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READING ASSESSMENT KIT
1 set of reading assessments due by Sept. 30th
Helpful Hints
o Must do assessments 5 times a year –
 3 formal, 2 informal (Aug, Oct, Dec, Mar, May)
 Formal reading assessments need to be done using the K-2 Assessment Kit box
 Informal reading assessments can be done in guided reading groups
 Teacher’s Monitoring Checklist – Principal will check your assessments and sign off
on this checklist
 Administrator should let you know when they are going to come and check
 2nd grade – 1st running record needs to be non-fiction
o Need K-2 Assessment Notebook and Box
o The Writing about Reading component is Optional, but it is a great source of information for
you about the student
o On all assessments, only assess the items they have not mastered. If they have mastered
something you don’t have to re-assess
o You can observe this mastery during guided reading and mark it down on student’s
assessments. You don’t have to do these assessments in isolation and all at once (if they
show they can complete this skill 2 to 3 times based on your observations, then you can
mark that they mastered that skill on their assessment sheet)
o Assistants cannot complete assessments, they have to be completed by certified staff
o Use different colored ink each time you do these assessment, to differentiate each time you
assess
o Any notes/comments you make on these assessment are very important, to help you use
these assessments to inform your instruction
o Pg.92-96 = Frequently Asked Questions
o No longer using Purple Writing Portfolios
Letter Identification – Identifying Letters and Sounds
o Starts on pg.16 of Literacy Assessment Notebook
o Mastery has to be 85%, if they master you don’t have to reassess later
o Meaning mastery would be 22 out of 26 sounds and letters, or 44 out of 52 (upper and
lower case letters combined)
o Make sure to have an index card or paper with a block cut out of it, so that students only see
one letter at a time
o 1st and 2nd grade must also look in folder to make sure each student has mastered letter id,
and doesn’t need to be reassessed
o Page 19 in Assessment Notebook – recording sheet for Letter and Sound Identification
o Just need to do lower or upper case, not both
o Ex. If the student says “ball” for the ‘b’ sound, you can count this as correct, but you need to
record that the word and the fact that they said the word instead of the sound
o You can except the hard or the soft sound
Book and Print Awareness – Knowledge of Books and How they Work
o Usually have mastered this before 2nd grade
o Use book “No Sandwich,” that is provided with kit
o Pg.21 in your assessment notebook
o 85% = Mastery, 17 or 18
o Make sure you pay attention to the specifics of how to hand the book to the child, this is
very important (you hand them the book by the spine)
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Be very specific during this assessment, stick to the script given to you
Pg.25 – Recording Sheet
You can accept things like a student calling quotation marks, “talking marks” or a common a
“rest.” But make sure you note that they did not use the correct vocabulary
Phonemic Awareness – Using Knowledge of Different Sounds to Complete Tasks
o Pg.26 in assessment notebook
o There are 15 different tasks
o It is measuring how they manipulate sounds
o It is an oral assessment
o Use script to ensure fidelity
o Can give other examples besides the ones given, if student does not understand
o 85% = Mastery, 4 out of 6 is acceptable
o You can accept non-sense words
o On Task 4, some students (ESL) may need picture cards that are provided with the kit, to
give them a visual representation of the words
o The guideline is K – Tasks 1-4, 1st – Tasks 5-11, and 2nd Tasks 12-15, but you really need to go
as far as the student can go
o 3 times a year, but you may need to do 5 times a year depending on the student
Running Records – Assess Reading and Comprehension Level
o Completing Running Record
 Pg.36 in assessment notebook
 You must use the books in the Black Assessment Kit box for the 3 formal running
records (Aug/Sept,Dec/Jan, and May/Jun), and ‘Comprehension Conversations’
(comprehension questions for each book in black box that have been scripted for
you)
 In October and March (informal) you can use running records taken during guided
reading groups, make sure to document their comprehension of the book in some
way
 They are asked to preview the book before they begin during formal running
records, but this is optional. They do not have to do a book walk if they don’t want
to, because this is a reading strategy that they can choose to use or not to use.
 You may want to place you chair slightly behind the student, so that they can’t see
what you are doing. It helps them not get distracted from their reading
 You need to be doing informal running records every 2 weeks or more in guided
reading groups
 Have other students in your group re-reading familiar text while doing these
informal running records (have basket where students can grab their familiar text
easily)
 Keep books that students are reading in guided reading groups for 2 weeks, to help
build their fluency
 For informal running records, use the book that you have introduced/read the day
before for your running record on that student the following day
 It is a good idea to have a notebook to store and organize these running records.
Some people have a notebook with a tab for each student with notebook paper for
informal running records; some people just use a spiral notebook. It is up to you. If
it is a long book, just have them read one paragraph.
