Assessment and the beginning reader: Using student dictated stories

Abstract

Most traditional methods of assessing reading are not effective for measuring the strengths and weaknesses of beginning readers. To fulfill the need for meaningful assessment that can be carried out with students who are in the earliest stages of reading acquisition, a procedure has been developed that makes use of the student's own dictated story. This carefully delineated procedure provides information about 1) the strategies students use in normal contextual reading when they encounter unknown words; 2) students’ understanding, or lack of understanding, of the principle that what is read must make sense … and their abilities to make use of this insight in identifying unknown words; and 3) student's mechanical orientation to a page of print. This assessment procedure also allows the teacher to determine 1) student's responses to repeated exposures to material; 2) students’ responses to words presented in isolation vs. words presented in context; and 3) students’ attitudes toward reading stories they have created. The procedure can be used with first graders in developmental reading programs, as well as with older students in corrective, remedial, and clinical programs. It allows the teacher, not a test, to assess students and leads directly to specified teaching strategies.