EARLY LEARNING PROFILE (ELP)

READING - PM BENCHMARKS (K-3)

Purpose of Assessing Reading Development:

To observe and record information on children's developing reading skills to inform responsive instruction, track progress and ensure children are matched with just-right text every day.

If you want kids to be better readers, they must read. And if you want them to read a lot, much, perhaps most, of what they read must be what they choose to read.

Listening is not reading. There is value in listening, but listening uses and hones different skills from reading.

Giving kids time to read is necessary, not optional. And giving them the chance to discover what they want to read is also necessary (Beers & Probst, 2017).

Overview

How-To Resources

HOW-TO ADMINISTER RESOURCES

The following resources are intended to help guide the administering of the PM Benchmark reading sub-assessment of the ELP.

How to use the PM Benchmark assessment:

Choose a text for the student based on last year's assessment information. If the student does not have previous assessment information, then take a best guess at a level and have the student read aloud enough of the text to help you decide on the appropriate assessment level.

Introduce the text using the PM Benchmark book introduction script on the reading record page and ask the student to read it silently in preparation for a retelling. (Silent reading is a time for the student to independently apply prior knowledge and skills and strategies to build an understanding of the text as a whole. During this process, the student internalizes the text and searches the visual information).
Ask the student to retell the passage. (Retelling allows the student to organize their thinking and present information from a personal perspective. Silent reading followed by retelling ensure the assessment is more like an authentic reading event).

• It is useful and recommended to scribe the student's retelling as a reference for using the Retelling Rubric to assess the student's comprehension. The Retelling Rubric includes language for both fiction and non-fiction text.

• Additional prompts/questions for retelling are included under the Retelling Rubric. These can be used to further the student's responses. (Teachers should only prompt if required and these prompts should be recorded on the Student Record. If the student is hesitant during retelling, it can be an indication that the text is too difficult or may indicate that the student is unsure of what information is required. Retelling instruction should be part of ongoing responsive reading instruction as it forms the basis to eventual summarizing and synthesizing).
Ask the student to read the passage out loud and conduct a miscue analysis using the PM reading record page. (Once the assessment is complete score the reading record for number of miscues, self-corrections, and accuracy rate. Analyze the student's miscues using M-S-V – Meaning – does it make sense; Structure – does it sound right; Visual – does it look right. This will inform responsive feedback and instruction to support the reader.)
If the retelling addresses the comprehension questions, the assessment is complete. If the retelling does not fully answer the comprehension questions and requires a lot of prompting, then proceed with only the questions that will give you more information (i.e., inference questions).
Complete the multi-dimensional reading fluency scale. Use the language of the rubric to give the student descriptive feedback on his or her oral reading fluency.

Overview Video - Administering PM Benchmark Assessment

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Instructional Strategies

INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES

What instructional strategies and next steps can I take to be responsive to the needs of my students, and support the development of their reading development?

How will using a reading development continuum support teaching, learning, feedback and reporting of children's growth in reading?

The reading continuum provides teachers with a holistic way of looking at what children can actually do and how they can do it, in order to both inform planning for feedback to developing readers and for planning ongoing responsive instruction.
The continuum reflects development of a reading process system which includes accuracy, fluency, comprehension and metacognition.
Reading development explained along a continuum describes stages or phases of growth in reading that are based more on children's experience with reading and less on their age and grade level. Reading skill development moves along the continuum with increased daily volume of reading just right text.
Grade levels are aligned with PM Benchmark levels to provide bands of targets for teachers to consider for reporting purposes.
The text structures of leveled text such as those in PM Benchmarks support the teaching of strategies along a developmental continuum. As levels increase, the demands on the reader also increase. As decoding/accuracy demands decrease (levels 18+), the need for deeper thinking, comprehension, fluency and metacognition increase. Therefore, the focus of instruction also changes along the continuum.
Strategy instruction and learning is cumulative and builds on strategies taught and learned at earlier levels. If children are missing key strategies at the emergent and early reading levels, then the demands of more advanced text will continue to be a challenge and reading growth will stall.
Key indicators in accuracy, fluency, comprehension and metacognition are used to describe children's reading behaviors within a specific phase/stage, so that links can be made to appropriate learning experiences.
Children seldom progress in a neat and sequenced manner; instead they may remain in one phase/stage for some length of time and move rapidly through other phases. Each child is a unique individual with different life and literacy experiences so that no two developmental pathways are identical.