 Best to use pencil when completing running records
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Make sure as you put checks for each word the student says that the checks follow
the pattern of the words on the page. Ex. If there are 5 words on a line in the book,
then you should have 5 checks on that line, and then go to the next line if the text in
the book went down to the next line
 Draw a line after a student finishing reading one page to create a page break on
your sheet before you begin coding the next page. It will just help keep things more
organized
Miscue Analysis is the most important part of the running record
 “Use of Cues” (on running record form, must check which cues the student used)
 If you aided the student in figuring a word out, you do not count that against them
 Dialect does not count against a student, Ex. If they say ‘ax’ instead of ‘ask’
 Pg.39 – Summary sheet of conventions, put it in front of you to help you when doing
your running records
 To calculate the error rate you divide running words (RW) by number of errors
 Self-Corrections (SC) – if they score 1:4 that is a big red flag
 M = Meaning, Did what the word the child said make sense? Did they use the
illustrations to help them figure out the word? Ex. The reader reads, “The boy ran
into the pool,” but the sentence actually said “The boy jumped into the pool.” The
word ‘ran’ does make sense, so this is a meaning error
 S = Structure or Syntax, does it sound right grammatically. Ex. The dog eated, is not
grammatically correct. This would be coded as a structure/syntax error
 V = Visual, deals with the letters in the word only. Are the letters in the word the
student said, similar to the letter of the word in the text? Ex. ‘the’ and ‘her’, both
have the ‘he.’ They are visually similar, or ‘not’ and ‘now.’
 For Self-Corrections (SC) you have to analyze why the error happened AND why the
self-correction happened (this means you must have an M,S, or V code for the selfcorrection, and the error
 Helpful Hint – Self-Corrections are usually visual
 You can’t analyze Insertions and Omissions, so just don’t put a code by those
mistakes
 It is very important to go ahead and code the M,S, and V right after you do the
running record, when the reading is fresh in your mind
Strategies Student used while Reading
 “Use of Strategies” (must check which strategies the student used on the running
record form)
 Monitoring - Paying attention to a student’s self-monitoring ability, or lack of it, is
high on the list of things to watch for as you read with students. Since reading is
about making meaning of print, we want all children, even beginning readers, to
think about what they are saying as they read. If the child is using this strategy, you
may see them re-read a sentence or self-correct an error when they realize what
they said did not make sense.
 Example:
I was listening to David, a second grader, read the other day. He was reading a book
about scientists finding dinosaur bones. I could tell he was very interested in it; he
had read it many times before and chose it as one of his favorites. David asked
questions as we read. “But wait, are there really no people here when the dinosaurs
were here?” “Well, then, who was the first person here?” “How did the scientists
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know that dinosaur was a meat eater?” By his questions, comments, and selfcorrections as he read, I could tell that David was self-monitoring his
comprehension.
A little later that day, I read with Frannie. She read a book about a class taking a trip
to the veterinarian’s office. She read ‘chart’ for ‘clinic’ in the phrase “we went to
the vet clinic.” On another page she read ‘musta’ for ‘machine’ and ‘place’ for
‘picture’ in the sentence “The x-ray machine takes a picture of the dog’s bones.”
She continued on although it made no sense whatsoever. Frannie was not selfmonitoring and it was a big red flag for me.
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Cross Checking - Beginning readers need to learn how to bring together two sources
of information simultaneously. They have to think about what would make sense
and think about letters/sounds; cross-checking. Most children prefer to do one or
the other, but not both. Therefore, some children guess something that is sensible
but ignore the visual (letter/sound) and others guess something which is close to
the visual but makes no sense in the sentence. This activity will demonstrate how to
cross check. Emergent readers (level A/B) check prediction at point of difficulty with
the picture (cross-checking)
 Searching - Searches the pictures or photographs for meaning, and/or searching for
visual patterns or phonetic elements
‘Oral Retell’
 We no longer do this as it is explained on pg.45
 We now use the ‘Comprehension Conversations’ Sheets, which are not included in
your assessment notebook. They were sent to teachers via email, so if you don’t
have them just ask another teacher how you could get them.
 You may discard or put an X through, pg.45-51, which explains the old way to do
oral retell and the rubrics. You could use pg.52+53 in your Guided Reading groups.
