Imagine It!Assessment

Compiled by Carrie Bunce

Assessment

Purpose of assessment Monitor students’ progress To diagnose students’ strengths and weaknesses

To prescribe forms of intervention necessary

Measure student outcomes

Assessment Formal assessment of student learning consists of

performance assessments:

Objective tests are:• Multiple choice• Short answer• Essay

Progress Assessment through students’ everyday:• Oral work• Written work

Assessment Rubrics are used for:• Writing• Inquiry• Comprehension strategies

Informal assessment can be done by observing or listening to students as they work

Assessment The assessment system of Imagine It! consists of : Screening Progress monitoring Diagnosis

And is designed to: help teachers make informed instructional decisions

make AYP and help ensure the needs of all students are met

Assessment General Outcome Measurement

General outcome measurement is a form of standardized classroom assessment whereby students’ overall competence is measured. The testing methods and content of general outcome measurement remain constant over the course of the academic year. That is, each test is of equivalent difficulty and represents competence in the entire school year’s curriculum.

Assessment General Outcome Measurement

Each alternate form of the test is created the same way.

The difficulty and content of the test remain constant and we expect the student’s scores to gradually increase over the course of the year.

Incorporated into the Benchmark Assessments with the 100-point Skills Battery.

Assessment General Outcome Measurement

Measures have been validated to accurately reflect overall reading competence and those measures differ by grade level.

Kindergarten Phoneme segmentation- The examiner says a word, the

student says its constituent sounds Rapid letter naming- The examiner presents a page of

lower- and upper-case letters randomly ordered- students says as many as they can in one minute

Letter-sound fluency- The examiner presents a page with lower- and upper-case letters randomly ordered, this time the student says sounds for one minute

Assessment General Outcome Measurement

First Grade Combining nonsense word fluency and passage reading-

Students begin with nonsense word fluency and move to the more difficult passage fluency where students are presented with grade-level text and they read aloud for one minute.

Word identification fluency- Students read as many words as possible in one minute.

The advantage of nonsense word fluency is that it maps onto beginning decoding instruction.

The downside of the nonsense word fluency/passage reading fluency combination is that getting a good picture of development over the course of first grade is problematic because teachers cannot compare scores collected in the first half of the year.

Assessment General Outcome Measurement

Second - Fourth Grade Passage reading fluency measure provides the strongest

source of information on reading development as a form of performance indicator general outcome measurement.

• Each week one test is administered with the student reading aloud from a different but equivalent passage for one minute.

• The examiner counts the number of words read correctly within the one-minute time frame.

• The reliability,validity, and instructional utility of this simple measure have been demonstrated repeatedly.

Assessment General Outcome Measurement

Fifth- Sixth Grade

Research indicates that the validity of the passage reading fluency performance indicator begins to decrease somewhere around Grade 5.

So, beginning in the 5th grade (or in Grade 4 for high-performing schools), teachers should consider using a different measure that more directly taps comprehension.

One alternative for the higher grades is maze fluency. With maze fluency students are presented with a passage from which approximately every seventh word has been deleted and replaced with three possible replacements, only one of which is semantically tenable.

Demonstrates strong reliability and validity and models reading development beginning at Grade 4 and continuing through grade 8.

Assessment 3 Types of Formal Classroom Assessment

Screening

Progress monitoring

Diagnosis

Assessment Screening Students are identified as having potential problems early.

Teachers can then allocate special attention to these students as quickly as possible. (Catch-up Time)

Once a screening assessment has been selected, a cut-point is determined.

Performing below the cut-point signals the teacher to pay extra attention to this student.

When periodic screening is used, the cut-point on each subsequent screening gradually increases.

Assessment Progress Monitoring SRA Imagine It! uses the term progress monitoring to refer to specifically systematic formal assessments in which students are assessed on a regular basis.

Teachers can use results from progress monitoring: To formulate decision about how to make classroom-level instruction more responsive to individual student needs

To determine whether a student is responding adequately to the instructional program

For students who are unresponsive to validated or researched-based instructional program, to inductively design individualized instructional plans

Assessment Progress Monitoring In most reading programs, progress monitoring is accomplished via mastery measurement. SRA Imagine It! does not use mastery measurement.

With mastery measurement, teachers assess mastery of a sequence of skills.

