in this video i'm going to attempt to extend on some of the ideas from previous videos particularly related to the four purposes of assessment i want to connect that to the theoretical models and particularly connected to the beginning of your screening that many of you are about to conduct so i'd like to start with the theoretical models grounded in the simple view of reading mckenna installs cognitive model and scarborough's rope and this is just my very basic attempt at representing those concepts that reading comprehension is the product of language comprehension which includes listening comprehension oral language and vocabulary and decoding skills which include reading connected text accurately and fluently advanced decoding basic phonic skills and phonological and phonemic awareness when a student is struggling with reading comprehension we've got these two paths or strands of skills that we can investigate and even better than that when a student is coming into kindergarten from a prevention framework we want to be equipping them with oral language and vocabulary as they enter kindergarten and with phonological and phonemic awareness and moving them in a left to right progression through this sequence of skills so that they do in fact understand what they read at the end of first grade so i'm going to try to articulate what this might look like at the beginning of each grade level and how the four purposes of assessment might be used to help inform the support that you're providing in your reading instruction so i'm going to start with the beginning of third grade but really this applies in grades four through six as well when we screen typically at the beginning of third grade we are using tools like oral reading fluency because they are such powerful indicators of reading comprehension words correct per minute will tell you a lot about a student's comprehension skills if a student is struggling in third grade and above with reading for meaning in grade level text we want to ask does the student have grade level language comprehension and we could do that informally by just asking them some questions after we read a passage to them and we want to also investigate does the student have grade level appropriate decoding skills we have a little hint to that with the accuracy score from oral reading fluency when a student is indicating difficulty with reading comprehension let's say on oral reading fluency the accuracy score in particular we need to go beyond that kind of a statement because reading comprehension almost always involves the foundational skills being not in place so what looks like a reading comprehension problem in third grade and above actually is grounded in an issue or a lack of skill in the foundational skill areas this is why some of those other assessments like that just just have students reading text aren't going to give you all the information that you need particularly with your first and second graders but more on that later but if you're measuring only with something like a running record or a dra you're not going to have the opportunity to explore through this sequence of skills into the foundational skills that are actually what is causing the reading comprehension problem so if you are working with third grade students on the screening assessment like oral reading fluency you want to investigate how is the student doing in below grade level text on that same skill could the student read second grade or first grade text accurately fluently and for meaning and i'm going to use the acadians reading measures as an illustration in this example of of what to do from here so let's say your third grade student is not reading first grade text accurately and or fluently enough to support their comprehension the next step of assessment would be to test back to the earlier skill area the alphabetic principle in basic phonics and that is indicated with the cadence reading by the nonsense word fluency assessment and if your third grade student is not able to automatically blend those letter sounds into the cvc pattern i might want to investigate their phonological and phonemic awareness skills with a measure like psf this is going to start to give me a picture of the foundational skills the student may be missing and what is at the root of their reading comprehension problem as i've just tested back so to speak with these one-minute screening indicators i may still have additional questions and want to conduct diagnostic assessment in either of these foundational skill areas phonemic awareness or basic phonics once i have the diagnostic information now i have the detail that will help me plan what that instructional support should look like for the student and my progress monitoring tool is going to be the one that matches the lowest skill in this sequence that that i'm working on so i want to line up my progress monitoring to the point of my instruction i'm not going to progress monitor with third grade oral reading fluency in the system scenario it would be too hard for this student i want to progress monitor on the same skill that i'm focusing my instructional support on at the beginning of second grade the screening with acadian's reading involves checking in on oral reading fluency in grade level text if you have second grade students who can't read grade level text accurately and fluently enough to support their comprehension then again just those assessments that only measure text aren't going to be sufficient you're also screening at the beginning of second grade with the cadence reading on the nonsense word fluency assessment and this is really the primary score to attend to at the beginning of second grade any student who can't score sufficiently on the two nonsense word fluency indicators correct letter sounds and whole words read those scores are indicating the student doesn't have a basic level of phonics that supports them to read grade level text for meaning and that problem with basic phonics and decoding might actually rest in a problem with phonological and phonemic awareness so when the nwf scores are low at the beginning of second grade you might want to check into the phonemic awareness skills with something like psf you may also want to conduct diagnostic assessment in either of these skill areas to investigate more fully why the student is struggling diagnostic assessment is going to go deeper into the skill areas and give you that very specific next step for your instruction and once again progress monitoring should be selected to match the skill that you're focusing your instruction on so in the case of my second grade scenario here that could either be progress monitoring with psf or if the student is fine in the area of phonemic awareness you would be progress monitoring with nwf at the beginning of first grade we're screening with the nwf assessment to indicate their uh ability to match sound assemble and blend letter sounds we're also screening with psf at the beginning of first grade and this is really the critical indicator if a student is not scoring sufficiently on psf it says that they don't have the necessary or even basic level of phonemic awareness that's going to support them to be able to eventually by the end of first grade read for meaning and so diagnostic assessment in the area of phonemic awareness might be particularly helpful and psf or even first sound fluency would be an appropriate progress monitoring measure in that kind of a scenario at the beginning of kindergarten the screening is primarily with first sound fluency you also have that extra risk indicator letter naming fluency and first sound fluency is telling you if a student at the beginning of kindergarten has even a little bit of a clue about the sounds in spoken language and if they do great you can move forward and teaching them the more advanced phonemic awareness skills but if they don't you want to know about those students right away at the beginning of kindergarten so you can support them you might need a diagnostic assessment that helps you measure those skills that even are easier or come before isolating beginning sounds in words so diagnostic assessments like the acadians reading diagnostic for phonemic awareness or like 95 percent groups passi diagnostic or even the past assessment any of those diagnostics would help flesh out a little bit more where you should be targeting some instruction for students and first sound fluency would make an excellent progress monitoring tool so just to summarize here particularly with your older students thinking about asking questions about their language comprehension skills and their decoding skills and working this progression backwards sort of like being a detective to find out why they're not comprehending grade level text and with your younger students coming into kindergarten in first grade thinking about working this progression of skills from left to right checking in to see if they have the foundational skills making sure you're teaching them sufficiently so that students will be readers by the end of first grade and making sure that you have screening measures particularly in these primary grade levels that don't just measure reading and text like a running record or dra might do but making sure you're assessing these foundational skills that will support students to understand what they're reading so screen with indicators of the essential skills test back as you need to with older students to find that lowest skill that the student hasn't yet mastered conduct diagnostic assessment in that lower skill area as needed to inform your next steps for instruction and then line up your progress monitoring with that point of instruction even if that's using below grade level progress monitoring measures