Strengths: Great for getting to know a student’s likes, dislikes, areas of interest and personality. I learned a lot about my focus student from using these assessments. They could help with choosing texts and/or genres for a student, setting up book clubs or even classroom libraries when analyzed on a classroom scale. These assessments can be administered individually or in a group setting.

Weaknesses: Students may tell a teacher what they think he or she wants to hear on the Here’s How I Feel about Reading inventory (I think this happened with Sarah!). These are both interest based rather than skill based. 

Suggested Use: These would be great to have students complete during the first week of school, while getting to know one’s students. The results could be used for choosing texts and/or genres for a student, or for setting up groups or classroom libraries. 

I also gave Sarah the Motivation to Read Profile Assessment (Malloy, Marinak, Gambrell and Mazzoni, 2013). This was a very interesting assessment that was more involved to administer and score, but provided very interesting learning about Sarah as a reader.

Strengths: This assessment measures students in two areas, Value of Reading and Reading Self-Concept, by asking students questions that relate to their feelings about and approach to reading. (I don’t think that Sarah had any idea of the information I was gathering when I administered this assessment!) It gives a student a score in both areas, and provides guidelines for further assessment when a student’s score falls below a certain line. These assessments can be administered individually or in a group setting.

Weaknesses: This assessment does not provide information regarding reading skill, or data from which to diagnose specific reading issues. 

Suggested Use: This assessment could be included in a beginning of year assessment battery to determine students’ attitudes toward reading. It could also be used by an intervention teacher when meeting or intervening with a new student. I liked the tool for use with my focus student because it helped to confirm thoughts that her parents had about her feelings about reading, and gave me an idea of how to approach my work with her.

Thanks for reading!
Valora Unowsky

The Motivations to Read profile broke down motivation to read into two categorie: Value of Reading and Reading Self-concept. I think that being able to understand how the student views reading (value) and how they see themselves as a reader (self-concept) is an integral part of understanding how the student will perform in reading. It is my belief that students that place higher value on reading will be more willing to work hard, where students that place a lower value on reading would be more resistant to working hard. Having access to this information would ideally help guide and motivate students who feel that reading has little or no value. 

A large weakness that I see in the Motivations to Read Profile is that they are multiple choice questions. Many times when I was reading the survey aloud to Marg, she would ask clarifying questions, especially when it came to the time questions. Often, sometimes, almost never and never are confusing to kids! She asked me many times, “What is the difference between often and sometimes?”

I currently teach fifth grade. I think this survey would be awesome to use at open house or in the first few days of school in order to get a good sense of how my students see themselves as readers. I do think though that it would need to be in conjuncture with other assessments, like an interest assessment. 

The survey of adolescent attitudes is a very simple and quick way to survey an entire class to gather information. It has 18 questions and uses a simple rating system (1= very bad, 6= very good). The major strength it has is easily letting the teacher know what type of assignments would engage each child. 

Survey’s with rating systems are limited due to the fact that everyone views the rating system differently. Justin likes to read and so he scored everything a three or above. I could see certain students who would rate everything a 1 (very bad) just because they don’t enjoy school or reading. I would rather have them rate each marker 1-18 picking their favorite and their least favorite so I could better use the information. 

The Survey of Adolescent Reading Attitudes was extremely short and easy to give. I think that a middle school teacher could use it in their class to determine creative ways to engage their students. I also think that it could help them target and work on interventions with the students who do not enjoy reading. Again, I think that you would need to use this survey with an interest survey in order to hook the readers who rate reading low. 

Christine Moren

I completed two assessment tools on my 2^nd grade student who goes to elementary school in Minneapolis. He completed the the assessments from McKenna and Stahl’s (2009) Assessments for Reading Instruction calledReader Self-Perception Scale (p. 231-234) and the Elementary Reading Attitude Survey (p. 215-223).

 

Strengths: I thought both assessments provided me with valuable information about my student and helped me get to know him better. The answers were great conversation starters and he seemed to enjoy telling me his reasoning behind his answers. I knew he read a lot at home and at school, but I didn’t know how he felt about himself as a reader or his attitude about reading. I could tell that he was really thinking about his answers to the questions. 

