Assessing Readers

Book excerpt: A Co-publication of Routledge and the International Reading Association This new edition of Assessing Readers continues to bridge the gap between authentic, informal, and formative assessments, and more traditional quantitative, and summative assessment approaches. At the heart of the book is respect and confidence in the capabilities of knowledgeable teachers to make the correct literacy decisions for the students they teach based on appropriate assessments. Inclusive and practical, it supports individual classroom teachers' knowledge, beliefs, decisions, and roles and offers specific assessment, instruction, and organizational ideas and strategies, while incorporating a range of perspectives that inform the field of reading and literacy education, covering the most important ideas and information found in more traditional reading diagnosis books. Changes in the Second Edition Addresses the Common Core State Standards Includes Response to Intervention (RTI) Discusses family literacy in language-diverse homes and the needs of ELL students Covers formative assessment Offers ideas and guidelines for ELL assessment Looks at issues of accountability and teaching to prescribed state tests and objectives versus accommodating to them – the pitfalls and problems and how to cope Provides new practical examples, including new rubrics, more teacher-developed cognitive assessments, a new case study, and new teacher-developed strategy lessons