Year 4 and Year 5

Reading Assessment2009/10

1) Please use two of the following reading tasks.

You may wish to use these during a guided reading group session, focusing on the particular child/children you have selected. Please read the ‘additional guidance’ for each task before you decide which to use.

Choose an appropriate way of capturing each child’s reading and response to the tasks, e.g.:

  • teacher notes
  • observation sheet
  • pictures drawn by children in response to their reading
  • tape recording

2) Please also bring as much additional evidence of children’s reading as possible,for each of the 3 selected pupils,to support your discussions with colleagues. For example you may be able to bring:

  • list of books the child has read (in school/at home)
  • child’s individual reading record

(comments on reading, by teacher or TA)

  • guided reading records
  • ‘running record’ (100 word passage) with comments on

-child’s strategies for decoding

-child’s response to reading

  • favourite author and/or types of book the child chooses (see ‘Key Features of Level 3 and Level 4 books’ in this pack)

Please use copies of the Reading assessment sheets (from Hertfordshire Pink Book or APP Guidelines) when making assessments of your children’s attainment, using a highlighter pen to show the criteria met by each of the three selected pupils.

The Readingassessment tasks

Select two of the following three activities:

ACTIVITY 1: (Before reading) - ‘Be a Detective!’

(Possible evidence for Assessment Focuses 3, 4 and 7)

Can you guess what the book is about from the chapter headings?

List the Chapter headings from a book you are about to read and share this list with the children. Don’t reveal the title of the book.

Ask the children:-

NB: This is not about the children guessing correctly, but how well they justify and contextualise their ideas.

e.g.These are the Chapter Headings from ‘Christopher Mouse: The Tale of a Small Traveller’ by William Wise

At the Crimmins’ place

‘When Mrs Crimmins comes to fetch you’

Last days at home

Poems and partings

Freddy Willis

The orphan boy

‘Oh sad is the mouse’

Desperate circumstances

The boy with the stuffed owl

Something overheard

On my own

Life among the ladies

Weary traveller

Walter and Abby

Journey’s end

ACTIVITY 2: (During/after reading) - ‘Feelings Graph’

(Possible evidence for AF3)

Using either of the two attached graphs children can plot the emotions of a character over time. This is a visual way to encourage children to share their understanding of a text.

Encourage the children to talk about how they made their decisions. (Much of the assessment evidence will come from the explanations and justifications.)

ACTIVITY 3:(After reading -Non fiction task) - ‘Lucky Dip’

(Possible evidence for AF2, AF4 and AF5)

Step 1: Talk Partner/ Paired talk

In Talk partners/pairs ask children to talk about the key points of the Non-fiction text that have just read.

Step 2: Group discussion

Beforehand, cut up the attached cards and place in a bag.

Children pull out a card, read the question and discuss their thoughts (with justification). When everyone has articulated their thoughts, and responded to each others’ ideas, pull out another card and repeat until all the prompt cards have been used. Teachers may wish to add their own cards/prompts to encourage further discussion of the structure, composition, text and word level.

Cards for Lucky Dip

Who else do you think would enjoy this book? / Were you surprised by anything in the book? And if so, why?
Do the pictures or diagrams help you to understand the information? / If you were the author, which words would you put in the glossary?
How has the author organised the information? / Can you think of any other books you have read that are organised in the same way?
How did you decide which order to read the information/text? / How does the author draw attention to the key points?
Can you think of a question that the book helps you to answer? How many questions can you think of?

Additional guidance on assessment

In addition to the generic criteria from the Pink Book, the following guidance (specific to these tasks) may be useful:

Child’s response to text / Level 3 / Level 4
Activity 1:
Be a detective!
(AF 3, 4 and 7)
/ Child uses a few of the chapter headings to make simple inferences, e.g. “It’s about a journey and being sad – because one of the chapters mentions being sad and the last chapter is called Journey’s End.” / Child uses broad range of chapter headings to infer and deduct, justifying their ideas, e.g. ”I think it’s about someone having to leave home, and travelling from place to place, meeting different people – Freddy Willis, Walter and Abby etc. It might be wartime and they have been evacuated because it mentions partings, orphans and desperate circumstances.”
Activity 2:
Feelings Graph
(AF3) / Child makes simple inferences about characters’ feelings at key points in the book, possibly with reference to the text or possibly by empathising with the character, e.g. “She was angry because the author wrote she ‘stormed off’ ” or “I think she was angry because I would be if that happened to me.” / Child makes more subtle inferences about character’s feelings and motives, justifying their ideas, e.g. “In this chapter he was feeling very irritated and a bit depressed. You can tell because he was snappy with his friends and didn’t want to play football.”
Activity 3:
Lucky Dip
(AF2, 4 and 5) / Child identifies a few basic features of text organisation and use of language, but with little comment on their effect, e.g. “The author has used different sizes of writing and put some of it in boxes. It makes it stand out more.” / Child identifies the key features of text organisation and use of language, commenting on the effect, e.g. “The author has put this sentence in bold because that is the key point of the paragraph.”

N.B. Level 3 readers should be assessed with these tasks on a Level 3 book, Level 4 readers on a Level 4 book to allow opportunity for them to develop their ideas and thinking (see ‘Key Features of Level 3 and Level 4 books’ over the page).

Key Features of Level 3 and Level 4 Books

(extract from the Hertfordshire ‘Pink Book’)

Things to consider:

lay-out

vocabulary

sentence structure

length

Features of real books for readers at Level 3

many ‘chapter heading’ books fall into this category

chapters are often fairly short

illustrations used to break up text rather than to support text

whole page of text

more technical vocabulary and less known words but still fairly familiar settings

sentences more complex

characters and settings more complex

books will demand that the reader can use inference and deduction

Children should be more confident in choosing their own books. They should begin to have developed a favourite author or type of book. They should be able to sustain their reading on their own.

Features of books for readers at Level 4

chapters less likely to have a heading and much longer

books demand that the reader can sustain reading

books may have a theme as well as plot

text demands that the reader understands meaning beyond the literal and can pick up significant ‘clues’ in the text

settings will be less familiar to the child – set in different times and places

variety of formats for showing information in information texts

Children need to extend their knowledge of authors, whilst not losing their love of favourite authors.