Assessment

Finding the appropriate level of text for beginning readers is an incredibly important task in demonstrating beneficial reading instruction. Students should be provided with text that is a balance between support and challenge. In other words, a child should be able to develop confidence while reading and understanding through comprehension, but it should be difficult enough to provide a challenge and require the reader to do some "reading work" to improve their skills. Grade-level approximations are frequently not suitable for all children in that perspective grade and should not merely be expected to read at one level across the whole classroom. Each child should be examined to determine the abilities that the student has. Instruction is said to be most effective when the reader can read about 9 out of 10 words and comprehend the meaning of the passage with little difficulty, this puts the students at successfully reading 90-95% of the words. More difficult text is said to be at a child's frustration level, which is not appropriate for learning or reading instruction. Giving a child text that is too challenging for them can damage their reading and their confidence, which would affect them negatively in various ways.

Three important aspects to keep in mind when establishing the correct text for a student are, the complexity of concepts and familiarity of subject matter, the degree of predictability of the text, and the proportion of unique or repeated words to familiar words. Each of these aspects provides different sections of a leveling system including vocabulary, size and layout of print, predictability, illustration support, and complexity of concepts.

Reading benchmarks are effective in early literacy and provide teachers with benchmarks for students to reach in their reading efficiency and success. Standardized tests should not be used for early reading assessment, but it is still important to collect data on the instructional reading levels of first- and second-grade students at two points in the year. The leveling process is improved and extended as research continues to be conducted, which helps teachers and reading instructors to be as successful as they can be for the students' success.