443 Informal Assessment of Reading

By using teacher-student conferences in a way that all students can express themselves , teachers create a space for increased learning . This idea touches on what McKenna and Stahl (2003 ) call The Contextual Approach ' one distinct from a learning style model (p . 3

The third informal reading assessment , workbooks and worksheets , enable teachers to focus on individual students and their needs in practicing a specific skill (Pikulski and Shanahan , 1982 ,

. 8 . The numerous workbooks on the market and worksheets on the internet make this approach a relative quick and time-saving way

to assess student learning . of the informal instructional methods should be used alone and this particular assessment method highlights the danger of approaching one method as a singular way to help students improve their reading skills . Reading instructors want students to not only improve their facility with recognizing and constructing words , sentences , and paragraphs , we also want students to make inferences , ask questions about the implications of a particular way of thinking , and synthesize multiple sources of information on an issue (Caldwell , 2002 ,

. 8 . The ability to perform these latter tasks is consistent with what McKenna and Stahl (2003 ) describe as strategic reading knowledge (p . 19

Finally , the fourth assessment technique , reading portfolios , enable students to develop an informed perspective about their own reading and writing . Documenting student progress is one of the three reasons for assessing reading (Caldwell , 2002 ,

. 11 . The benefit of this approach as an informal technique is that is shows the student the specific kind of improvement made in any given area . Unlike standardized tests , which compare students to a national norm or a cutoff score (Caldwell , 2002 br

. 12-13 , records of student progress assess a student 's learning in the area of reading over time . It also provides feedback to the instructor...