To meet students where they are, Schools at Benton Community take literacy tests to assess where they are and figure out what intervention would be best to help them increase their fluency or comprehension skills. We take these tests throughout the year; Fall, Winter, and Spring. We are finishing up the testing window now so we can analyze the data to help provide appropriate instruction and interventions.
CBM Reading- This is a test for reading fluency. Students read three passages, each for one minute. We want to see how many words they can read in one minute to help determine their reading fluency. The fall benchmark for sixth grade is 144 wpm. If students do not meet the benchmark they become at risk of not being proficient and if they continually miss the benchmark throughout the year they will become persistently at risk. When students become persistently at risk their classroom teacher is required to teach an intervention that will help better their fluency.
Areading- This is a test for reading comprehension. Students will answer a variety of questions of different levels. As the student takes the test they will answer questions about vocabulary words, answer questions about short or long passages, and analyze what kind of writing a passage is trying to convey. The questions will get more difficult or easy depending on how they are doing on the test. We use this test to help know how students are comprehending what they read and if they need extra help in the area of comprehension. The fall benchmark for this test is 517.