On this page I will be posting some of the reading tests I use with my students.
There are many commercially available assessments, but most of them are quite expensive and do not give any better results than the assessments I will be posting here. They can all be used for pretesting and post-testing.
- Reading_Competency Test by Dr. Partick Groff. This is an Informal Reading Inventory that will give you a good estimate of your students’ reading abilities through sixth-grade.
- Miller Word Identification Assessment: MWIA I & MWIA II. This is the test I give for artificially induced whole-word dyslexia. This test is indispensable. Here is my 2016 MWIA Revision that uses Dolch List Sight Words in place of Dr. Seuss words. MWIA Video.
- Alphabet_Letter_Recognition_Test. This is a simple, yet very important test. A student’s ability to recognize and write the letters of the alphabet is an excellent predictor of later reading ability. The appalling lack of good handwriting instruction in today’s classrooms becomes apparent very quickly with this test.
- San Diego Quick Assessment. This was the first reading assessment I ever gave. It gives a rough estimate of a child’s Frustrational Reading Level, Instructional Reading Level, and Independent Reading Level by grade levels from kindergarten through eleventh-grade. Originally devised by Margaret La Pray and Ramon Ross and published in the Journal of Reading in 1969. In their 1969 article, “The Graded Word List: Quick Gauge of Reading Abilitly,” La Pray and Ross explain, “The graded word list has has two uses: 1) to determine a reading level, 2) to detect errors in word analysis. Here is another sourve for the SDQA.
- Jennings Informal Reading Assessment. A very complete IRI. It is very similar to the 1987 Riverside IRI that I have used since 1990.
- Ruth Miskin’s Nonsenses Word Test. Students with artificially induced whole-word dyslexia will find this test very difficult.
- Core Phonics Survey. This is a very good phonics assessment that can be used with any phonics program.
- Nonsense Word Test for Phonics Knowledge. This is an excellent little test that can be given in just a few minutes.
- Morrison-McCall Spelling Scale Test. This is a widely used and well researched spelling assessment. Since students can read what they can spell, it is a good test of reading ability. You can find more information on on the M-C Test here.
- A Test for assessing phonemic awareness in young children by Hallie Kay Yopp. This is the famous Yopp-Singer Assessment for Phonemic Awareness. This test does not assess reading, but it does assess the students ability to hear and manipulate speech sounds, which forms the necessary basis for learning to read,
- Quick Adult Reading Inventory (QARI)
- Test of Auditory Analysis (J. Rosner, 1993) This is an easy to administer test for phonemic awareness.
- Phonological Awareness Screening Test (PAST) by David A. Kilpatrick.
- Phonemic Awareness Screener Assessment.
- Wide Range Reading Test for Kindergarten to College
- Adaptations of the Names Test: Easy-to-use phonics assessment.
- Spencer Ultimate Phonics Reading Fluency Test.
- The Abcedarian Reading Assessment by Sebastian Wren & Jennifer Watts.
- Dr. Edward Fry’s Informal Reading Inventory K-3, 2nd Edition.
- How NOT to test reading: Running Records.
- A convienent battery of tests.
- Lexercise Free Dyslexia Text for Children. This online test includes nonsense words and the San Diego Quick Assessment.
- PBST-III Basic Phonics Skills Test. This looks like a pretty good test.
