Diagnostic Assessments For Middle School Reading Standards

 

Every year, I strive to understand where to focus my reading standards instruction, ensuring I meet the needs of my students and don't waste time 're-teaching' things they already know.

Plus, I want to be able to monitor progress to track growth.

Of course, my district eliminated iReady, one of my favorites for this type of purpose. I could not find anything else that was standards-based the way I needed it.

So I made my own.

I went through samples of standardized tests and made questions to match my own original text based on the first 8 reading standards:

1.  Citing Evidence

2.  Theme/Central Idea

3. Character Analysis and Idea Development (Making Inferences)

4.  Poetry (Interpreting words and phrases)

5.  Text Structure

6. Point of View

7.  Media Literacy

8. Analyzing Arguments

Since I had about 120 students, I needed the results to be easy to access, but I also wanted students to focus on the task at hand.  So, I had students complete the assessment on paper first and then enter their answers into a Google Form.

I even made a video for Media Literacy that can be shown at the beginning of the diagnostic.

But then that spreadsheet that the Google Form produces - I needed something more.  First, I wanted to be able to sort by standard.  There didn't seem to be an easy way to do this, so I got some help, and this was the result:

This was great because I could choose the standard at the top and instantly see all the questions connected to it. All the green cells showed the correct answers. Now, I could see at a glance how well my students perform on this standard overall.

But I still wanted more - I wanted to know what each student missed.  So, with help, I added another tab:

Now, I had the data I needed to move forward.  I could use this assessment again anytime I was ready to monitor progress.  

Having this reading standards diagnostic assessment really helped me solve the problem of knowing where my students' skill levels lie.  And it can help you, too!

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