Reading assessment by any other name

Any teacher taking Reading AQ courses may end up needing information on the topic of reading assessment, and there are scads of books and articles on this topic. When you search the journal databases, the term “reading assessment” tends to give you articlespertaining to standardarized and high-stakes tests and this is not what teachers want. Teachers are looking for articles that discuss informal assessment that can be used in the classroom.

So, how do you search for articles that assess reading informally in the classroom? You need to search the journal databases using specific assessment strategies. The popular ones include: anecdotal records, cloze, miscue, observation/observations logs, portfolios, questioning for comprehension and meaning, response journals, retells, rubrics, running records, student-led conferences, surveys (eg student interests, habits and parental role).

Try using the strategies listed above as stand-alone search terms. If you get too many hits do an advanced seach and link them with reading as a subject (remember that many of the search fields are drop-down menus and you can link a word to the subject or title or author).

Easy, right?  Call the library if  you get stuck. Even better if you can do it from a networked computer and one of the Librarians can work you though it.

Rowan