WIAT reading scores

My daughter has higher comprehension scores when stories are read to her. Perhaps that portion of the WIAT that rates comprehnesion is read to her and then she anwers comprehension questions. My daughter has better comprehension skills than her reading skills if she knows the vocabulary. She is pretty good with putting puzzle pieces together and if she can’t decode a word she will use the context surrounding the word to try and figure it out.

The passages are read to the student as they follow along. The questions may also be read (not sure). The scores indicate that the child has decoding problems. The strong reading comp. probably matches with the ability of the child as measured by IQ. The IQ my guess is around 120.

Helen

Thanks—that makes sense now.

This is a READING Comprehension test - not a LISTENING Comprehension test. You cannot read the passages to the student- it violates what is being measured. I don’t give the WIAT but I cannot imagine that this is the case.

In my experience- many students who solid vocabulary knowledge, good reasoning skills and a wide knowledge base are able to commprehend connected text -especially at this age- much better than their single word reading abilities might indicate because they bring all the aforementioned stuff into play. Normed reading tests seldom have anyone read more than a fifteen to twenty word passage even at the most advanced levels and except for guidelines about not hanging out on one item forever- they are not timed. It is not hard to do well on these if you can read ENOUGH of the words therefore to get the gestalt of the passage. Deciding frequently improves in connected text a bit also because of the support that context and meaning provide- which is not available on single words measures. Where these kids have difficulty eventually is in content text like high school science books iuf they don’t get their dcoding skills down solidly- because the words they hear in class don’t match up to the words in print.
Robin

The latest revision of the WIAT is giving us some dreadful reading comprehension scores. The basals and ceilings area found differently and the child must take a specified section, that is determined by grade level. If a child is significantly below grade level, then the child attains a sometimes unreasonably low score because the level at which the child CAN read and comprehend is not established. I am very unhappy with this subtest. Our psych. is getting scores for children that are not supported by the WJ III and informal reading inventory data.

Is the WIAT Reading Comp. section read to the child?

Helen

I’ve occasionally seen scores spread this far apart; we *often* see scores with a much higher comprehension score than word recognition, with kids who haven’t been taught decoding skills. Sometimes things are thrown off by a kiddo having background knowledge in a passage or havig the verbal skills to make intelligent guesses.

No, the child reads it to the examiner, of course. The old WIAT had a really good, I thought, reading comprehension and listening comprehension. They were separate subtests, but they tested the child in the same fashion. This new WIAT uses a different approach to testing listening vs. reading comprehension.