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Reading Grade Level Tests and Diagnostic Phonics Tests | ||
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There are a variety of tests you can use to determine reading grade level. There are also some diagnostic tests to determine if phonics training will be helpful. Spelling tests are on another page. The Miller Word Identification Assessment, (MWIA) is a diagnostic test that measures the reading speed and accuracy of 2 different sets of words--sight words and phonetically regular words that are not commonly taught as sight words. If you have a slowdown of more than 10% on this test, you should try our online spelling lessons. For a slowdown greater than 15%, our phonics lessons are recommended. The MWIA is available from Don Potter's Education Page. The MWIA is a very powerful test which you can use to determine if you could benefit from phonics instruction. The New Elizabethian Test is a diagnostic based on a constructed language. It can determine if phonics training will be beneficial. It can also be used to pinpoint phonetic areas of weakness, and is correlated with our online phonics lessons and spelling lessons to help you pinpoint areas needing further study and send you to our corresponding lessons. For a quick check of reading grade level, you can try the Wide Range Test, also available from Don Potter. It tests up to the 12th grade level. A reading grade level test for grade levels 1 - 6 is available at the NRRF. Do part 2 first. Part 2 is reading grade levels. Part 1 shows different areas of phonics knowledge. A nicely formated for printing version of the NRRF test is available at Don Potter's Education Page. Below is a reading grade level test I developed for grade levels 8, 10, and 12. This test has not been standardized. Its reading grade levels are based on Fry. The highest grade level at which the student misses 2 or less words is that student's grade level. Stop after the student misses more than 2 words on any of the tests. For example, a student who missed 3 words on the first test would be reading below the 8th grade level. Take the NRRF test above to determine their reading grade level. A student who missed 2 words on the grade level 8 essay and 4 words on the grade level 10 essay is reading at the 8th grade level. A student who missed 1 word on all three tests is reading at or above the 12th grade level. From Ben-Hur His shoes were brought him, and in a few minutes Ben-Hur sallied out to find the fair Egyptian. The shadow of the mountains was creeping over the Orchard of Palms in advance of night. Afar through the trees came the tinkling of sheep bells, the lowing of cattle, and the voices of the herdsmen bringing their charges home. Life at the Orchard, it should be remembered, was in all respects as pastoral as life on the scantier meadows of the desert. (8th Grade Level; 2 errors permitted) Errors ________ From Sanders New Fourth Reader, 1860 It was the boast of Augustus Caesar, that he found the City of Rome composed of brick, and left it marble. But the Imperial City, even in the days of its Augustan splendor and magnificence, could not boast of one of those philanthropic institutions which are the chief ornaments of our modern metropolis. It had its long aqueducts of marble stretching across the valleys, and its sculptured arches spanning the streets--its triumphal pillars piercing the skies; its Amphitheater of colossal dimensions, and its every form of classic elegance and might. But not one hospital for the sick: not one retreat for the insane; not one asylum for the blind; and not one refuge for the orphan; not one institution for the mute. (10th Grade Level; 2 errors permitted) Errors ________ excerpt from The Federalist 22 The organization of Congress is itself utterly improper for the exercise of those powers which are necessary to be deposited in the Union. A single assembly may be a proper receptacle of those slender, or rather fettered, authorities, which have been heretofore delegated to the federal head; but it would be inconsistent with all the principles of good government, to entrust it with those additional powers which, even the moderate and more rational adversaries of the proposed Constitution admit, ought to reside in the United States. If that plan should not be adopted, and if the necessity of the Union should be able to withstand the ambitious aims of those men who may indulge magnificent schemes of personal aggrandizement from its dissolution, the probability would be, that we should run into the project of conferring supplementary powers upon Congress, as they are now constituted; and either the machine, from the intrinsic feebleness of its structure, will moulder into pieces, in spite of our ill-judged efforts to prop it; or, by successive augmentations of its force an energy, as necessity might prompt, we shall finally accumulate, in a single body, all the most important prerogatives of sovereignty, and thus entail upon our posterity one of the most execrable forms of government that human infatuation ever contrived. (12th Grade Level; 2 errors permitted) Errors ________ | |
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