Diagnostic Assessments
The diagnostic assessment service provided at Reading Now consists of the administration of a variety of assessment measures to determine your child’s strengths and weaknesses as a reader. The diagnostic assessment will be administered one on one with your child by a certified, trained educational professional. This diagnostic assessment will provide data regarding your child’s reading skills in the areas of vocabulary, comprehension, fluency, phonics and phonemic awareness. The 2 main assessments administered will be the Gray Oral Reading Test and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, along with a number of other assessments that measure reading capabilities. These combined provide a superior view of your child's reading abilities.
After completion of the diagnostic assessment, a detailed, personalized summary report will be written by Reading NOW. This summary report is about 5 to 6 pages, and shares scores, reading levels and areas determined as strengths and weaknesses of your child as a reader. The report also provides reading instructional goals and instructional recommendations for specific strategies and activities to do with your child that will address your child’s weaknesses in the area of reading. It has also been shared with the schools to refine focus on the areas of instruction.
After completion of the initial assessment, we will hold a conference with you. This conference will be to review the findings of the diagnostic assessment and to discuss options for signing up at Reading NOW for tutoring sessions. If you decide to register for tutoring and follow through with all of the sessions, a second assessment would be completed with a report at the end of the tutoring sessions. This second assessment would allow you and us to determine areas of growth in the child’s reading over the course of the tutoring sessions. This second assessment would be provided as part of the package of signing up for the tutoring sessions.
Tutoring
• After the initial screening and conference, parents have the opportunity to register their child for small group tutoring sessions held twice a week for 7 or 15 weeks per session. A session is designated as running from early September to mid-December (excluding holidays and scheduled days off) or from mid-January to mid-April.
• The small group tutoring sessions will consist of 2 to 3 students MAXIMUM with similar reading instructional needs, which were determined by the initial screening data. Your child will be taught by certified teachers with additional training and/or specialization in the area of reading/literacy instruction.
• Each tutoring session will consist of specific instruction in the five Scientifically Based Reading Research (SBRR) components of phonics, fluency, phonemic awareness, vocabulary and comprehension. These five components are the areas identified by the National Reading Panel, through the review of the latest research in reading instruction, that are necessary for students to have in order to become successful readers.
• Specific reading skills and strategies will be addressed using a variety of materials and activities to address each student’s reading instructional needs.
• Activities, terminology, reading strategies and skills will be highly correlated to what students do in their school setting. This link will allow your child to make connections and easily transfer the reading skills and strategies learned in the tutoring session to their reading work at school. This transfer and connection of skills and strategies is intended to promote more positive results for students’ reading achievement, and improve CONFIDENCE and SELF-ESTEEM!
• Upon completion of the 7 or 15 week sessions, students will be re-administered the reading diagnostic screening to determine areas of reading achievement and improvement. A decision by you and Reading NOW can then be made to continue tutoring for an additional session or exit the program.