Screening, Diagnosing and Progress Monitoring for Fluency

Screening, diagnosing, and progress monitoring are essential to making sure that all students get fluent readers — and the words-correct-per-minute (WCPM) procedure tin can piece of work for all 3. The only aspect of the procedure that has to alter is the difficulty level of the text. For screening, passages are selected from text at the student'due south form level. For diagnosing, passages are selected at the student's instructional level (which may exist lower than her grade level). In this context, instructional level text is challenging but manageable, with the reader making errors on no more than than one in x words (i.e., the reader is successful with 90 per centum of the text). For progress monitoring, passages are selected at a student'south individually determined goal level. For instance, if an 8th-class student's instructional level is at the fifth-grade level, the teacher may conduct the progress monitoring assessments using passages at the 6th-grade level.

Screening

Because empirical research clearly indicates the urgent demand to provide loftier quality, intensive instructional interventions to students at risk of reading difficulty as shortly as possible, schools should administer screening measures to every pupil through the 5th grade. First graders should be screened in the winter and the spring; 2nd- through 5th graders should be screened in the autumn, winter, and spring. To make up one's mind if students are at the expected levels in their reading fluency, my colleague Gerald Tindal and I advise comparison students' WCPM scores to the 50th percentile score on the norms tabular array below, given the students' grade placement and the gauge time of year in which the assessment was conducted. A score falling more than 10 words below the 50th percentile should heighten a concern; the educatee may demand boosted help, and farther assessments may be needed to diagnose the source of the below-average functioning. Depending on the age of the student and any concerns well-nigh reading performance noted past the teacher or parents, such additional testing might include assessments of oral linguistic communication development, phonemic awareness, phonics and decoding, and/or comprehension.

Diagnosing

If a pupil scores poorly on a fluency screening, or if the teacher has some other cause for concern such as poor performance in form or on some other assessment, the instructor should take a more than careful expect at the student's strengths and needs. The student could be deficient in a diversity of reading skills or in related areas like vocabulary and background knowledge, and then administering some informal diagnostic assessments would be helpful for designing effective teaching, providing evidence of the need for a reading specialist, or referring the student for farther evaluation. Typically, if a student's fluency level is low, simply word reading accuracy in course-level texts is adequate, a instructor can place the student in an intervention focused just on improving fluency. But if diagnostic assessments indicate other areas of weakness, a more comprehensive intervention may demand to be developed. (Meet instance below.)

Monitoring student progress

If a pupil'due south diagnostic assessment reveals concerns nearly one or more areas of reading, additional, targeted instruction should brainstorm right away. WCPM procedures tin exist used to chart progress. Many educators have institute WCPM to be a better tool for monitoring students' progress than traditional standardized measures that typically are time-consuming, expensive, but administered infrequently, and of express instructional utility. For students reading six to 12 months below grade level, progress monitoring should be done ofttimes, mayhap in one case or twice monthly for as long as students crave supplemental instruction. Progress monitoring should be done as often every bit once per week for students who are reading more than than one year below level and receiving intensive intervention services, including special teaching. This regular monitoring assures that if the intervention is not working well, it tin be modified.

When monitoring the progress of these struggling readers, the standard procedures are expanded by graphing the student's WCPM scores. A progress-monitoring graph, for perhaps a grading period or a trimester, is created for each student. Teachers can use the boilerplate weekly improvement (AWI) information in the norms table to select an ambitious, all the same reasonable, instructional goal; for instance, a fourth-grader'due south goal could exist to improve by 15 WCPM over ten weeks of intensive instruction. An aim line is placed on the graph to stand for the progress a student must brand to achieve a preset fluency goal. Each time the student is assessed, that score is added to the graph. If three or more than sequent scores fall below the aim line, the teacher must consider adjusting the instructional program.

Teachers should also consider having the students tape their ain WCPM scores on their graphs — it increases their motivation and investment in their reading progress.

Examples of a diagnosis

Andrew, an eighth-grader, recently moved to a different town where he entered a new school in March. It before long became axiomatic to his teachers that Andrew was having difficulty with his academic work. At a weekly meeting during which teachers talk over whatever concerns about their students, several teachers brought samples of Andrew's work to share. The teachers agreed that the school's reading specialist should determine if reading problems were contributing to Andrew's struggle with his assignments in several classes. The reading specialist conducted an IRI (breezy reading inventory) and planned to follow up with additional assessments if Andrew's performance on the IRI indicated possible deficits in phonemic awareness, phonics and decoding, vocabulary, and/or comprehension. The specialist built a fluency cess into the initial IRI by using a stopwatch to make up one's mind how many words Andrew could read in the first 60 seconds of each IRI passage.

The reading specialist began the IRI using a sixth-class passage, two years below Andrew's grade. The passage was at a frustration level for him: He had difficulty with decoding, phrasing, and expression, and was only able to correctly answer four of the viii comprehension questions. Because the passage was at Andrew's frustration level, the WCPM score was not calculated. The specialist then repeated the cess using a 5th-grade passage; Andrew was able to read it with 94 percent accurateness and correctly answer six of the 8 comprehension questions. The specialist calculated Andrew's WCPM score for this passage and compared his score, 131 WCPM, to the norms for fifth-graders in the bound. The 50th percentile in the spring of 5th grade is 139 WCPM. Considering Andrew'due south score fell less than 10 words below information technology, his fluency is within the expected range for fifth grade readers in the spring.

The reading specialist's conclusion was that Andrew appears to be reading approximately three years beneath grade level, but that his fluency skill level appears to exist advisable for his overall reading level. Before designing Andrew's reading program, the specialist plans to administer a diagnostic assessment focused on phonics and decoding, and a more than comprehensive assessment of vocabulary and comprehension. She suspects there may be some underlying weaknesses in Andrew's decoding skills contributing to his filibuster in overall reading development. His intervention volition likely include fluency instruction and practice to proceed him on runway, and may as well include decoding and comprehension teaching, depending on the results of the other diagnostic assessments.

These procedures for screening, diagnosing, and progress monitoring have been available for many years, just accept not been widely used in schools. This state of affairs will likely change as educators go more aware of the importance of preventing reading difficulties and providing intensive intervention every bit shortly equally a concern is noted. Using fluency norms to set advisable goals for student improvement and to measure out progress toward those goals can be a powerful and efficient tool to help educators make well-informed and timely decisions about the instructional needs of their students, especially the everyman performing, struggling readers.

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Source: https://www.colorincolorado.org/article/screening-diagnosing-and-progress-monitoring-fluency

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