KEEP
THE SPIRIT OF SHERLOCK HOLMES ALIVE
by Jack Humphrey
Mysteries intrigue so many of us. What fun it is to piece together the clues and come up with a solution to a complex case in a good book or a vexing predicament in real life. We ponder the evidence closely and mull over the details. We arrive at our conclusions after considerable detective work.
Beyond the pages of a book, a good detective often relies on sophisticated tools when investigating a case. He or she requires more than hunches to track down the culprit. It’s really not that much of a stretch to see that a good teacher must be a good detective, too, making use of the sharpest diagnostic tools available to provide information about why some middle graders don’t read well.
Group tests clearly reveal that some students have reading problems, but they provide little information about specific deficient reading skills. Those low reading scores can be traced to many different areas, so further diagnostic information is needed to help guide instruction.
Middle grades reading teachers learn about diagnostic reading tests in their courses leading to an Indiana Middle Childhood or Early Adolescence Reading License. But college classes are only a beginning step in the professional development of middle grades reading teachers. It follows that teachers need to take the next step and obtain copies of appropriate tests and then administer them to students in their schools.
Learning to use these individual diagnostic reading tests is a lot like learning to read. First you learn the skills, and then you must practice, practice, practice. It is essential to investigate the many individual reading tests available to middle grades reading teachers. Publishers who sell reading tests provide informative catalogs. For example you can order the pro-ed catalog at
<http://www.proedinc.com/customer/default.aspx> or the Slosson Educational Publications catalog at
<http://www.slosson.com>. These catalogs provide information about each test along with its price. Bill Harp’s The Handbook of Literacy Assessment and Evaluation from Christopher-Gordon Publishers, Inc. offers a helpful review of many of the tests.
It is important to keep in mind that individual tests need to be administered in a quiet place away from the regular classroom. Allow for the extra time required to test students. Plan for the testing before and after school or during your planning periods.
One individual test is DST Reading. It takes five to ten minutes to administer and can be given to any middle grades student. Four scores are computed: word reading comfort level (the level at which the student knows almost all of the words and reads each without assistance), word reading instructional level (the level at which the students knows 85 to 90 percent of the words), frustration level (the level at which the student is unable to read many of the words), and Comprehension of Passages Level (the level at which the student is able to understand and remember the facts and subtleties of passages). There are also eight diagnostic scores which reflect skills in phonics and word attack proficiencies plus sight vocabulary.
The DST Reading is only one example of the many different tests available to middle grades reading teachers. Others include Decoding Skills Test, Gray Oral Reading Tests, Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, Slosson Oral Reading Test, Wide Range Achievement Test, and Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests.
The important thing is to obtain your own individual reading tests and use them to help your students. As you sharpen your testing skills and effectively diagnose your students’ problems, you’ll find out how rewarding it is to be the best Sherlock Holmes in town!