Are your baseline assessments showing you which children can decode words, but missing those who cannot yet read fluently enough to access learning?
Top takeaways
A reading score is valid at a single point in time. It becomes useful when an experienced professional who knows the child interprets it alongside the broader context. Reading is a multi-layered dynamic process, and no single figure should be used to label, define or profile a child.
Single word reading tests and connected text assessments answer different questions. A single word test is more reliable because it isolates word recognition from understanding. A connected text assessment is less reliable and tells you considerably more, because it can pinpoint discrepancies between accuracy and comprehension, for example.
Timing shows up when a child reads connected text aloud. Hesitations mid-phrase and rushing ahead between sentences are audible, and they can be noticed early.
Five days on a pinhead
At the start of a new school year, school leaders, SENDCos and Reading Leads are making important decisions from limited early data. A baseline score can be a useful starting point, but it must never become a label or the whole story of a child’s reading. Children may read single words accurately, yet still struggle to hold meaning across a sentence, keep pace with classroom learning or experience the enjoyment that comes with reading a book fluently. This September, the opportunity is to look beyond one score, notice what pupils’ reading is telling us, and intervene early with compassion and precision.
As this is the first blog post of the new school year and tomorrow I am due to administer baseline assessments prior to the start of the Rhythm for Reading programme, it seems fitting to write about starting points.
The cycle of the academic year is made up of peaks and troughs, times of intense pressure are followed by brief periods of recovery and restoration. Teachers pour themselves into all their children and it’s heart-centred work. Teachers know that children are not only learning about skills and knowledge, but are also discovering that an adult believes in them and their capacity to grow in a particular way as a member of a class community and within the school as a whole.
The first couple of weeks of the term establish these all-important bonds and the children also rebuild peer-relationships after the break. Some children stayed together at holiday clubs and others went away to other family members while parents continued their working lives. Children will have spent their time in various ways - trotting around museums, reading in libraries, spending time with grandparents, playing outdoors with local friends, or staying indoors and interacting with online friends.
The number of children who read books during the summer holiday is a key question to ask this week. How many children took part in the Summer Reading Challenge after the school’s ‘big push’ for reading in July? Despite this, the number of books children read will have varied and the number that they enjoyed will depend on their reading attainment.
September, as a starting point for getting to know the class, new colleagues and new parents is a big event. It lasts for about five days and looks a bit like a pinhead with a whole school community dancing upon it. And once this first dance has ended, everyone feels they’ve ‘been back’ for months.
Two tests and two different questions
Assessments have been compared to ‘snapshots’ (a quick, informal photograph) for decades. But the metaphor still works because an assessment is only valid at one single point in time. And it is for this very reason that an assessment should not be used to label, define or profile a child. Pupils vary in their performance on tests from day to day, (particularly if they have specific learning differences). Scores from assessments can be misunderstood, but become more meaningful if and when they are interpreted by an experienced professional who knows the child and their ways of working, and can view their assessment score, whilst accounting for the broader context.
The baseline reading assessments I am using tomorrow provide standardised data and a range of measures. These can be applied with a light touch to capture different aspects of reading development. In this way, it’s possible to get several snapshots and to obtain a feel for the way a child’s reading is developing. This in my opinion is more valid than working from a single summative score, given that reading is a multi-layered, dynamic process.
A summative score is easy to obtain in a few minutes by asking a child to read a list of words aloud against a stopwatch. The reliability of this type of test is impressive, and the reason is structural. There is no debate with categorical data. The word was read correctly or it wasn’t, and correct words over time can be counted. It’s a well-trodden path.
Connected text is messier. Words are connected to other words and their meaning can be interpreted this way or that way. Assessing the reading of connected text and a child’s comprehension of a passage they read aloud involves a range of reading skills working together. These skills may develop at different rates relative to each other and these variations impact the reliability of the data. If a score tells us more about reading, but is less reliable, what should we do?
It’s a real question. The acronym used in research: RIRO - stands for ‘Rubbish In, Rubbish Out and it refers to the quality of the data entered into a dataset prior to analysis. Here too, we need to think about the interpretation of the data by a human in the broader context of their enquiry.
A test of single word reading isolates the process of word recognition from understanding. A test of reading that involves connected text does the exact opposite and the score reflects how well the child can recognise the words in a meaningful context. The reliability of the first test is higher than the reliability of the second, because of the structure of the test.
One of the biggest hurdles in a test of connected text is that each passage may be more relevant to some children than others. For example, a child who was lucky enough to go on a diving course in the summer will be more familiar with specialist vocabulary than a child of the same age and aptitude who had once watched a programme about diving but hadn’t had the same lived experience. Similarly, a child can score higher in a more challenging passage because they were familiar with the vocabulary and setting, and less well in an easier passage where they did not recognise a few unfamiliar words and the context.
