptual difficulty and the task(s) that students are expected to complete. Simplifying a text by changing the language often removes natural redundancy and makes the organization somewhat difficult for students to predict. This actually makes a text more difficult to read than if the original were used.

Rather than simplifying a text by changing its language, make it more approachable by eliciting students' existing knowledge in pre-reading discussion, reviewing new vocabulary before reading, and asking students to perform tasks that are within their competence, such as skimming to get the main idea or scanning for specific information, before they begin intensive reading.

2. The reading purpose must be authentic: Students must be reading for reasons that make sense and have relevance to them. "Because the teacher assigned it" is not an authentic reason for reading a text.

To identify relevant reading purposes, ask students how they plan to use the language they are learning and what topics they are interested in reading and learning about. Give them opportunities to choose their reading assignments, and encourage them to use the library, the Internet, and foreign language newsstands and bookstores to find other things they would like to read.

3. The reading approach must be authentic: Students should read the text in a way that matches the reading purpose, the type of text, and the way people normally read. This means that reading aloud will take place only in situations where it would take place outside the classroom, such as reading for pleasure. The majority of students' reading should be done silently.

Reading Aloud in the Classroom

Students do not learn to read by reading aloud. A person who reads aloud and comprehends the meaning of the text is coordinating word recognition with comprehension and speaking and pronunciation ability in highly complex ways. Students whose language skills are limited are not able to process at this level, and end up having to drop one or more of the elements. Usually the dropped element is comprehension, and reading aloud becomes word calling: simply pronouncing a series of words without regard for the meaning they carry individually and together. Word calling is not productive for the student who is doing it, and it is boring for other students to listen to.

There are two ways to use reading aloud productively in the language classroom. Read aloud to your students as they follow along silently. You have the ability to use inflection and tone to help them hear what the text is saying. Following along as you read will help students move from word-by-word reading to reading in phrases and thought units, as they do in their first language.
Use the "read and look up" technique. With this technique, a student reads a phrase or sentence silently as many times as necessary, then looks up (away from the text) and tells you what the phrase or sentence says. This encourages students to read for ideas, rather than for word recognition.

Teaching Reading

Traditionally, the purpose of learning to read in a language has been to have access to the literature written in that language. In language instruction, reading materials have traditionally been chosen from literary texts that represent "higher" forms of culture.

This approach assumes that students learn to read a language by studying its vocabulary, grammar, and sentence structure, not by actually reading it. In this approach, lower level learners read only sentences and paragraphs generated by textbook writers and instructors. The reading of authentic materials is limited to the works of great authors and reserved for upper level students who have developed the language skills needed to read them.

The communicative approach to language teaching has given instructors a different understanding of the role of reading in the language classroom and the types of texts that can be used in instruction. When the goal of instruction is communicative competence, everyday materials such as train schedules, newspaper articles, and travel and tourism Web sites become appropriate classroom materials, because reading them is one way communicative competence is developed. Instruction in reading and reading practice thus become essential parts of language teaching at every level.

Reading Purpose and Reading Comprehension

Reading is an activity with a purpose. A person may read in order to gain information or verify existing knowledge, or in order to critique a writer's ideas or writing style. A person may also read for enjoyment, or to enhance knowledge of the language being read. The purpose(s) for reading guide the reader's selection of texts.

The purpose for reading also determines the appropriate approach to reading comprehension. A person who needs to know whether she can afford to eat at a particular restaurant needs to comprehend the pricing information provided on the menu, but does not need to recognize the name of every appetizer listed. A person reading poetry for enjoyment needs to recognize the words the poet uses and the ways they are put together, but does not need to identify main idea and supporting details. However, a person using a scientific article to support an opinion needs to know the vocabulary that is used, understand the facts and cause-effect sequences that are presented, and recognize ideas that are presented as hypotheses and givens.

Reading research shows that good readers

Read extensively
Integrate information in the text with existing knowledge
Have a flexible reading style, depending on what they are reading
Are motivated
Rely on different skills interacting: perceptual processing, phonemic processing, recall
Read for a purpose; reading serves a function
Reading as a Process

Reading is an interactive process that goes on between the reader and the text, resulting in comprehension. The text presents letters, words, sentences, and paragraphs that encode meaning. The reader uses knowledge, skills, and strategies to determine what that meaning is.

Reader knowledge, skills, and strategies include

Linguistic competence: the ability to recognize the elements of the writing system; knowledge of vocabulary; knowledge of how words are structured into sentences
Discourse competence: knowledge of discourse markers and how they connect parts of the text to one another
Sociolinguistic competence: knowledge about different types of texts and their usual structure and content
Strategic competence: the ability to use top-down strategies (see Strategies for Developing Reading Skills for descriptions), as well as knowledge of the language (a bottom-up strategy)
The purpose(s) for reading and the type of text determine the specific knowledge, skills, and strategies that readers need to apply to achieve comprehension. Reading comprehension is thus much more than decoding. Reading comprehension results when the reader knows which skills and strategies are appropriate for the type of text, and understands how to apply them to accomplish the reading purpose.

Material was drawn from “Reading in the beginning and intermediate college foreign language class” by Heidi Byrnes, in Modules for the professional preparation of teaching assistants in foreign languages (Grace Stovall Burkart, ed.; Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics, 1998)