Oral Reading Fluency Assessments

EMC’s Mirrors & Windows Assessment Guide provides Oral Reading Fluency Assessments in response to the increasing demand for this type of evaluation tool, especially at the high school level. The relationship between reading fluency and comprehension has been well documented.

In the Assessment Guide, two passages are provided for each unit in all grade levels of the Mirrors & Windows: Connecting with Literature program. Each passage contains material from the corresponding unit in the Student Edition, whether it is from a literary selection or instructional material. Each passage is considered moderate in difficulty and is about two hundred words long.

Step-by-step guidelines explain how to administer the assessments as well as evaluate and score the student’s performance. The Detailed Reading Fluency Rubric describes each of the categories that are used to measure students’ skill in reading the passages.

The goal of reading fluency assessment is to encourage and chart student progress. A master Reading Fluency Progress Graph is provided to help you accomplish that goal. A copy of the graph can be used to chart an individual student’s scores for multiple readings of the assessment passages. Following each assessment, you can also document the types of errors a student made in a Reading Fluency Error Chart. The student can then review the results and practice to remedy the identified errors. A master Reading Fluency Error Chart is supplied for this purpose.

Additional oral fluency activities can be found at http://www.mirrorsandwindows.com/. Mirrors & Windows supplies all the tools you need to assess and monitor your students’ oral reading fluency!

Customize Instruction with Formative Assessments

Use Formative Assessment to customize EMC’s Mirrors & Windows for your students—quickly and easily!
Identify Skill Levels
The Formative Surveys provided in the Assessment Guide for each level measure students’ basic reading and writing skills. Administer Formative Survey 1 at the start of the course to determine each student’s level of competency in language arts skills.
Customize Instruction
Use a student’s score on Formative Survey 1 to identify selections and supplementary materials that will best help each student meet and exceed state and national language arts standards. Each selection in the textbook is rated Easy, Moderate, or Challenging, as well as many of the lessons in the Meeting the Standards Unit Resource books.
Measure Progress
To realign instruction. Administer Formative Survey 2 and use the results to revise your plan for each student as necessary.
To obtain a summative measure. Administer Formative Survey 2 and compare the results on both surveys to quantify each student’s progress.

STAAR to replace TAKS

The Texas Education Association recently announced that a new generation of student tests called the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) will replace the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS), a criterion-based test which been in use since 2003.

According to TEA, the new tests will be significantly more rigorous than previous tests and will measure a child’s performance, as well as academic growth. By law, the grade 3-8 STAAR tests in reading and mathematics must be linked from grade to grade to performance expectations for the English III and Algebra II end-of-course assessments.

The new tests will be used beginning in the 2011-2012 school year. A new state accountability rating system will debut in 2013.

EMC’s Mirrors & Windows: Connecting with Literature responds to this call for educational rigor by offering full-length formative surveys, developed and validated by the Educational Testing Service, that measure student performance against other students nationwide.

For more information on the new STAAR tests, visit TEA’s website at http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index4.aspx?id=7874