Assessing A Student's Level

Three-Part Process

1 Students record themselves reading aloud Benchmark Passages, Benchmark Books (Levels aa-J), or Spanish Benchmark Passages and send recordings to your In Basket, which you access through your Kids A-Z management hub. You score their reading behavior using online running records.

2 Students record a retelling of the text and send it to your In Basket, and you use online rubrics for fiction or nonfiction texts to score their comprehension.

3 Students take a Comprehension Quick Check Quiz, and our software scores it. Skill Reports help you identify comprehension skills for additional practice.

Save valuable instructional time and assess every student's reading performance with online running records. Each student sends recordings to your In Basket in a three-part assessment process that provides you with a more complete picture of your students' reading abilities and monitors their progress.

Part 1

Preview the Benchmark Passages & Running Records, Benchmark Books & Running Records (Levels aa-J), or Spanish Benchmark Passages & Running Records collections before assigning. (Initially you may have to take more than one running record to determine a student's instructional level.)

Assign a Benchmark Passage or Benchmark Book (Levels aa-J) by clicking on the Assign button and selecting students. You may also use printable versions of the Benchmark Passages or Books. To assess a student's instructional level in Spanish, use printable versions of the Spanish Benchmark Passages, or Pasajes estándar.

Review About Running Records to learn about the details of scoring an online or printed running record.

Parts 2 & 3

Retelling Rubrics and Comprehension Quick Check Quizzes automatically follow the recording of the passage or book and provide details about a student's understanding and comprehension.

Retelling recordings provide details that identify strengths and weaknesses students might have comprehending fiction or nonfiction texts; including analysis of text structures. Listen to recordings and score rubrics for either fiction or nonfiction text.

Multiple-choice quizzes provide students with feedback when completed on how well they scored.

The three-part process establishes a baseline of your students' levels. Assign leveled books from Reading A-Z's extensive collection for small group practice at students' instructional levels. Allow students to choose books below their instructional levels for independent practice.


How Do I Monitor Students' Reading Progress?

Use Benchmark Passages or Benchmark Books (Levels aa-J) and their associated resources for progress monitoring as students' reading at their instructional levels improves and/or as they complete self-paced assignments. Use Assessment Reports for a whole-class view. Review student profile pages to see individual reading rate and level progress reports so you can further monitor the progress of individual students.

Assessment Schedule

Developmental Level Reading Level Schedule
Beginning readers Levels aa-C every 2 to 4 weeks
Developing readers Levels D-J every 4 to 6 weeks
Effective readers Levels K-P every 6 to 8 weeks
Automatic readers Levels Q-Z every 8 to 10 weeks

Note Students who are not progressing at the expected rate should be assessed even more frequently than the Assessment Schedule suggests.

Use the chart below along with the information in Assessment Reports to determine if students are ready to move up a level.

Scorecard formulas are automatically calculated based on recording length and errors you have marked using our online rubrics or forms. See Assessment Reports to review a list of calculated scores for your class. See About Running Records to learn more about taking, marking, and scoring a running record.

Scores

Running Record Accuracy Rate Quick Check Comprehension Quiz Action
95% + 100% Advance Student a Level
95% + 80% Instruct at this Level
95% + <80% Lower a Level, Assess Again
90-94% 80-100% Instruct at this Level
90-94% <80% Lower a Level, Assess Again
<90% N/A Lower a Level, Assess Again

Results from the printable running records can be entered to display in a student's Reading Rate report in your Kids A-Z management hub. That way, you have not only the digital running records and assessment information, but also the results from printable running records—all in one place


How Do I Match Learning A-Z Levels to Other Leveling Systems?

For your convenience, Learning A-Z correlates its levels to other leveling systems. If you've already placed students in levels according to another system, please reference the Level Correlation Chart to determine how another system's levels best match Learning A-Z's levels.

The correlations are not official levels assigned by the other leveling systems, but rather an approximate correlation based on a comparison of attributes in books assigned official levels by both the other leveling system and Learning A-Z.