‘Writing about Reading’ is Optional
 Pg.54 – 57
 It can provide you will very valuable information about the student
 It is a good artifact to have
 They can draw and/or write depending on the grade level and their ability
 They complete this on their own, without assistance
Fluency pg.43+44, Use Fluency Rubric for judging fluency as they read
 Pg.43 is for Levels A-F, you do pg.43+44 for Level G and above
 pg.44 ‘Quantitative Fluency Rubric’ is for Level G and above
 Only do Words Count Per Minute (WPM) for Level G and above
 It is helpful to take this rubric out and have it in front of you, as you listen to the
student read
 Make sure you evaluate fluency, right after student has finished reading
 Don’t continue to a higher level text if the student can decode the text, but can’t
read the text fluently (score of 1 or 2)
 Use your Fountas & Pinnell calculator for these calculations (it is huge help), but the
equations for figuring the calculations are also given in case you do not have an F&P
calculator (pg.43). It even has the timer on the calculator. If you are unsure about
how to work it, just ask someone to explain it to you (but directions are the back of
the box it comes in, also)
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RW = running words (how many words the student read)
Errors (E) = how many mistakes the student made while reading
SC = self-corrections (how many times the student self-correct themselves)
WPM or WCPM = Words (Count) Per Minute (the calculator will figure this for you)
There is an app on the iPad that will do all this also, “Running Record Calculator Lite”
Go ahead and stop the running record if the book is too hard for the student
Instructional Level for Levels A-K - Decoding needs to be at 90-94%, and
Comprehension needs to be 3 or 4 (satisfactory or excellent). If the student is at 95100% but has Limited Comprehension, this is also considered their Instructional
Level
 Instructional Level for Level L or Above - Decoding needs to be at 95-97%, and 3 or 4
for Comprehension, or 98-100% decoding with Limited Comprehension
 Make sure to staple your Comprehension Conversation Sheet to the Running Record
form
Primary Spelling Inventory pg.58-61
 Most schools use the spelling program ‘Words their Way’ (also called Word Study),
so they use the spelling assessment that goes with that series, instead of this one
 However, the grading sheet on pg.60 can be much easier to look at and plan your
groups, than other ‘Words their Way’ forms (this form is actually based on the
‘Words their Way’ program, so you can use it instead of the one from the ‘Words
their Way book)
 Pg.59, has the sentences you are supposed to read for them to spell the words
 I found it helpful to just keep those sheets on each of my students with their actual
spelling test, attached behind it
 Pg.60 is blank form, where you can compile the results of all your students on one
page, but I just kept pg.59 and used that sheet to form my groups (do whatever
works for you)
 Use different colors of ink, because you also do this assessment 3 times a year
 2nd grader typically start at ‘Menial Vowels’
Writing Continuum pg.62
 Make sure students date their pages
 Need benchmark and summative pieces
 30% Opinion/Argumentative
 35% Informative/Explanatory
 35% Narrative
 Writing is something that is ongoing in your classroom
 You are only going to collect your benchmark writing, interim writing pieces
throughout the year, and the summative writing piece
 This written is not force or based on a prompt
 You do not help edit this writing piece; they do not work with a partner, etc.
 This is their individual work, and it is okay if every students pieces you take up are
different
 Needs to be handwritten, unless student requires an alternative
 Students need to be using typical pre-writing procedures
 Pg.64 – North Carolina K-2 Writing Continuum (use this to help you discover where
you students writing piece falls developmentally)
 Make sure to think of the students writing as a whole, not just looking at one piece
to assess this students writing
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 Sample writing pieces for each level are on pg.72-92
K-2 Assessment Folder - Literacy Folder (cream folder)
 Note: If a student has a PEP you will want to record beginning, middle, and end of
year scores for the area that the student is struggling in… ex. If they are below
grade level in reading, then you will need to record the BOY, MOY, EOY running
record scores and include all 3 of those formal running records in the K-2
Assessment Folder (same would go for Writing, etc.)
 Keep running records, spelling inventory, etc. in a folder for each student, you don’t
need to place in K-2 Literacy Folder necessarily, because you only have to put the
EOY documentation in the K-2 Literacy folder unless the student has a PEP
 It is probably easiest to just have a folder for each student to keep all of your
documentation in one place, then at the EOY just place the items that are needed in
the actual K-2 Literacy Folder (but do what works best for you, everyone is different)
 Record only end of year scores on folder, OR when they have mastered a skill (ex.
phonemic awareness task or book and print awareness)
 Only record End of Year (EOY) running record information, and place EOY formal
running record in the folder
 Front of folder, offers a place to write comments from parent/teacher conferences
and have parent sign
 These things need to be recorded on the folder: parent/teacher conferences, book
and print awareness score, letter/sound id score, phonemic awareness (1 box per
task), primary spelling inventory (end of year), running record scores (end of year)
 Back of folder, Writing
 Record BOY, MOY, and EOY data
 Place EOY writing sample in the folder (make sure to write on the piece the
writing level Ex. emergent, developing, etc.)
 All other writing can be kept in a folder for each child for your personal
records
 Gray Writing Folder
 This folder goes in each students cum folder at the very back
 Choose the filing system that works for you to file all student writing during
the year, so you will have it readily available to choose those pieces at the
end of the year
 At the end of the year, you complete a cover sheet where the student and
the teacher reflects on the students writing that year
 Attach to the Cover sheet: Baseline piece (beginning of the year writing
piece), Teacher Selected piece, and a Student Selected piece
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