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How to Assess your Students’ Guided Reading Levels

When guided reading first became the expectation in every classroom I didn’t feel prepared. Guided reading was never talked about in my college courses, and my student teaching experiences didn’t provide me with any modeling or observation opportunities (this was 20 years ago people). To be honest, I had two pretty bad experiences with student teaching that taught me more of what not to do than anything. So today let’s talk about how to easily assess your students’ guided reading levels!

To catch myself up with the latest best practices I read Jan Richardson’s Next Step Forward in Guided Reading. Check it out in the link below. This book provides a lot of wonderful information, but as with anything, you won’t truly internalize it until you put it into practice. In this post, I want to talk to you about my system for assessment in the hopes that it can help you with your own guided reading organization.

The Next Step Forward in Guided Reading by Jan Richardson

Prior to Assessment

Before I begin assessing my students I put together a binder to keep all of my records organized. I get a regular three-ring binder and some numbered dividers like the ones linked below. If you don’t number your students you can also get alphabetized dividers.

Numbered Index Dividers

I print up all the beginning copies I need and organize my binder. I try to do all of this the first week of school before the kids come so that I’m ready on day one.

Testing Resources

Below is a list of all of the different types of assessments you might want to test your students on:

  • Letter name recognition – capital and lower-case – Students need to know at least half the alphabet before reaching level A.
  • Letter sound recognition – same thing as the letter names, they need to know at least half before reaching level A.
  • Letter production – Check to see their letter formation and the number of letter reversals.
  • Sight Word recognition – ideally students would know at least 20 sight words before level A.
  • Spelling test – this assessment doesn’t look for 100% accuracy but rather, which phonetic skills they have mastered. i.e. final sounds, beginning blends, vowel patterns, etc.
  • Dictation sentences – again, not looking for perfection, but observing which spelling patterns the students have mastered.
  • Running records – checking the accuracy of their actual reading.

Testing Best Practices

Here are some things to think about when testing:

  • How many tests will you be initially administering? – If this is the beginning of kindergarten you will probably only give the letter name and sound recognition tests along with the letter production, and sight word tests. If you have students that have their letters and sounds mastered you will give them the more challenging tests individually.
  • Are there any tests you can give as a whole group? – Letter production works well for this, as well as the spelling test and sentence dictation. There will always be some students in your class that need to take these tests individually sitting right next to you. Make sure you identify who those students are so that you are meeting their needs.
  • Decide how often you are going to test. – I break my testing into 4 quarters, but I test 2 times in each quarter. Decide what feels like a manageable amount to you that also allows you to see the student’s progress. Ideally, you will be testing every 6-8 weeks on different components.
  • Grouping students – you might have several students at the same level. I try not the have more than 4-5 students in each guided reading group. If I have a ton of level A kids I try to group them by focus skill. If some of them are having trouble with ending sounds I group them together. If another group is finding sight words to be a challenge I group them together. By doing this it helps make the most out of everyone’s time together allowing me to give intervention on their needed skills.

Running Records

Running records seemed daunting to me when I first started with guided reading. I read a lot about them, and watched multiple videos, and just practiced until I had it down. Here is a video that explains running records in detail:

Communicating Results

Group levels can have a massive impact on self-esteem. The fact that one child is at level A and another is at D should not be common knowledge within the classroom. Name your groups after animals, fruits, colors, or whatever else you can think of, but don’t name the groups by their level.

Conversely, it’s really important that you communicate growth to the students. After each test, celebrate the small wins. “Hey, you learned 8 new letters in the last 5 weeks, way to go!” You can let them know they went up a reading level without sharing the exact level. Set goals together and communicate progress. Check out this blog post I did about progress monitoring that includes a large freebie:

Data Tracking in Kindergarten

Keeping everything organized in a binder also helps you during parent conferences. You can easily flip to the correct student’s tab and show the parents their growth over the year.

If you are interested in some fast and easy forms to use with your class, check out my Guided Reading Assessment resource. It’s guaranteed to make your guided reading instruction more organized and purposeful.

Want to learn more about how I set up my guided reading groups? Check out this post I wrote about my reading center set-up:

What are the Other Students Doing During Guided Reading?

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