Reading comprehension - what skills are included in assessment?

[youarenotkiddingme]

When considering a child's reading comprehension should you also include their speed and accuracy, their fluency, their ability to draw one word answers and also to write sentence responses to questions. Also should you consider their ability to infer meaning from text?

Tia

[Coconut0il]

I would say all those things are included when assessing reading. Maybe not speed but definitely accuracy and the ability to use the punctuation correctly. So stopping at full stops, taking a breathe at a comma, adding expression when a ? or ! comes up. I would look at those things if I was hearing a child read.
Reading papers that the children read to themselves have a mixture or retrieval and inference questions.

[youarenotkiddingme]

So would you say a child with unfluent inaccurate reading who can't infer from text has a RC difficulty?

[Coconut0il]

If the reading is inaccurate and the child is struggling to read with some fluency I would say they are going to struggle with comprehension.
How old is the child? I would be working on decoding and reading accurately first then building up pace. I would be asking some simple retrieval questions first followed by the inference questions.

[Keithyoustink]

Standardised assessments for reading comprehension look at reading rate & reading accuracy. Other factors include vocabulary knowledge, ability to use cohesive devices within the text, as well as inference.

[MrsWooster]

At Secondary you're looking at: finding info (explicit and implicit- see inference), supporting w evidence, inference, comparison, synthesis.

[youarenotkiddingme]

So if a child struggled with the above they'd be considered to have a problem with reading comprehension?

Does the amount of text they can read and comprehend factor? So for example if they could read a paragraph and answer 4 multiple choice questions would that be considered good comprehension? Or the fact they couldn't read a whole page and then remember all details and certainly couldn't infer from text beyond possible a simple 2 word answer be considered difficulty.
What about if a child could read a chapter of a famous five book but couldn't even remember the characters names?

Child is in year 7.

[Keithyoustink]

I would certainly want to carry out further assessments for the difficulties you describe.

[youarenotkiddingme]

Thank you.

Ds saw EP today and I mentioned how his reading comprehension was poor alongside his spelling. I said he was accurate or fluent and still struggled with new words.

The senco reply was there's nothing working with his RC - his problems are inferring from text. I was thinking but that is comprehension?! Especially at secondary level.

[MrsWooster]

Hmm
Worth pursuing. Finding info is level 3 so by y7 'should be' finding, supporting and starting to infer. This level of not remembering basic info merits investigation...

[user789653241]

I don't know if it's any help, but this is very good reading comprehension site. (free)

www.readtheory.org/

[weirdsister]

Did the EP do a reading assessment with him?
What were his scores?

[Coconut0il]

The example you give of being able to read a chapter and not remember the character names would worry me slightly. How is the working memory in other areas? Remembering dates/months/ lists for example?
I work with younger children but find lots of them struggle with inference questions. Retrieval questions are easier for them to answer.

[youarenotkiddingme]

I don't think the EP did do RC assessments because school said he was fine and had no problems.

I've just signed up to the website suggested above. Thanks irvine it looks great. Ds did the protest and 1 exercise. He's got a reading grade of 1.5G and Leslie score of 195L. Any idea what these mean?!

[youarenotkiddingme]

Lexile not Lesley!

[youarenotkiddingme]

Ds has been assesed as having some difficulties in working memory but not an actual working memory problem iyswim? That was 2 years ago though.

[user789653241]

If you go to the progress report, (on top left of the page where there are 6 different lists of buttons, 3rd from left), they will tell you about grade and lexile levels and more detailed analysis of reading comprehension.
But don't worry about it so much now, since there are not enough information about his progress yet. In each section, if you press learn more, you can get more detailed info. We have been using this site over a year now, and my ds has improved so much. Good luck!

[youarenotkiddingme]

Thank you so much. I think I'll get ds to do a few of the readings each evening but over a period of time - so before dinner and then after iyswim? It won't harm and certainly practice and repetition is likely to help. His salt said he rote learns most of his social communication!

[user789653241]

What i like about this site is you can review the quiz(when you made a mistake, and in quiz history section) dc has taken, and get detailed explanation why they made a mistake.
One quiz doesn't take long, and each text is short and interesting. So doing it regularly isn't so much pain, and I think it definitely better than doing nothing. Worth the effort in the long run, IMO.

[youarenotkiddingme]

It's brilliant! I just got DS to do some more. It clearly measures where he is because he gets 100% on grade 2 so it takes him to grade 3 (not so accurate!) then it does a grade 2 quiz again and so forth!

[mom17]

Does this site has reading comprehension matching to habs 11+ standard ?I am impressed with their past papers and would love similar level. I would really appreciate if it provides expected answer as well as convincing the child what should be the answer is difficult part ( They have their own reasoning !!).

[user789653241]

I don't know about habs, but this site's level goes up to US grade12(17/18yrs old). They give you the explanation why the answer is A, B, C or what ever.

[mom17]

Thanks irvineoneohone. I was wondering if it is just for grade-3 as it shows in starting