 

Limitations:

While I learned a lot about my student, I’m not sure how reliable the answers were that he gave me. I think the questions could be answered differently depending on how you look at the question. For example, he answered the question “I am getting better at reading” as strongly disagree. I asked him to explain his answer and he said he is not getting better at reading because he is already good at reading. When I explained the meaning behind the question, he changed his answer to undecided. Additionally, I think if I gave him the same surveys tomorrow, he would answer them differently. He told me that he loves reading at home and at school, but in the survey he circled the very upset Garfield explaining how he feels about reading in school. That did not match his true feelings. I think both assessments have a lot to do with the current mood of the student, not a true representation of the student’s attitude or self-perception. 

 

Suggested Use: 

I think both surveys would be great to give students in the beginning of the year to get to know students better. I also think it would be interesting to give it to them at the middle and end of the year to see how students have changed throughout the year. It could be helpful to use the results to start conversations with students and see how attitudes or feelings could evolve.

 

-Megan Stevens

I used the Adolescent Reading Attitudes Survey (McKenna & Stahl, pp. 243-245) with my 9th grade student.

This survey is helpful for instructors when they want to find out if there is a discrepancy in where students like to read. I also think it is a good tool because it shows that many activities that students typically like to do are essentially reading activities such as participating in online chat rooms. I also think the activities are relevant in students lives and is not intimidating for students.

This survey does not mention anything about whether the students thinks that they are good or bad readers or if those kinds of motivations are present in their lives. This survey also does not discuss genres. In addition, most of the students would have to have internet and cellphone access outside of the classroom for this to be relevant.

I would suggest to use this survey with another survey that discusses more genres or other motivations to get a better picture of what is important to the student. This should be used at the beginning of the school year to get a better picture of what the students motivations are toward recreational versus academic and print versus digital reading.

From the text Assessment for Reading Instruction I used the Adolescent Reading Attitudes Survey and the Title Recognition Test with an incoming 8^th grade student. 

 

Some of the strengths of both of these tools were that they were very easy to use. The 8^th grade student was able to complete both of the independently with a quick set of directions. They were also quick to administer, taking a total of 15 minutes.  A strength of the Adolescent Reading Attitudes Survey was the vast specifics it gave me as a teacher. It also would be a spring board for conversations I had with my students during conferring time to delve deeper into getting to know them. Both tools were very easy and quick to score. 

 

I have some hesitation about the Title Recognition Test. I find it interesting the correlation to literacy exposure. The student that I administered this to, is an avid reader and has consistently been exposed to a variety of books in both school and her home, but yet barely met the ‘average literacy exposure.’ It doesn’t seem to match what I know about the child. So one limitation could be the effect of the child’s interest compared to the set list of titles. Another limitation with the Adolescent Reading Attitudes Survey would be the 6-point scale. Adolescents might be more decisive if the scale was smaller. 

 

I could see these tools administered in a whole class setting. I would also see value in administering the attitude survey a few times throughout the year to monitor my students’ attitudes about reading.  As the teacher, I would also look for patterns throughout my class. For instance, if many felt negative about researching online I would investigate this pattern, could it be that this is an area where the students need to build more capacity?

 

 

I used Traits of a Reader-Self Evaluation Rubric with my 9th grade student.

One strength of this assessment is that it asks questions of a student’s use of comprehension strategies. I think this is important to assess because if we as educators are teaching comprehension strategies, I think we should have students evaluate if they are actually using them. I also like that one of the questions is if the student actively looks for changes in the character. I have not seen this type of question in many assessments, but it is important as we move toward “close reading.” 

Some of the questions are a little childish for secondary students. Some students may be offended by the elementary level of the questions.

I would suggest using these questions with upper elementary students because most of the students should have be exposed to all elements of the evaluation rubric. I may even use this with 6th or 7th grade students because it could give teachers better understanding of students who struggle with comprehension.

2)Strengths for Elementary Reading Attitude Survey: Garfield pictures were inviting and fun, age appropriate questions, easy for kids to match a picture to how they felt,  four answer choices, gave results in two areas(recreational and academic reading) as well as a full scale score, clear administration directions, percentile ranks by grade.

 

Strengths for  Motivations for Reading Questionnaire: age appropriate questions, four answer choices, administration and scoring directions, questions were phrases from a child's

 Perspective

3)Limitations for Elementary Reading Attitude Survey: middle pictures were hard to discern difference in feelings 

Limitations for  Motivations for Reading Questionnaire: 1-4 answer choice was confusing at times, scoring was a little tedious

 

4)I would use both at the beginning of the year to get to know my readers. I see using them the first two weeks when we are making goals and setting expectations in reading.   Both were very age appropriate for 4th and 5th graders.  The Attitude survey could easily go down a couple of grades as well.  The motivations questionnaire could go up a couple of grades.