Teachers can use many types of assessments to measure reading comprehension. They can write tests themselves or use tests that are published with their textbooks. These tests are all useful to a certain degree. However, diagnostic tests are the most reliable for determining instructional needs of students because they are usually given individually and provide scores based on national norms. These are also the most effective tools for identifying reading deficiencies.
Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS)
The Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) assessment measures a variety of reading skills, such as initial sound and phoneme-segmentation fluency. The portion of the test that measures reading comprehension is the retell-fluency section in which the student has to give all the information they can remember about a passage they have just read orally for one minute. The retell-fluency assessment helps teachers determine if students' oral reading is consistent with their level of comprehension. This test is administered to students individually.
Early Reading Diagnostic Assessment (ERDA)
The Early Reading Diagnostic Assessment (ERDA) is another diagnostic-reading test that measures phonemic awareness, vocabulary and comprehension, both oral and silent.This test evaluates early-reading skills and can help teachers identify and address the specific learning needs of their students. Like DIBELS, it is administered individually.
Group Reading Assessment & Diagnostic Evaluation (GRADE)
The Group Reading Assessment & Diagnostic Evaluation (GRADE) measures sentence and passage comprehension. Students have to read sentences with words missing and decide what words would best complete the sentences based on inference and context clues. Students also have to read passages and answer multiple-choice questions about the text.
Woodcock Johnson III (WJIII)
The Woodcock Johnson III (WJIII) test measures passage and word comprehension. Instead of answering questions about a passage, students give responses to oral prompts given by the administrator. They have to provide appropriate synonyms, antonyms and analogies as answers in a style similar to cloze testing. The WJIII gives age- and grade-level equivalents for each student's ability based on predetermined norms.
Wechsler Individual Achievement Test (WIAT-II)
The Wechsler Individual Achievement Test (WIAT-II) is a battery of tests that measures phonological skills as well as reading and listening comprehension. The student has to match words to pictures, read sentences aloud and orally answer questions about passages they have read. Silent reading speed is also assessed.
