1.A.10 Understand the role of formal and informal assessment of comprehension in making instructional decisions to meet individual student needs.

Assessments are critical in allowing me to identify strengths and weaknesses in your child’s education Like other elements in reading, comprehension is assessed both formally and informally. However, with comprehension I will be assessing students on a daily basis to determine strategies to use to further your child’s reading development. Some informal assessments  include

• Think Alouds- After students and I read a passage, we will orally discuss the passage and I will ask the students questions to gauge their understanding of the story. I will also allow students to have a piece of paper at their desk to use while we are reading the story in case they want to write down anything they would like to remember. (Tompkins, 2011, 223).
• Story Retellings- After reading a passage, students will tell me what happened in the story. I may ask them for the main idea or plot of the story or what happened in the beginning, middle and end of the story. The purpose is for the students to be able to read a passage and accurately recount the story as it occurred within the context of my question. I will use a rubric to score their storytelling (Tompkins, 2011, pg.222).
• Cloze Procedure- This activity will involve students fill in words that have been removed in a passage in order to demonstrate knowledge of the text. Students will use the content of the passage, vocabulary and sentence structure to construct their answer (Tompkins, 2011, pg, 223)

Students will also be given the following formal assessments to determine their level of comprehension.

• Florida Comprehensive Achievement Test (FCAT)- Students will be assessed beginning in 3rd grade and the test will measure your students ability to comprehend.  It is administered once a year.
• Accelerated Reader(AR)- There are questions on the accelerated reader test that measure comprehension. Students will be tested on this every time they take an AR test.