Diagnosis and Assessment in Reading Course Information
EDUB 537 Diagnosis and Assessment in Reading
Course Description
The course prepares candidates to create, administer, and interpret a wide variety of informal classroom assessments and standardized literacy assessments to screen, diagnose and plan remediation for students who are struggling with literacy development. Candidates practice test administration and diagnosis with developmental and remedial students. They learn the ethics of testing procedures and report preparation.
Week 1
Lecture: Running Records
Lecture: Fluency, Miscue Analysis, and Interest Inventories
Outcomes
- How to judge independent, instructional, and frustration levels in reading
- How to administer, mark, and score a running record
- How to find a fluency oral reading rate
- How to do a miscue analysis
- What are the semantic, syntactic, and graphic and phonetic cueing systems
- How to use an interest inventory
Week 2
Lecture: Individual Reading Inventories
Lecture: Demonstration of an Individual Reading Inventory
Outcomes
- Learn the purpose of an Individual Reading Inventory
- Learn how to administer an IRI
- Compare several different IRIs
Week 3
Lecture: Assessing Phonemic Awareness
Lecture: Assessing Phonemic Skills
Lecture: Assessing Vocabulary
Outcomes
- Learn why phonemic awareness is so important for beginning readers
- Examine the phonemic awareness tests in the BRI
- Learn what norms are for published tests
- Look at a Phonological Awareness Test
- Learn why it is useful to give a systematic phonics test
- Learn why pseudowords are often used in assessing phonetic knowledge
- Examine the Dominican Phonics Test
- Discover several phonics tests on the Internet
- Review the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test
- Learn about basals and ceilings for administering and scoring tests
- Learn about reliability and validity of tests
- Learn what other tests are used to assess vocabulary
Week 4
Lecture: Spelling Assessments and Finding Readability of Books
Lecture: Diagnosis and Case Studies
Outcomes
- Learn how spelling tests can help you assess phonemic knowledge and orthographic rules
- Examine several spelling tests
- Find spelling tests online
- Learn the factors on which readability formulas are based
- Find the readability of a book on several Internet sites
- Find the readability of anything by typing it into your computer and adjusting a few settings
- Learn why leveling is different than readability
- Examine the case study format in detail
- Learn about the formal language required in a case study
Week 5
Lecture: Screening Tests
Outcomes
- Learn about the purposes of screening tests
- Examine these primary screening tests: Illinois Snapshot of Early Learning and DIBELS, both of which can be used as screening and progress monitoring tests
- Learn how to find benchmark cut scores
- Find out which tests can be used for screening after the primary grades
Week 6
Lecture: Assessing Intelligence/Cognitive Ability
Outcomes
- Examine some of the controversies surrounding IQ testing
- Learn which tests are given by psychologists and which can be given by reading specialists
- Examine the Slosson and KBIT tests
- Learn how IQ scores are interpreted
- Learn two reading expectancy formulas based on IQ
Week 7
Lecture: Setting Objectives for Instruction
Outcomes
- Learn about how to choose objectives for your students
- Learn how to refine those objectives
- Review the objectives that other reading clinicians have chosen
Week 8
Lecture: Formal Assessments
Outcomes
- Learn about standardized formal tests
- Learn the purposes of standardized testing
- Learn the difference between norm-referenced and criterion-referenced tests
- Learn the variety of ways scores can be reported from standardized tests
- Learn how to find tests and test reviews on the Internet
The course description, objectives and learning outcomes are subject to change without notice based on enhancements made to the course. October 2011
