What can a Reading Assessment tell you?

Reading assessments form an important part of many reading programs, allowing parents and teachers to determine a child’s reading level, and to therefore cater lessons and activities to their reading ability.

The most effective reading assessments help parents and teachers assess a child’s strengths and weaknesses, highlighting areas in which the child may require more help. Some key ways to assess a child’s reading ability include:

Comprehension Skills

Asking the ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘where’, ‘when’, ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions are always a good way to both develop comprehension skills in children and determine how much of a text they understand. After reading a story, asking the child who the main characters were, where the story was set, what happened in the beginning/middle/end as well as asking them to share their opinion on these or other aspects allow for a more thorough comprehension of the story.

Use of Graphic Organisers

At the sentence level, students are regularly asked to recreate sentences that have become muddled – putting them in the right order to make the text meaningful and logical. This activity focuses students on the syntactical structure of a sentence and how it is put together to make sense.

Asking Questions

The type of questions a child asks about a text can give a good indication of their understanding. Encouraging children to ask questions about a text helps them to explore their understanding and helps build critical thinking skills.

Recognition of Story Structure

Asking a child to identify what part of the story – beginning, middle, or end – they are reading can demonstrate how much they understand about story structure.

Reading Eggs provides lessons that incorporate these four areas, with periodic reading assessments that help determine lesson difficulty and measure progress.

After every 10 lessons, students complete a 20-question, multiple-choice assessment test which, if they pass, rewards them with a printable certificate bearing their name, at either a bronze, silver, or gold level. Results of these assessments are easily accessible by parents and teachers, either on the dashboard page or sent directly to their email. Such reading assessments allow parents to monitor a child’s progress and to alter the course of learning if required.

Testimonials

This program is great. My 5-year-old was struggling with learning to read at school. After a couple of week on this program I can see her progress. With her school readers she was memorizing the words; however with Reading Eggs she is actually learning letters/sound combinations and the experience is fun. Today she said to me ‘I want to use the computer every night before I go to bed. Learning is fun!’ Two mornings ago we read four of your little books in bed. It used to be a struggle to read one of her school readers. Thanks again.

- Nicole

Reading Eggs is a comprehensive, well-integrated program, which I have found to be of great help in developing children’s skills and interest in reading. Even the senior students wanted to have a go!

- Lynne Brehaut, Nungurner Primary