The reliability of the reading scores varies to a large degree when children are not yet secure as readers, but when they can read well, this discrepancy loses relevance. Strong readers find out about all kinds of new situations, unfamiliar vocabulary and contexts by reading about them and absorbing the information. The reliability of the data would increase under these conditions because relevant lived experience no longer holds a considerable influence over reading behaviour and therefore data.
To answer the question, I suggest schools track reading of all students at the beginning of term using a single word reading test, but if progress in reading loses momentum or if the child is not able to follow the lesson in class, then an assessment involving connected text is going to be more useful as it provides rich data that can pinpoint any discrepancies between scores in accuracy and comprehension of reading. These are two different scenarios, producing two kinds of data and for two different purposes.
What a teacher can hear
Reading for enjoyment is a lovely pastime. Navigating the ever-changing terrain of a real passage of prose is in itself a feat of constant adaptation with the reader anticipating all the while what might be coming up next in their reading. The intrinsic motivation that ensues on this quest is one of the rewarding aspects of reading well and is one reason why time can pass so quickly.
And when reading is not yet fluent, when hesitations pause the flow, when full-stops are rushed and the meaning frays and unravels, an assessment that involves the reading of connected text aloud lays all of these timing issues bare. Indeed, reading connected text is best assessed in passages that involve sentences of varying shapes and sizes. Single word reading data obscures these timing issues.
In my professional judgement, it’s better to address timing issues that underpin the hesitations mid-phrase, and the rushing ahead between sentences, early-on. Left unchecked, children lose heart and can blame themselves when they know ‘something’ is wrong, but no one else seems to realise. Not only do they feel isolated, but there is also shame, guilt and a feeling that ‘something fundamental is missing’. They know that they see themselves as very distinct from their friends who are getting a lot more out of books than they are. They hear squeals of genuine enthusiasm from their friendship group as they discuss what they read in the summer. Downcast, the lower-attaining reader realises they must be ‘different’ as they’d assumed the Summer Reading Challenge had just been ‘homework’, and of course they’d complied.
The child who could read the words, but didn’t understand them
For children who are dutiful in practising reading, there is a particular pain in knowing that despite being conscientious, reading - the key to unlocking education at your next school - may not be ‘your thing’.
This is personal because in the first week of term of Year 5 and Year 6, I’d heard my friends speaking with real excitement about the books they’d read during the summer. Somehow, I was missing the whole point of reading. I could manage the words, but reading aloud was just a performance for my teacher. Imagine reading one hundred and fifty made-up words set out in sentences and then wondering why this important task was so devoid of meaning. Now perhaps you can appreciate how pointless this felt for me, and others like me.
In the 1970s, it was customary for a visiting violin teacher to take a few children out of class one afternoon each week. I was desperate to have a break from the classroom, where I dreaded being punished for not understanding what was happening in the lessons. Our violin teacher saw some potential in me and in Year 4 I was invited to play in an after school orchestra about five miles away.
The sound was excruciating, but once I saw a cello I was obsessed. My campaign to change instrument bore fruit after about 15 months and at the start of Year 6 I’d joined an orchestra once again. To my surprise a few weeks later I began to read print with expression, ease and meaning. Things happening in the classroom were making sense. I can’t tell you that the cello made the difference. I can tell you what I noticed at the time, and that I have been paying close attention to rhythm for many years. It was a massive relief and I vowed to myself that I would help other children, who were still struggling with reading and less fortunate than me.
Five minutes, once a week
Some forty years later, reflecting on those days, I was astonished to recall that I’d made that promise to myself and then delighted to realise that I’d delivered on my vow, even though I’d forgotten all about it. When children tell me that they can follow the lessons, that they get on with their work, that the words have meaning now, I nod along with them. It’s such a privilege to see that they are no longer trapped in that state where reading does not develop beyond word recognition.
For teachers, inspired by the renewed emphasis on inclusion, and like me keen to help the children who feel ‘different’ and are blaming themselves or on a waiting list, there is an agile, light touch way to build discernment by monitoring their fluency and noticing where their blocks are. I have created a reading fluency tracker for teachers supporting lower-attaining readers. It takes five minutes per pupil, and there is no score to calculate.
Download the free printable reading fluency tracker
A starting point is an opportunity, not a verdict
When schools combine assessment data with professional judgement, classroom observation and a closer look at reading in connected text, they are far more likely to notice the children who are working hard but still not accessing the curriculum. Early identification of fluency difficulties protects confidence, strengthens inclusion and gives staff a chance to act before a child begins to believe that reading is simply not for them. If you would like a light-touch way to help teachers notice patterns in fluency and pinpoint where support may be needed, download the free printable reading fluency tracker.
