A Practitioner's Handbook - Speech or Presentation Example

A Practitioner's Handbook Good morning everyone! I begin by asking you all to take a minute to guess which assessment tool I am going to be discussing here today. I am providing you with three clues: 1) The test is used to measure reading abilities 2) It has various subtests 3) It has undergone two revisions. (Allow for 2 minutes for the audience to think). (Yes you are correct) It is the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test which I shall be discussing with you today. As we progress I shall walk you all through a brief history of this test along with a detailed look into its components as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the test. There may be parts that may ‘sound’ technical but are actually not. However, if you still believe you do not understand the message Im trying to put across at any point in time you may note down your questions and we shall have a brief discussion towards the end. Before we begin, I would like to draw your attention to a small class activity. It is rather apt to call it a small quiz as we will spare a few minutes for each one of you to consider your reading abilities. Please note, however, that this exercise is intended for fun and the results must not be taken seriously. I begin by dividing the class into two groups by splitting it into half from the middle; that is, the right side vs. the left side. The “Word Attack” game begins NOW- each side has 5 seconds to answer each analogy: LEFT SIDE QUESTIONS: ANSWERS: 1. Propaganda: Opinion as Sermon: ? Morality 2. Couch: Furniture as Knife: ? Cutlery 3. Conclusion: Essay as Scene: ? Play 4. Locker: Storage as Telephone: ? Communication 5. Sunscreen: Sunburn as Vaccination: ? Disease RIGHT SIDE QUESTIONS: ANSWERS: 1. Active: Idle as Brief: ? Lengthy 2. Lifejacket: Boat as Seatbelt: ? Plane 3. Hidden: Visible as Flimsy: ? Sturdy 4. Cough: Cold as Disagreement: ? Argument 5. Veins: Circulate as Ornaments: ? Decorate Transition: Hope this exercise was fun and fruitful. Now we shall engage in a discussion of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test which, apart from the Word Attack exercise conducted, examines various other aspects of an individual’s reading ability. I shall begin my speech by explaining to you what The Woodcock Reading Mastery Test actually is. The Woodcock Reading Mastery Test is a “norm-referenced” series of assessments that enables assessors to determine the reading achievements and abilities of individuals (Rathvon, 2004). The test is administered on an individual basis and is diagnostic in nature. Basically, the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test measures the “reading readiness” of individuals. It primarily targets individuals who have difficulty in reading. The purpose of this test goes beyond the general aim of identifying reading abilities of the candidate as it highlights the individuals’ strengths and weaknesses in particular areas of reading so that targeted action may be taken. It allows specific strategies to be devised for students who have special needs in reading. Particular attention is devoted to ELL learners whose reading abilities are determined by this test. Not only does this test allow for an evaluation of the candidate but also the institution or school’s reading programs. The history of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test can be traced back to 1973 when Dr. Richard Woodcock laid the first foundations of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test (Rathvon, 2004). This test could be taken by children from kindergarten through the twelfth grade which was a rather broad target segment for this assessment (Rathvon, 2004). This test was best suited for ESL candidates. Furthermore, the test involved short intervals and comprised of 5 subtests including the Word Attack, Word ID, Letter ID Passage Comprehension and Word Comprehension. This test was later revised in 1998 whereby Forms G and H were introduced which were not parallel in nature (Rathvon, 2004). These two forms allowed the assessor to test and re-test as they were non-overlapping in nature. Therefore, as you may think, this assessment was highly thorough in nature. Furthermore, the wide age bracket meant that individuals from young as well as the older segment could be tested. Form H comprised of approximately 4 tests (Rathvon, 2004) whereby the focus was to measure the reading readiness of the candidate. Form G, on the other hand, comprised of 3 additional tests with the Letter ID sub test eliminated from the list. However, there was criticism surrounding this revised version with the critics claiming that the test was not an adequate measure of reading abilities of individuals and was “dumbed down” in line with the state of the reading at that time in the country. Furthermore, the reading standards on the whole were being criticized with various cases of poorly written scripts being attributed to the “average score” for such tests. It is also important to note that the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test was norm-referenced, meaning that the students would be compared to a “current norming sample”. Validity would not be achieved if the reading skills of a nine-year old were compared with that of a nine-year old’s reading skill 30 years ago. Thereafter, in June 2011, this