Developmental Reading Assessment Essay

The Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA2) is a formal assessment designed to assess students in Kindergarten through eighth grade. It provides educators with two different kits, K-3 and 4-8, to use for assessment. The K-3 kit is used with students in primary grades to observe, document, and assess reading skills over time. This assessment yields students’ information about reading engagement, oral reading fluency, and comprehension through the administration of this assessment. The DRA2 provides formative information about student’s independent and instructional reading level, which will better inform the teacher in the areas in which helps to inform areas of instruction that would be beneficial. Within the K-3 kit, there are 45

Assessment of the descriptors for each level differ depending on what the benchmark requires of the student and what we want them to gain from selection. The lower levels, assess previewing, whereas, the rest assesses prediction. Assessing retelling/summarizing occurs at all levels, to determine the student’s ability to retell the selection in the correct sequence. Answering questions pertaining to interpretation of major events, reflections on what makes this important, and the ability to connect to the selection provides information about the student’s ability to understand the authors reason for writing the story and ability to connect through personal

Scoring a DRA2 without more definitive descriptor choices could lead to different scores with each teacher. Time is also a factor of the DRA2. As the levels progress, students are responsible to create a written response upon completion of reading the book. This becomes an issue as it could take longer than one sitting to complete. Many districts tell the teachers at what level to stop testing the students each year, therefore, you may never find an actual student’s instructional level. Lastly, teachers will only go up one level to continually show growth amongst the