The Reading Quiz
Assessing vocabulary as a function of assessing reading comprehension
Reading Quiz created by Shelly Cloke, 2013
What are different types of reading comprehension questions looking for?
Reading comprehension questions are designed to ellicit different skills involved in undestanding text. Most include questions about a student's ability to determine the main idea/supporting ideas, infer information and recognize the author's purpose and tone. In a recent google search I conducted, only half of the websites I accessed included questions to determine if a student can identify the meaning of a vocabulary word in the passage. Perhaps this is because reading comprehension is facilitated by vocabulary knowledge and not all reading assessments choose to assess this skill.
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As an English Language Arts teacher for many years, I based my reading assessments on identifying a student's ability to determine the meaning of unfamiliar words, recall details, synthesize ideas and infer information. These questions formed the basis of my reading quizzes, as in the example above.
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Reading Quiz created by Shelly Cloke, 2011
Reading Quiz created by Shelly Cloke, 2011
Part of my instruction on reading comprehension involved identifying, modeling and having students practice different strategies they could use during reading. The sheet below is a a sample worksheet students used to practice three different strategies that help them determine word meaning.
1. Say the word out loud--have you heard it before?
2. Word parts--are there parts of the word you recognize?
3. Context--how is the word used in the sentence?
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Vocabulary worksheet created by Shelly Cloke, 2013
The purpose of this website is to examine the brain structures and functions that underpin the "say it out loud" strategy and the "word parts" strategies students can use to determine the meaning of an unfamiliar word in a reading passage.