assessment was further revised whereby it complied with Common Core State Standards. These standards dictate the requirements of learning for students at each grade level. It has been adopted in the U.S whereby the entire learning community comprising of teachers, parents and students come together on a single platform sharing similar learning standards. Alignment with the Common Core meant that specific elements in the Woodcock Mastery Test now matched with specific requirements of the Common Core State Standards. The Phonological Awareness aspect of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test matched with the same aspect under the K-5 Foundation Skills of the Common Core domain, whereas, the Letter Identification test of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test matched with the “Print Concepts” part of the Common Core. Similarly, Word Identification, Word Comprehension and Word Attack fulfilled the “phonics and words recognition” domain of the Common Core. Finally, the Passage Comprehension and Oral Reading Fluency aspect of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test met the objectives of “fluency” as per the Common Core standards. The age bracket of test takers for this revised format was 5-75. The assessment comprises of 4 clusters and a total of 9 tests. The test duration is approximately 15-45 minutes. It is now important to understand the various components of this assessment. As of today, the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test comprises of 9 major subtests as mentioned earlier. Four of these subtests have been newly introduced including Listening Comprehension, Phonological Awareness, Oral Reading Fluency and Rapid Automatic Naming. The Letter ID test measures the candidate’s recognition of uppercase and lowercase letters. The Rapid Automatic Naming test aims to diagnose the accuracy and speed with which individuals can name common objects such as colors, letters, and numbers. Word ID, as the name suggests, aims to identify the individual’s ability to read words. It measures the ability of the test taker to identify words upon seeing them. Word Attack judges the individual’s ability to read nonsense words at various difficulty levels. Nonsense words are words that are typically not real. These words are deliberately used so that the assessor can judge the candidate’s ability to read words without using any supplementary support such as contextual meaning, reading words by sight or looking at images. Phonic and structural analysis skills are utilized at this stage. Additionally, students are trained so that they know how to approach this test. Next, the Listening Comprehension subtest (which is part of the “comprehension” cluster), deals with diagnosing the candidate’s comprehension of words spoken out verbally. The Passage Comprehension test measures the ability of the individual to comprehend passages of text and use contextual information. The reader is asked to provide a key word that is absent in the passage.Finally, the last test in the Comprehension cluster, the Word Comprehension test, aims to judge the reader’s understanding of synonyms, antonyms and analogies. This is meant to infer the test taker’s ability to understand word meanings in various formats. The part related to antonyms judges the students’ reading ability as well as ability to respond to the word with one of the opposite meaning. The part related to synonyms judges the ability of the reader to respond to the word with one of similar meaning. Finally, the analogies part involves reading a pair of words, determining the relationship and use that relationship to apply it to different words. While this test may appear to test only general reading vocabularies; it actually caters to vocabulary of various disciplines including humanities, science, mathematics, social studies and general reading. Next in the line is the Oral Reading Fluency Test which judges how well the reader can decode information, express it and phrase it. Phonological Awareness, on the other hand, manages to judge the candidate along multiple dimensions including the candidate’s ability to match the first sound and last sound, blend, delete and produce rhymes. After having learnt the history, purpose and basic components of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test, we shall now explore the process of scoring and measuring the test taker’s results. The score for Visual Auditory Learning (which is used to measure reading readiness as part of the Form G assessment) is based on the number of errors (Rathvon, 2004). All other items on the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test are scored in a dichotomous manner. As far as scoring is concerned, candidates’ raw scores can be converted into what are known as “derived scores”. These include, percentiles, T-scores, scoring along the normal distribution, standard scores ( involving a mean of 100 and standard deviation of 15) as well as equivalents of age and grade (Rathvon, 2004). Furthermore, these scores can be converted into other forms such as W-scores as well as indexes such as the Relative Performance Index which measures the test taker’s performance/mastery of the skills relative to those at 90% of a normative sample (Rathvon, 2004). This may sound technical; therefore, I shall support my explanation with a simple example. If a student has