Every state sets specific benchmarks or standards for reading for each grade level. Throughout elementary school, students must comprehend words, letters and sounds to become independent readers. By the sixth grade, schools expect students to be reading non-fiction and fiction text with full comprehension. Other criteria students must meet include understanding unfamiliar words, using prefixes, roots and suffixes, using a thesaurus and a dictionary, and locating information to answer research questions.
It's common for teachers to combine basic reading assessments with performance assessments. For example, a performance assessment may ask a student to read a short story, analyze characters and conduct research. Reading performance activities allow the students to apply their skills and demonstrate their knowledge on various topics. Performance-based reading assessments may also be assigned to students in groups where each child is expected to take part in a project, share in the narrative of a story, brainstorm and create summaries or pictures with their classmates.
Basic authentic assessments test students to see if they can apply their reading skills to the real world. Such assessments may assign tasks that require the students to read books and discuss text from newspapers or magazines aloud in the classroom or a group. State standards often ask teachers to look at the thinking process each student employs to complete oral reading tasks. Authentic assessments force the student and teacher to engage in a reading activity together. It gives the teacher the opportunity to learn which areas of the curriculum need more time exploring.
Some states require teachers to keep a reading portfolio on the progress of each student. Portfolios contain self-evaluations, oral reading skills, teacher observations, presentation scores, book reports and lists of books the student has mastered reading. At the end of the school year, the teacher can use the portfolio to evaluate the student's reading level. The teacher can share this information with the student's parents, principal and other teachers and make recommendations as the student moves on to the next grade.