Reading Age

[EverybodysDoeEyed]

How is a child's reading age determined?

I hear people saying how their child's reading age differs from their actual age and just wondered what the scale was

My DD is reading way above her age but I never know what her 'reading age' is. I did however do a test on here which someone posted which took comprehension in to account and was interesting for DD to do. Will see if I can find it and post a link

There are some standard tests available which test reading age. There are different types but most just test a child's ability to read stand alone words in a list, not their comprehension or understanding, nor their fluency. There are other tests that go someway to looking at them I think though.

I would imagine few people really know actual reading ages as ime it is not assessed in schools. It is sometimes assessed when schools are assessing children for specific needs, but not always.

THIS

My niece was told her reading age after doing her SATs

I assumed it was just a different way of doing levels - just like the stages in ORT

How do teachers judge comprehension? I would say that DS' comprehension is better than his reading ability!

AFAIK SATs don't include a check on reading age. Must have been some internal test perhaps.

Oh ok.

Thanks - curiosity appeased!

My DS's reading age was assessed as part of a dyslexia assessment

We use the Salford Sentence Reading Test which also tests comprehension (one literal and one inference question per sentence).like any test its results are not 100% aligned to those of other tests. It provides us with a reading standardsised score and rough NC level

Er, numbum, are you sure that's a valid test for children? It only gave me 36 percent and I wasn't exactly dawdling. Then it suggested that I buy some product to help me with my comprehension!

Seemed fairly sound when I tried it with DS1, 2 and myself - although possibly put DS2 higher than I had expected.

Although despite me getting 98th percentile at the highest grade, it did suggest I needed a product to improve, so I ignored that part, for the boys too.

The test said my DD(5) was at 2 grade level (age 7-8) and she didn't get that far!. She's good but not that good!

It put DS2 at grade 2 level, 90th percentile, which having just checked does actually fit with his ORT reading level.

Also seemed fine on me and DD.

No idea why you did so badly L&S.
Possibly because your reading isn't very accurate?

It tests speed and accuracy.

Don't know Indigo, I got a first on my logic paper at uni, so I'd imagine that I can work out most sentences. Maybe I'm not very good at that test. But it is trying to sell something, so I'm not going to spend too much time worrying about it. But I'm certainly not going to buy the product!!

did you not use your phonic knowledge learnandsay?

Sorry couldn't resist!!!!!!!

It depends on which test you use.

We have used the Salford test in the past but this only tests ability to decode words- no comprehension involved.

Now we use the GTTp test which involves more comprehension and knowledge of vocabulary. It is also a multiple choice so there is a 1/4 chance of getting the right answer. I find the results to be wildly innacurate.

One of my pupils is achieving 4b in reading (end of year 5) but only achieved 8.11 on this test.

Another is 9.1 in the reading age test but only 2a in the QCA assessments.

Makes no sense at all.

BrigitBigKnickers the new Salford test was published earlier this year because we wanted something to give a comprehension age as we are frequently being asked for this information by external agencies.

SAT's do not measure reading age at all. It is a non-standardised test devised by a quango to measure how much the child has learned

If the school is using a nationally standardised test, it will give their percentile ranking. Reading ages are usually used to find out whether the child is reading at age-appropriate levels or well above or below, and often used as a baseline when children need specialist support.
I use the Diagnostic Reading Analysis which is standardised and gives a reading accuracy age, reading fluency age and a reading comprehension age.

That's interesting mrz- I will look into that- really don't rate the Gttp one(if that's what it's called)

DSs school do the Suffolk reading test, which is a standardised reading/comprehension test.
(Shown major improvements across the board since introducing phonics throughout the school )