an RPI of 60/90, it means that the student’s performance is at a mastery level of 30 versus the level of 90 of an average individual. Furthermore, since the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test is linked with students’ performance in schools, the scores offer a great deal of compatibility with students’ performance at schools. This is the concept behind the use of “age and grade equivalent” scoring. For instance, a K.0 grade equivalent on the Audio-Visual Learning represents that the test taker’s score matches that of the 25th percentile of scores for children seeking admission into Kindergarten. Percentile ranks are also extended which enhances precision of test scores. This means that, rather than having percentiles in whole numbers only, percentile ranks as little as 0.1 and as high as 99.9 may be used (Rathvon, 2004). We shall now attempt to understand how the effectiveness of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test. Research has been conducted to assess the level of standardization offered by this test. The sample size was controlled for gender, age and geographic region with multi-stage sampling done of children in school as well as young adults. Furthermore, a certain amount of children with special education needs was also included. Approximately 3700 individuals were included in the sampling frame and the results were determined. Thereafter, the reliability and validity of the test was determined. The results revealed a median of 0.91 which falls within the acceptable range (Pearson, 2012). Furthermore, the results revealed that the assessment tool was valid in terms of content validity, concurrent validity and intercorrelational validity. Usually the interpretation of the test is based on the analysis of a wide range of factors which includes completion of diagnostic profiles and scores calculation. Although the actual process may be a bit complicated and statistical, I shall attempt to walk-through the salient and simpler aspects of interpretation for your understanding. There are approximately seven case studies provided in the manual of this test that presents diagnostic profiles of a Kindergarten boy, holistic scoring profile for a seventh-grade girl or the approximate errors on Word Attack by a sixth-grader. This does simplify the interpretation process. However, poor organization and formatting makes it a laborious task to interpret the manual. The Woodcock Reading Mastery Test has been primarily designed to measure various aspects of individuals’ reading ability. The test is used by schools to determine the reading ability of children. Furthermore, this test is largely diagnostic in nature in the sense that it can be used to diagnose learning disabilities and reading problems of students. This test can be used at the commencement of a learning program or a module to determine the individual’s reading skills and then repeated again at the end of the program or module to demonstrate the progress made by the student. Therefore, the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test is largely diagnostic in nature, which means that it demonstrates the strengths and needs of the test-taker and comprises of various subtests to measure the candidate’s reading abilities holistically. Consider an example of Harry whose reading ability was measured along a wide range of dimensions including reading, spelling, writing, oral language and phonological awareness. The assessment profile indicated specific deficit in the area of reading comprehension. This lack of ability has been related with deficiency in the semantic area of language. On the other hand, he has demonstrated superior word decoding and recognition skills. Considering that the diagnostic assessment helped to identify Harry’s specific area of deficiency, targeted action may be taken to ensure that his comprehension abilities are increased. Considering that comprehension is an essential life-long skill, rectifying this deficiency at this age will help Harry later on in life when the academic demands for comprehension will increase. The information provided by this test is, therefore, more precise than that provided by general survey tests. Furthermore, the test is easy in terms of administration and does not require any special preparation as such. Also, it is relatively easy on scoring as well. On the other hand, the use of multiple subtests by the Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests makes it limited in terms of evaluating only a small number of reading behaviors. The content of the test also greatly predicts the results. This is because a poorly scripted comprehension passage or poorly framed questions can make the test as well as the results flawed. There have been instances whereby the comprehension passages are boring and do not engage the reader significantly or where the passages have been very brief. Furthermore, less than 10 questions in the comprehension subtest cannot adequately measure the comprehension skills of the test-taker. Furthermore, such tests have also been criticized for tearing apart the reading process into minute subtests that dilute the reader’s attention. Fragmented skills are, therefore, assessed rather than assessing the candidate’s reading abilities as a whole. Taking these criticisms further, various researchers have questioned the existence of Word Comprehension