Reading Assessment for Children

EI is developing a Reading Assessment Test to benchmark reading levels. Assessment of Reading , a critical academic skill, will identify the exact difficulties of children and help authorities to plan suitable interventions.

Skilled reading is dependent on being able to link sounds to script symbols, identify letters and know meanings of words rapidly and accurately. Word meanings are then used to construct interpretations of larger text segments such as clauses, and paragraphs. Further text comprehension and learning from text involves several levels of cognitive processing. At the lowest level we extract the surface meaning of the text we are reading. At a higher level we develop the ability to make inferences about the content of the text. And at a yet higher level we develop the ability to recognize “big ideas” in the text.

Finally, it is important to appreciate that there are different ways in which we read, for example, reading a story for a child, reading a literary novel for a higher class, reading a manual to operate a washing machine, reading a memo, reading a doctor’s report or reading an article in a scientific journal are all different in intent. In other words, we learn, through years of practice and example, many ways of reading, each of which is tied to specific contexts and goals.

Why Assessment of Reading ?
Assessment of reading helps to check whether and how many students are acquiring the ability to read well with comprehension. It helps monitor progress and also the nature of the progress - for example, are some children improving their reading ability significantly, while others are not. It will help to objectively know the extent of progress based on some standard parameters - this would otherwise be subjective and based on the opinions and impressions of individuals. Finally, assessment of reading would help identify techniques that are more and less effective in developing skills and identify factors that may help or hinder in the process.

In other words, assessment of reading can help to

a. monitor progress.

b. identify skill levels of the tested samples.

c. understand effectiveness of different techniques.

d. know whether the children comprehend what they read.

e. explore how instruction can be improved.

Your Role:
Be part of a team that will review existing reading research, develop and pretest the final papers and analyse student responses.