LETRS Unit 1: Session 8
Outcome assessments - >>>>>Outcome assessments assess the overall effectiveness of
instruction given to a large student population—for example, all students within a state. These
high-stakes, summative reading assessments are usually administered at the end of grade 3 or 4.
Because they are often normed, they can show how an individual is doing relative to norms and
help in comparing groups.
Screening measures - >>>>>Screening measures help predict which students are at risk for
reading failure and how they are likely to perform on outcome assessments by measuring their
performance against established benchmarks. Screening measures, such as Acadience® Reading
K-6 or AIMSweb®, focus on foundational skills and are administered several times a year in the
early grades. Because they are brief, low-cost measures that provide extremely useful
information, they are highly efficient.
Diagnostic surveys - >>>>>Diagnostic surveys inform teachers' work with at-risk readers. This
category includes informal diagnostics teachers use to assess students' academic knowledge or
skills in a particular area (e.g., a developmental spelling inventory or handwriting sample), as
well as formal, specialized testing used to determine whether a student fits the criteria for a
specific developmental disorder (e.g., an assessment to determine whether and where a child falls
on the autism spectrum).
Progress-monitoring tests - >>>>>Progress-monitoring tests inform instruction by telling how
well instruction is working—that is, how at-risk students are responding to instruction. These
formative assessments, typically administered every 1-3 weeks, focus on specific targeted skills.
Teachers can use them to determine the effectiveness of a given program or approach.
Many screening measures can be considered diagnostic since they provide extremely detailed
data about a students skills in particular literacy domains. - >>>>>true or false
If a student needs work on phonics and decoding, what kind of informal diagnostic assessment
would provide the most useful information on how to help this student with these skills? - >>>>>
a. a spelling inventory to show which features of English spelling the student has mastered
b. a word-reading survey to show which sound-symbol correspondences the student knows and
which ones still need practice
