Accelerated Reading Assessment

Nowadays, there are a number of different types of assessments used in the classroom. Students are quizzed, pre-tested and tested and they are required to write essays, fill in the blanks and answer multiple-choice questions. These assessments are given by teachers as a method of determining whether or not the student has gained mastery over the content that is being taught. Individuals who teach reading operate in the same way. Given that one of the primary goals for teaching students to read is for them to comprehend the materials they read, teachers must devise a method of assessing whether students, in fact, understand what they read.

Even though different strategies are utilized in the teaching and assessment of reading performance,

Accelerated reading offers a number of proven benefits to participants. It provides for authentic assessment, significantly contributes to improving reading scores and develops higher order thinking skills via the assessment, recognizing the achievement of the students.

The program combines the reading of popular and rich literature with computer-based comprehension tests to provide inspiration for students to read books of higher quality and to read more in general. In addition, the accelerated reading software manages the records of the student to keep track of reading performance, which gives parents and teachers valuable information to evaluate motivation and reading comprehension

Initially, a student selects a book from the available titles. A point value is assigned to every book based on its reading difficulty and the number of words in the book. After the book is read, the comprehension test is then taken on the computer and the test is immediately scored. The test comprises recall questions and it is used for evaluating comprehension. This software indicates the average percentage of questions that were correctly answered, the total points earned, as well as the reading difficulty of all the books. Typically, accelerated reading quizzes take only a little time, since students answer 20 questions at the most. The majority of students have the option of taking the tests by themselves by the second grade and even in the first grade in some cases.

Types of Quizzes

The accelerated reading program offers two types of quizzes; the Literacy Skills Test and the Reading Practice Quizzes. The latter is designed to supply proof that the participants have indeed read the book. Usually, the questions are centered around significant characters, events and literacy features of the book. Additionally, the questions chronologically follow the order in which the book is presented; this practice reinforces the grammar of the story as the participant takes the quiz. The quizzes focus on literal comprehension and comprise multiple-choice