- English Language Arts and Reading
- Grade 4
- Developing and sustaining foundational language skills
Have students work in pairs to read aloud while their partner listens. As students work on accuracy with a partner, the teacher can travel from group to group individually assessing the student's rate, accuracy, and prosody. After reading aloud, have students individually write a brief summary of the text.
Notes:
For this assessment, students will demonstrate fluency while reading as part of a diagnostic assessment. Students should read the text with appropriate speed, accuracy, and prosody (phrasing and proper expression). The speed with which students read should make the text easily understood by themselves and the listener. The decoding of words should be accurate enough that it does not impede comprehension. Prosody is important to properly convey the tone and message of the text. Students should not sound robotic. Fluency should be practiced with a variety of text types at students’ reading levels.
1. Hosp, J. L., & Suchey, N. (2014). Reading assessment: reading fluency, reading fluently, and comprehension--commentary on the special topic. School Psychology Review, 43(1), 59+. Retrieved from https://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A364693563/PROF?u=tea&sid=PROF&xid=af82488e
Summary: This article provides a summary of four articles related to the assessment of oral reading. The authors acknowledge that while there are increasing accountability standards for reading, measuring reading ability remains complex and difficult. The authors make a case for oral passage reading as a way to measure both reading fluency and comprehension.
2. Carrison, C., & Ernst-Slavis, G. (2005). From silence to a whisper to active participation: Using literature circles with ELL students. Reading Horizons, 46(2). Retrieved from https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1137&context=reading_horizons
Summary: The article promotes the use of literature circles to support literacy, especially for English learners. Literature circles allow student to interact through sharing ideas, opinions, and personal responses to literature. Students become active participants and learn to manage their literature circle activities, negotiating the structure of their timelines. The study participants were a fourth-grade class in which 5 of the 24 students had varying levels of language acquisition. The use of literature circles led to decreased anxiety about reading and participation and increased reading accuracy and comprehension.