If a student struggles significantly with reading, perhaps arrange for a reading achievement test, which a diagnostician or other trained professional will usually administer. Individual achievement tests require controlled conditions with a knowledgeable examiner to yield accurate, reliable results. All standardized test results provide scores that provide accurate comparisons of students in the same grade using percentiles and other information. The testing companies create these norms during test development.
All fifth-grade teachers give group standardized tests at least annually. These are timed tests the entire class takes simultaneously. While these tests may not yield the most definitive results concerning areas of weakness, information is provided that can help teachers drive instruction.
Informal Reading Inventories (IRIs) are easy-to-create and administer classroom assessments. Many IRIs are available online and commercially, but teachers can easily adapt these measures to their specific classroom content. These inventories, like standardized reading tests, require students to read passages and answer specific detail or inferential questions about the selections. The results of these IRIs can help teachers identify the types of questions students have difficulty answering.
Cloze activities are usually teacher-prepared, but some are available commercially. A cloze activity requires students to read a paragraph or story from which key terms have been removed. The students fill in the blanks with words that fit the text. A word bank may or may not accompany a cloze selection. The students must use their knowledge of the text, as well as context clues, to fill in the blanks in the selection.
A simple way to test a student's understanding of text on a day-to-day basis is retelling or summarizing. The teacher or a peer simply has each student summarize or retell the story or selection in his own words. Many adaptations are possible, such as having the student tell the summary into a recorder or to a friend who types or writes. Allowing accommodations like these helps address all student learning styles.