Reading Assessment Test

Reading Assessment Test

A reading assessment test can be completed to find out what skills an individual already knows concerning reading. A parent/teacher can use the skills already known when beginning instruction. New skills can systematically be built upon the already known skills. A reading assessment test will help you to gather this information. Reading Assessment Tests included in Reading Blocks are: Phonemic Awareness Assessment, Reading Wall Assessment, Checkpoint Assessment, How to Divide a Word into Syllables.

Fluent Readers Build Skills Layer by Layer

Fluent reading builds upon previous skills. Picture a brick layer cementing row upon row of bricks to form a wall. What if he started on the first row, and then skipped several bricks in the second row, and skipped even more bricks in the third row, and even more in the fourth row? His structure would not have the strength it needed to remain intact and strong. This type of structure would eventually collapse.

Missing Skills

The same type of collapse happens with any academic skill that depends on a solid base to add increasingly more difficult material upon. Mathematics is the most typical example. Many adults will tell you they cannot do mathematics and never could. The reason almost always lies in the fact that they are missing some of the basic skills or bricks in the early rows of their mathematical wall of knowledge. This caused their wall of knowledge to collapse at some point in their academic background. Since the person never went back to earlier lessons to learn or fill in the information that was missed, the individual never felt confident in his mathematical abilities. A reading assessment test can help you to locate these missing bits of information and complete your reader’s wall of knowledge.

Phonemic Awareness Assessment

The Phonemic Awareness Assessment is used to take a quick measure of the reader’s phoneic awareness abilities. Phonemic Awareness is an early predictor of a reader’s success or difficulty with learning to read. This assessment can be given in preschool an up. Phonemic Awareness skills can be explicitly taught to individuals who are having difficulty learning to read. MRI exams showed that good readers and poor readers use different areas of the brain when reading. Phonemic Awareness skills taught explicitly will help poor readers to build pathways into the area of the brain that good readers use. You can find this assessment here.

Reading Wall Assessment

The Reading Wall Assessment will allow you to see the condition of your reader’s foundational knowledge. First, you want to know what existing knowledge is in place and what knowledge is missing. Next, you will replace any missing information before adding more layers of knowledge. Sometimes it is best to just start over and rebuild correctly. The Reading Wall Assessment will help you to determine your starting point. The Reading Wall Assessmenet can be found here.

Checkpoint Assessment

The Checkpoint Assessment is a measure of how much of the material is learned from a set of blocks in the program Reading Blocks: A Step By Step Measure to Teach Reading. Checkpoint one covers blocks 1-5. Checkpoint two covers blocks 6-10. Checkpoint three covers blocks 11-15. Checkpoint four covers blocks 16-20. Checkpoint five covers blocks 21-25. Checkpoint six covers blocks 26-32. The reader needs to know 90% or more on each assessment to continue to the next set of reading blocks. This is an effective strategy for uncovering if the reader is missing any of the information in their reading wall. The Checkpoint Assessment can be found here.

How to Divide a Word into Syllables

How to Divide a Word into Syllables is extremely helpful for learning new words. The reader will learn the skills needed to divide unknown words into syllables in order to sound out the word. There are seven rules for dividing words into syllables and they can be found here.