subtest by claiming it as a “reasoning” assessment rather than knowledge of words. This is because this part tested the individual’s ability to determine the relationship between the “stimulus words” to complete analogies. This led to double penalization as they would skip additional items owing to their lack of decoding skills rather than because of their poor comprehension of “words”. Therefore, subtests such the Word Comprehension subtest in the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test, has been criticized for judging too many constructs at the same time. Now the question arises: What should we have to learn from this? I have spend approximately 20 minutes discussing with you the history, merits and de-merits, usability and other aspects of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test; however, most of you may still be thinking what use is this to us? We must understand that, as individuals, reading is one of our most powerful and critical abilities. It is often taken for granted- most of us would never even consider evaluating our reading skills because we believe it is “Ok” or in line with the average standards. However, the moment we start reading a comprehension passage in an exam or even glance at assignment rubric, many of us will be perplexed and disappointed claiming that the passage was “ too difficult” or that the instructions were not properly worded. Often we do not realize that the problem lies with “us” rather than the passage or the rubric. In those cases, misinterpreting words and their meanings or having a poor vocabulary will simply make us lose our grades which we could have so easily achieved had we previously evaluated our reading skills. Tests such as the Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests, as I have previously explained, are inherently diagnostic in nature meaning that they refine our reading skills even before we know we are in trouble. In other words, colleges and institutions must make it a part of, perhaps their admission and placement process, to conduct the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test with children as young as Kindergarten. The results obtained can help these institutions in framing their admission decision as well as facilitate the placement of students based on their varying ability levels. For instance, those with extremely poor scores could be clumped in one class with the instructor starting off the lecture with reading basics and developing the reading abilities of these children from scratch. Similarly, high achievers could be grouped into one class whereby they are given more challenging assignments to further develop their high potential. This allows different students to progress at different paces based on the level of their reading abilities. Doing this from an early age can allow children’s reading abilities to become in line with national standards as they progress. Alternatively, an opposite strategy may be used whereby children possessing lower reading skills can be grouped together with those scoring high on the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test. This could facilitate team learning whereby the high scorers assist their low-scoring counterparts, thereby boosting the productivity of the class as a whole. However, problems may be created in this case as the high achievers may not get the opportunity to be given challenging assignments. Giving such challenging tasks only to high achievers while giving basic tasks to low achievers may not be a very good strategy as it can foster a social divide in the class, making the low achieving students feel inferior to their high scoring counterparts. Next, the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test, if used by all educational institutions across the country, can lead to standardization of the process of measuring children’s reading abilities across the board. Since it has been tied to the national curriculum, scores at Woodcock Reading Mastery Test can be used to determine the level of learning required by the reader. This test also has the potential of measuring subject-specific reading abilities of individuals. For instance, individuals’ reading abilities with respect to science, technology, history and other disciplines can be determined by correspondingly changing the nature of the test. To sum up, the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test is an effective tool for analyzing the individual’s reading ability from various dimensions. Although the approach of dividing the assessment into subtests may appear fragmented, it does, to a great extent, highlight the test taker’s strengths and weaknesses as far as reading is concerned which facilitates targeted action. Institutions are recommended to make widespread use of this tool to monitor progress of students’ reading abilities and provide varied levels of challenges in tasks depending on students’ scores in this assessment. Considering the high reliability and validity scores, this assessment has great value which needs to be capitalized by teachers and schools for the purpose of students’ learning. References Pearson. (2012). WRMT-R/NU Technical Information. Retrieved from Pearson: http://www.pearsonassessments.com/pai/ca/RelatedInfo/WRMTRNUTechInfo.htm Rathvon, N. (2004). Early Reading Assessment: A Practitioner's Handbook. New York: Guilford Press. Read More