Learn how to assess your students and correctly match them to a book club text.
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Complete instructions on how to match students to book club texts can be found in Chapter 3 of the Assessment and Intervention Guide. |
The first step in matching students to text is to assess them using a standardized computer adapted test (CAT), such as the MAP Reading Growth Test, iReady, or Star Assessment. While these tests can only give a superficial overview of a student's reading ability, they do provide a place to begin.
Once the test is complete it is important to look at the results using a percentile rank report. This is the most valuable scoring system for placing students in the right text since it compares the performance of each student to all of the test takers of the same age or grade level.
Once you have your students sorted by percentile rank, place them in the appropriate column on the Percentile Rank Sorting Sheet. This will give you a basic idea of where students would most likely be successful in the book club books, but it is important to have multiple measures of assessment for those students who fall on the bubble between two levels or who you, as the teacher, have questions about.
A running record will provide more specific information about a student's strengths and weaknesses around reading and will be valuable in placing those students. Begin by identifying any student who falls below the 20th percentile, or students who are right on the cusp between two levels based on their percentile rank. These students are those you will assess using a running record.
| More information on how to administer a running record can be found in the Assessment and Intervention Guide. |
Listen to a sample of a 4th grader doing a running record for Kensuke's Kingdom.
Listen to a sample of a 5th grader doing a running record for The London Eye Mystery.
Administer the running record for the level of book the student was originally placed in on the percentile rank sorting sheet. Running records can be found on the individual Grade Level Resource page or on the Assessment page on the website. This assessment will provide you with immediate data to help guide your decisions about placement and any further interventions that may be required for the students.
Once you have the information from the running record, place that information in the Running Record Cover Sheet. This will provide you with a snapshot of the student's Accuracy, Fluency and Comprehension. In order to find the fluency percentile use the Fluency Benchmark table (these can be found within each individual running record set). Finally, use the Guidelines for Matching Students to Text table to identify exactly which level of text is the best placement for the student.
Ideally, the information that you gathered from the running record will guide you during the book clubs to meet with and support those students through intervention in order to strengthen those skills that are weak.