EDTEP 532

Aspects of Reading

For your Profile of a Reader project, you will need to complete an Analysis Organizer (see other side). This organizer addresses the major areas of reading, so it will help you develop an overall picture of your profile students’ reading abilities. It will help you get organized for your final write up by making sure that your claims are grounded in evidence from assessments and observations. Below are some questions to help you get started with each area of reading. Keep in mind that the QRI will give you some of this information, but you will need to supplement with observations, one on one work (as possible), other rubrics and assessments, etc.

Word identification

  • Compare in and out of context (in passages vs. word lists).
  • Compare independent, instructional, and frustrational strategies.
  • Based on miscue analyses, compare cuing systems (graphophonic, syntactic, & semantic).
  • Your most important data will come from instructional level passages.

Comprehension

  • Report findings from both retelling and post-reading questions
  • Compare performance on implicit and explicit questions
  • Compare performance on narrative and expository texts
  • Compare performance on familiar and unfamiliar texts
  • For students in grade 4 and above, compare oral and silent reading comprehension.
  • For younger students (K-3), all reading can be oral; compare comprehension with and without pictures.
  • For students at or above 3rd grade level, compare comprehension with and without look-backs.
  • Your most important data will come from familiar, instructional level passages.
  • What comprehension strategies do you notice your students using (e.g. establishing a purpose, using prior knowledge, etc.)? (see p. 327 of Graves, Juel, & Graves)

Vocabulary

  • Vocabulary is about meaning not decoding!
  • What words does your student seem to understand or not understand that are central to comprehending a text? You can gain some of this info from some of the QRI questions and the retelling (e.g. do they use any specialized vocabulary in their retellings?). Also, you can ask students informally to explain words from texts they are reading in class.
  • What strategies does your student use to figure out the meaning of unknown words (e.g. context cues, word parts, dictionary, etc.)?
  • For young children, you can also look at spoken vocabulary and understanding of vocabulary from read alouds.

Fluency

  • Reading rate, accuracy, phrasing, and expression
  • See NAEP Fluency Rubric

Oral language

  • What do you notice about your student’s speaking?
  • During the QRI—are they interactive, articulate, quiet, etc.?
  • In regular class setting—do they speak in whole class, small group, and 1 on 1 settings? Are they able to get the floor when speaking with peers? Are they active members in in-classroom and out-of-classroom conversations?
  • See Overview of Oral Language Developmental Continuum

Prior knowledge

  • How does your students’ prior knowledge about a topic impact his/her comprehension? On the QRI, use pre- and post-reading questions to address this.
  • You can also observe this during regular classroom reading activities. To do so, ask pre-reading questions before a reading event to assess prior knowledge and compare to retellings & post-reading questions.