How can teachers determine whether students are making appropriate progress?

Page 3: Select a Measure

The first step in the progress monitoring process is to select a measure. GOM reading measures are used to assess key skills such as word identification and fluency. Often, the reading program selected by the school or district will include grade-level progress monitoring measures. In other instances, specific GOM measures might be chosen by school, district, or state administrators. This is typically the case when a school is using an MTSS or RTI framework for instruction. Educators can also decide independently to use GOM measures to monitor student progress and make instructional decisions. Regardless of who is making the choice, it’s important to keep several factors in mind when selecting a GOM measure:

• Does it align with the grade-level reading skills?
• Is the measure reliable and valid?
• Does the measure have sufficient alternate versions?
• Is the measure relatively quick (e.g., one to eight minutes) and easy to administer?
• Is the measure designed to be administered to individual students or to groups? (Group-administered tests are often more convenient than individually administered ones.)
• Are versions of the test available in languages other than English?

With these considerations in mind, the educator should decide which reading measure is developmentally appropriate for the students. Below is a list of common measures, listed by grade level, for students who are developing at a typical rate in reading. These measures can be used to both assess a student’s current reading skills and to monitor a student’s reading growth across the academic year. Notice that as students’ reading skills progress across time, the reading measures below change accordingly.

Kindergarten: Letter Sound Fluency

The student is given a sheet of randomized letters and asked to say as many corresponding sounds as possible in one minute. This test must be administered to each child individually. Choose this assessment if you are interested in measuring students’ progress toward decoding.

Letter Sound Fluency – Teacher Score Sheet Teacher: I’m going to show you some letters. You can tell me what sound the letters make. You may know the sound for some letters. For other letters, you may not know the sounds. If you don’t know the sound a letter makes, don’t worry. Okay? What’s most important is that you try your best. I’ll show you how this activity works. My turn first. (Refer to the practice portion of the CBM LSF sheet.) This says /b/. Your turn now. What sound does it say? Student: /b/ Examiner: Very good. You told me what sound the letter makes. You’re doing a really good job. Now it will be just your turn. Go as quickly and carefully as you can. Remember to tell me the sounds the letters make. Remember just try your best. If you don’t know the sounds it’s okay. Trigger the stopwatch.

Letter Sound Fluency – Student Copy

Source: Fuchs, Fuchs, & Powell (2004).

View Description

Letter Sound Fluency: The Teacher Score Sheet of the Letter Sound Fluency assessment provides script for the teacher to read to the student when administering the assessment. Underneath the teacher script is the actual score sheet with places to record the student’s name, teacher’s name, school, examiner’s initials, and date of testing. Also on the score sheet is the heading “Letter Sound Fluency Test” with shortened assessment directions. The letters of the alphabet of which the students will indicate the letter-sound are listed in a row for assessor notation. The final two lines of the score sheet include blanks for the number of letters sounded correctly and the time in which they were named, as well as the adjusted score if the test was completed in less than one minute. The student copy of the Letter Sound Fluency has four letters—b, c, h, and a—in a box for the practice portion of the assessment. Underneath the boxed letters are five rows of five letters each for which the student will indicate the letter-sound. The letters are not in alphabetic order.

1st Grade: Word Identification Fluency

The student is asked to read as many words as possible in one minute. Words are randomly selected from a list of the 500 most frequent sight words. This test must be administered to each child individually.

Word Identification Fluency – Teacher Score Sheet

Teacher: When I say “Go,” I want you to read these words as quickly and correctly as you can. Start here (point to the first word) and go down the page (run your finger down the first column). If you don’t know a word, skip it and try the next word. Keep reading until I say “stop.” Do you have any questions? Trigger the stopwatch for 1 minute.

Student’s Name _____________________	Examiner’s Initials ________
Student’s Teacher ____________________	Date ____________

Score 1 for a correct response, 0 for an incorrect response.

that	school	brought
for	say	line
by	land	probably
her	enough	close
up	live	table
them	against	strong
has	city	past
than	knew	friends
now	state	rest
water	wanted	having
must	four	full
me	toward	instead
come	move	case
still	power	worked
found	feel	alone
here	given	street
large	eat

Total Score__________

Source: Fuchs, Fuchs, & Powell (2004).

Mid-1st–6th Grade: Oral Reading Fluency

One of the most important CBM measures used with students in grades 1.5–6 is oral reading fluency (ORF), also known as passage reading fluency (PRF). In it, the student reads a passage for one minute. The passage’s difficulty is based on the student’s expected end-of-year reading competence. The score is the number of words she read correctly per minute. This test must be administered to each student individually.

Passage Reading Fluency – Teacher Copy

Teacher: I want you to read this story to me. You’ll have one minute to read. When I say “begin,” start reading aloud at the top of the page. Do your best reading. If you have trouble with a word, I’ll tell it to you. Do you have any questions? Begin. Trigger the time for 1 minute.