Most basal reading assessments provide unit test to assess mastery of skills addressed in each unit. Nevertheless, research indicates that few classroom teachers adhere to mastery rules, based on those tests, for advancing students to new instructional content.

High-stakes tests do not rely on single-skill measurement.

Assessment Progress Monitoring Benchmark Assessments- 6 or 7 administered through out

year Student will encounter 5 lesson assessments before the

next Benchmark assessment which will allow the teacher to use the information to reinforce the opinion of a student’s at-risk status or it can provide data of growth and greater comfort within instructional strands.

Not all students receive fluency progress monitoring. Weekly progress monitoring for those students who do can help teachers gain insight about the effectiveness of their attempts at remediation for these at-risk students.

Once a student is designated as at risk they should receive weekly progress monitoring for the remainder of the year even if the student scores above the risk cut-point on a subsequent screening.

Assessment DiagnosisDiagnosis means assessment that describes a student’s strengths and weaknesses with respect to skills or strategies. Goal is to identify productive targets for instruction

A curriculum-sampling approach to general outcome measurements provides teachers with a strong basis for describing students’ strengths and weaknesses in the curriculum because all the skills embedded in the annual curriculum are assessed on each testing occasion

Assessment Diagnosis Because each of the segments of the Benchmark Assessments provide a separate score in each of the strands of the curriculum, they can be used to identify the specific curriculum areas that are strengths or weaknesses for a student or across a classroom.

If students score below the cutoff for any Benchmark Assessment, use one or more of the following options to help students get back on track: Re-teach Intervention Workshop Leveled Readers

Assessments

The SRA Imagine It! formal assessment system includes two major components:

Benchmark Assessments

Lesson Assessments

Assessment Benchmark Assessments

Benchmark Assessments show how students’ knowledge of essential skills grows over the course of the year as these benchmarks are periodically administered. Each Benchmark Assessment is of equivalent difficulty, content covered, and question formats and each samples the entire year’s curriculum.

Assessment Benchmark Assessments

At each grade level there are periodic Benchmark Assessments. Kindergarten and grade 1 6 assessments Grades 2-6 7 assessments

Assessments are timed

One assessment is administered at the beginning of the year and then one after each unit the remainder of the year.

Assessment Benchmark Assessments

This equivalency means that rising scores reflect increased student competence in the curriculum.

These assessments differ from traditional assessments that:

cover only the material in the most recently taught unit

consequently become increasingly difficult over the course of a school year

Assessment Benchmark Assessments

Benchmark Assessments include the following components: 100- Point Skills Battery- Students answer questions

relating to comprehension, vocabulary, grammar, usage, and mechanics, spelling, phonics, and phonemic-phonological awareness. Each strand has been assigned a weight in accordance with its importance in the curriculum to reach the total of 100 points.

Fluency Assessment- A general overall indicator of a student’s reading ability.

Writing Assessment- Grades 2-6 , a writing assessment is included with the first, fourth, and seventh Benchmark Assessments. These prompts are similar to the type of prompt found in high-stakes tests.

Assessment Benchmark Assessments

At the beginning of the year; and then periodically throughout the year, any student who falls below the cutoff score on the 100-Point Skills Battery, Fluency Assessment, and Expository Writing Assessment should be considered for intervention. That student’s progress should be closely monitored through weekly fluency assessments.

Assessment Lesson Assessments

Lesson Assessments at the end of each lesson assess students’ understanding of the instructional content and the literature in each lesson. They cover the most important skills featured in the lesson of a given unit-skills that are closely related to reading success and are typically in state and national standards.

Assessment Lesson Assessments

These assessments will help you determine how well students are grasping the skills and concepts as they are taught and will help inform you about any additional instruction they might need.

Assessment Lesson Assessments As students complete each lesson, they will be assessed on their understanding of the instructional content and the literature in each lesson.

The results of the assessments will then be used to inform subsequent instruction.

The Lesson Assessments are in a structure similar to that of the Benchmark Assessments in terms of assessments sections that equal 100-points, a fluency assessment, and a writing assessment.

Assessment Informal Assessment Opportunities

Informal Assessment throughout the Teacher’s Edition provides tips for informal assessment on a daily basis for each part of the lesson. These include;

decoding skills vocabulary comprehension grammar- usage, and mechanic skills listening, speaking, viewing handwriting skills.

Are You Consistently

Assessing and Recording Results?