Reading age/spelling age - anyone know anything about these?

[roisin]

Hi! Does anyone have a link or explanation about reading/spelling ages, how they are calculated, and what they mean.

i.e. does an 'average' 7 yr-old have a reading age of 7, or something else?

i can explain.....

right......

These tests are tested on tons of kids before publication to work out what percentage of kids of a particular age can work out.....and then the scores are 'standardised' according to what most children of that age get.

When your child gets it, all kids of the same chronological age (year group) will get the same test but age at the time of testing is crucial.

READING/SPELLING AGES
If your child is say 7 years and 4 months their raw score will be looked up on a table and a 'reading or spelling age' will be read off - so the age at which they read or spell can be higher or lower than there true age.

Sometimes results are 'standardised' - a score where 100 is 'average' (like in an IQ test) so you look up their raw score, their chronological age and you are given a standardised quotient....so in effect, 2 kids could get the same raw score but the younger child will get a higher standardised score because they are youmger and therefore the gap between real age and spelling age is greater.......

does that make any sense????

for example (and this is made up for ilustration purposes)
a 7y4m old might get 40/70 in a reading test anfd get a quotient of 115 and their friend might get the same 40/70 but only be 7y1m and therefore get a quotient of 125...

Yes, that is really helpful. Thanks Popsycal.

How are they viewed these days in 'the educational establishment'? Our school clearly tests for them at least twice a year, and it's an important part of their record-keeping. But they don't go on school reports, and don't generally get passed to parents.

Actually, I have got an additional query on this. Is it OK if I CAT you?

yes - please do roisin!!!
i am off to see the midwife now but will be online later this evening
would love to hear from you"

Popsycal - I've sent a CAT. I'll explain the query by email once you've got it.

Thanks

We get them on IEPs. At secondary school they are seen as a way of gauging if a child is 'rougly' meeting their age expected performance. Measures may be put into place if there is a short fall or if there is a discrepancy between standardised english and maths schore as this could indicate that there is a problem like dtslexia or dyscalculia.

So for example I teach children with a chronological age of 13 and a reading age of 8.4. I have to take that ointo account when I set and mark work, I also try to improve on that, but that isn't always easy.

have used them for many years at school, generally our parents know about it because all studnets have an IEP - the ages are used as a measure of progress - ie when they started in Year 7, reading age was 6.3 and at end of year they were 6.7. The govt is really big into targets all over the place and this give them stats to play with. It's never exact, but in general terms works well.

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we also use nfer

roisin, 11+ tests are calculated in sort of the same I way I think- age is taken into account as well as score.

catan

we use the suffolk reading test which gives you both a reading age and a standardised score
the spelling tests we use, I can't remember their names........
will have a think