objective measurements of reading progress on IEP

You can use a specific and detailed observational test daily if you want to.

You get a highly patterned reading series based on *either* decodable text *or* high-frequency words. I tend to use high-frequency words with my real strugglers, in parallel with their phonics; this combination is what they need to transfer to other reading material. For high-frequency my personal choice is the old Ladybird series (recently re-published by penguin.uk) books 1a, 1b through 6a, 6b; you can also use any “Dick and Jane” type series, as long as it is based on something like the Dolch word list and has oodles of repetition. *Or* you can get a good developmental decodable series — one that teaches one skill at a time and repeats it and builds on it. I sometimes use some books from an older Holt-Rinehart series for this — titles are Mac the Rat, Adventures With Mac for end Grade 1, Silver Steps and Golden Trails for Grade 2. (Trouble is that they progress too fast and don’t have the high-frequency words.)

Once you have your developmental program, you set up present level and expected level based on it:

Student will be tested on reading *unfamiliar* material, either a page from the series not yet read, or a page printed in similar type using the same vocabulary. Student will read aloud with no pre-assistance (cold reading).
Each time student cannot read a word, he may be helped, but this counts as an error.
Present level: student can read from Ladybird Level 3 and/or blue pre-primer and/or Unit 1 of Mac The Rat with no more than five errors per page.
Expected level: after three months of tutoring student will read from Ladybird Level 5 and/or section 5 of The Little White House and/or Unit 1 of Adventures With Mac with no more than five errors per page. (Speed will *not* be considered at this time; student may have as much time as he needs to decode words.)
and so on after six months etc.

Of course this always depends on honest testing, and it is always a problem when a kid gets too much “help”. But you can get a quite accurate reading level and a definite measure of progress in this way.

In the case of a very young child, I would do things like:

1. Pretest on a word recognition test. Reading inventories, like the Johns or Burns and Roe, have leveled word recognition tests that include 20 words each from graduated levels. There are three first grade level lists: preprimer, primer and first. I would pretest and secure scores, include them in report and IEP. I might write a goal to improve scores on these assessments and I would assess each trimester. I don’t assess this monthly. I might also pretest on a high frequency word list (Dolch is most well-known) and write into IEP how many of these words the child can read, then go for gains each quarter or trimester, reassessing that often.

2. I have nonsense word lists that graduate in difficulty. I might pretest the child on these, include scores in IEP and report, then retest quarterly or each trimester. I have written goals specifically tied to these measures.

3. If the child is reading from a program that limits the child to decodable text, I do not use informal reading inventory passages to measure growth at first grade level. There is not enough overlap. I recently made a reading probe that incorporates the words from the first three units of Project Read (an explicit program based somewhat on O-G methods). The child is reading this for a targeted score that will assure us he has learned these words accurately and can identify with automaticity. He has learned these words in each unit, practiced segmenting and blending, building, writing, etc. now he needs to develop the automaticity and speed. This sort of thing can measure progress. I plan to make these to accompany a number of Project Read units and to prepare cumulative lists. Automaticity tends to be an issue with most LD readers, I am trying to “attack” this problem at the outset at this point.

4. Work samples can be collected, saved and used. The teacher using an explicit O-G based program can have the child write sentences to dictation, she can do this regularly and save a sample each week. This can show the progress your child is making reading/writing words that exemplify patterns as well as high frequency “red” words.

5. When the child can read short vowel syllables, consonant blends and digraphs, the “magic e” syllables and generally the “r-controlled” syllables, I begin testing each trimester or quarter with the informal reading inventory passages. This yields an oral reading score, time and comprehension score. While the child is reading primarily tightly controlled selections that are limited to just a few kinds of syllables, the stories tend to be dull and limited from comprehension standpoint, at this point I concentrate on teaching word reading and automaticity.

Hope this helps.

yes, it does help and sounds like you both have a good plans with your students. i am also hearing that it is really up to the individual teacher and what she/he prefers to use in the resource room to montior growth.
do you then write criteria and baselines as percentages and/ or time amounts of what the student can do now and where you want him to be in a year?

do you use the lac test or the topa or any of the woodcock subtests quarterly?

I do not use any standardized measures more than yearly. If you take baseline data and have scores, you don’t have to give standardized tests quarterly, which you should not do anyway. You use the baseline scores as the present levels and then project from there where you want things to be in a year, based on what you think you can help the child accomplish, not necessarily based on the well-placed desire to catch the child up in a hurry. I have to assess how quickly I think the child can progress.

One program you can try using is DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills). It involves a series of one-minute probes in different areas and can be used weekly to monitor progress. It is free, and available off the internet at this address: http://dibels.uoregon.edu/index.php

Many schools are using, or beginning to use, this product. I have been using it for nonsense word fluency, and will be beginning to use it for oral reading fluency for my students. DIBELS has some basic benchmarks to use for comparison.

The other suggestions were good also.

thanks gailma about the dibels. i am very familiar with this tool and shared it with my school. their response was it takes too long to download and is visually unappealing (?????????)

Sorry to hear you had such a negative response from your system. The DIBELS materials only need to be downloaded once (until the next edition comes out) and then photocopied. My first response to the “visually unappealing” comment would be to take out a copy of Moby Dick, Shakespeare, or maybe any high school book that is required in your system. How “visually appealing” are they? Pictures are not the point! (Sorry, I know I’m preaching to the choir.) If you have enough paper and printer ink, you might want to make one copy of DIBELS for yourself. I find it very helpful. Good luck.