Summertime in the big city had always been hot, but this year it	13
seemed to be unbearable. The air was lifeless and the smells of the city	27
were multiplying until it began to remind Yolanda of one big dirty	39
clothes hamper.	41
Yolanda lived on the twelfth floor of a forty-story high-rise	53
apartment building, on the east side of the city near the river. The	66
apartment was too small for the five people in her family and much too	80
hot. Ma opened the windows in hopes of catching a breeze. Yolanda	92
and her sister Jackie offered to run to the store anytime Ma needed	105
something just so they could stand in a place that had air conditioning.	118
Yolanda was thirteen years old; too old to play on the kiddie	130
playground and too young to get a summer job. She spent most of the	144
time sitting on the front steps of the apartment building watching the	156
traffic go by. She and her friends sometimes played hopscotch.	166
One morning as Yolanda was watching TV she saw a	176
commercial that gave her an idea. It was a lemonade commercial. It	188
advertised that lemonade was cool and refreshing, just the drink to	199
quench a summer thirst.	203
Yolanda ran down to the corner store to buy some lemonade	214
supplies. She bought a package of paper cups for two dollars and two	227
pounds of lemons for 60 cents a pound. She also got a small bag of	241
sugar in case the lemons were too sour. She wanted to make the best	255
lemonade ever sold on East Street.	261
Yolanda made two gallons of lemonade, added two teaspoons of	271
sugar for taste, gathered the cups and ice, and went downstairs to set up	285
her lemonade stand. She set it up in front of the building and sold four	300
glasses in fifteen minutes. She charged 10 cents per cup so she had	312
only made 40 cents.	315
Then Yolanda’s friend Clare came by and offered to make signs	326
advertising Yolanda’s business. Clare took the signs and placed them	336
near the street. Around 5 o’clock a big traffic jam had stopped traffic	348
on East Street. Drivers were hot and angry, and Clare carried cups of	361
lemonade to them to calm them down. Some were so grateful that they	374
tossed dollars out of their windows.	380
By the end of the day, the two young businesswomen had made	392
$30. Yolanda split the profits with Clare, and they agreed to open the	404
stand at ten o’clock the next morning.	411
“I’ll bet we can make $50 tomorrow if we have another traffic	422
jam!” called Yolanda to Clare with a smile.
Total Score	_____

Source: Fuchs, Fuchs, & Powell (2004).

4th–6th Grade: Maze

Students read silently for a specified amount of time (e.g., one minute, three minutes). Every seventh word in the text has been deleted and three possible choices offered. The student circles the word that best fits the meaning of the phrase or sentence in the passage. The student’s score is the number of correct replacements she makes. Because students read silently, this measure can be administered in a group setting.

Maze Fluency – Student Copy

SUMMER CAMP

Stuart had nice parents. They did not embarrass him in [glad/ front/ yellow] of his friends. His father did

[not/ ant/ soft] yell at him during his baseball [center/ games/ lines], and his mother never kissed him

[in/ tot/ put] front of his friends. He generally [liked/ flow/ jeep] his parents, except for the fact

[show/ went/ that] they were sending him to summer [bus/ dump/ camp] this year.

 

Stuart did not want [to/ wit/ cow] go to summer camp. The thought [and/ be/ of] it made him picture

himself hot [coat/ rest/ and] thirsty, hiking up a dusty trail. [Bit/ He/ Go] knew that summer camp food had

[of/ to/ my] be bad news, too. Besides, summer [camp/ free/ dog] was for people with nothing else

[fad/ to/ sew] do. He had plenty of things planned [for/ much/ very] his summer at home.

 

“Summer camp [will/ yes/ belt] be good for you,” said Mother. “[Feel/ And/ Lot] I don’t want to hear

another [catch/ phone/ word] about it!” Stuart moped around the [beat/ opens/ house] until it was time

to go. Mother [had/ with/ boy] packed his trunk full of clothes, [and/ sort/ time] she and Dad took Stuart

to [real/ glob/ the] bus station. Stuart tried hard not [to/ sun/ we] cry when he hugged them goodbye.

[Yet/ He/ Sat] ran onto the bus and buried [beam/ his/ neat] head in his hands. After a [while/ tall/ hate],

he looked out the window.

Source: Fuchs, Fuchs, & Powell (2004).

Grade-level GOM measures are appropriate for typically achieving students as well as for many who are struggling. However, these measures might not be appropriate for students who are consistently not performing at grade level. These students might require a measure designed for a different grade level. Sometimes, commercially available measures include directions on selecting an appropriate grade-level probe for these students. If they do not, the educator should:

1. 1. Administer three ORF probes at the grade level the student is expected to perform at by the end of the year (i.e., the student’s long-term goal). Note: This may not be the student’s current grade level.
   2. Identify the student’s median score for the three passages. Use the chart below to select the appropriate grade-level probe. As indicated in the table, the educator might need to administer additional probes at higher and lower levels until the correct grade-level probe is identified.

3. Monitor the student’s progress using probes at the determined goal level throughout the entire school year.