Assessment Report

On September 28, 2021, I had Leo read aloud to me in order to get a clear idea of where

he should be placed within our reading level program. Within this benchmark test I looked at his

reading comprehension, Reading fluency, self-correction, and accuracy rate at certain reading

levels. Leo first read at a reading level O, the story titled The New Girl.

Leo is a great reader, and I was so impressed with his reading comprehension. I mainly

would like to talk about Leo’s fluency and discuss with you his strengths and areas that I think he

can continue to grow in. The first being his expression and overall volume when reading. I recall

during his second reading that I have not attached to this letter he had amazing inflection. He saw

that there was an exclamation point and raised his voice a bit and had inflection while reading. I

was really impressed to see him do this while reading a story that was more challenging for him.

Leo also does a really great job when reading aloud of reading with a clear and loud voice. His

reading volume was at or above someone at his age. One area of improvement that I hope to help

Leo continue to grow in is varying in pitch and tone to reflect the meaning while reading. For

example, when reading dialogue verses descriptions Leo has the same tone and reading pitch.

For someone in 5th grade, reading with stressed pitch or different tones to showing meaning is

something that they are continuing to develop but also use well when they are comfortable with

the reading material.

One area that Leo and I will be working on this year is reading phrases and applying

punctuation. Students often at his age think that reading at a fast pace shows that you are a great

reader. This often creates long run on sentences and awkward pauses to catch one’s breath. Leo

would read until he came to a word that was unfamiliar to him or when he needed to breath. The
uses of pauses when reading can be developed with continued practice and also through writing.

Knowing why an author uses a comma verses a period and what they allow the reader to do are

important elements to understand as a writer and a reader. I had Leo read several short stories to

me, to start he read very fast and would not pause at indicated punctuation. This way of quick

reading without pausing continued throughout all the reading he did with me. This indicated that

it was not nerves that caused the quick pace of reading but rather not using the cues that are in

the text.

While reading I could see Leo use many of the strategies that he has learned over the

years when he came to a word that was unfamiliar to him. He would pause and sound out the

word in his head before saying the word aloud. Him sounding out the unknown word in his head

before saying it aloud is something that many of his peers do not do. Leo also would use context

clues like what the words look like, what word would make sense in the sentence, and would go

back and repeat the sentence to keep the flow while reading. As Leo continues to develop and

grow his vocabulary, he will had less pauses while reading, but his errors were minimal due to

his phonics strategies.

Finally, the last element of fluency that I looked at while he was reading what the overall

pace. As described when talking about punctuation Leo tends to read faster than an average pace.

This quicker reading pace can cause him to have choppy pauses while reading aloud. Overall, his

pace can be easily fixed after instruction about the use of punctuation.

Overall, I would give Leo a fluency score of a 3 out of 4. He scored a ¾ in expression

and volume. I gave Leo a 2/4 in phrasing, a 4/4 in smoothness and for pace I scored Leo a ¾. He

read the text attached to this form at a 97% accuracy. Therefore, I continued testing Leo until he

got to reading level P. In Level O Leo had 7 reading errors and one self-correction. After reading
I asked Leo a variety of comprehension questions and he was able to answer them fully with

examples from the text. For his reading comprehension I gave him a score of 3 out of 3.

I have created two goals based off the fluency tests for Leo. (1) Look ahead in the

sentence for punctuation that tells you when to pause, such as commas, dashes, and semicolons.

Read up to the punctuation, take a short breath and then read the next group. I am going to go

over with Leo why and how to scan ahead when reading. I will have him practice this goal on

rereads since Leo will be comfortable with the reading and be able to work on looking ahead. (2)

Reading with expression or intonation or prosody. Reading to match the feeling of the writing.

Partners can be a great way for students to practice fluency and reading with expression. Partners

can listen to the reading and then provide feedback to their peer.

How can you at home support Leo in his fluency development at home? One great way is

to model good reading pace, tone, inflection and pausing during a read aloud. Having examples

of great reading will further emphasize how good readers read.