Get Answers to Questions About Online Reading Comprehension Testing

The Reading Screening web site was created to empower parents, teachers, and other professionals to have a broader understanding of reading, reading disabilities, phonological processing, and dyslexia. It is hoped that the Reading Screening site will be very useful to parents, teachers, and professionals as they try to more fully understand the nature of their child’s, student’s, or client’s reading difficulties.

The Reading Screening’s Summary of Results Report provides a comprehensive, specific, and professional reading assessment. No special training is necessary for the parent, teacher, or professional to perform the reading assessment. All of the instructions are available on each page of the Reading Screening. It is hoped that the parent can take the results of the reading assessment to his or her student’s school so that school officials will know precisely the nature of the reading difficulty. The child’s reading instruction can then be more appropriately created to meet the child’s reading instruction needs.

If the results suggest that the child is at-risk of having reading difficulties or dyslexia, or if the child is currently experiencing reading difficulties or dyslexia, there is a link to the CARRD Help Area. The CARRD’s Help Area provides information regarding the results of the Reading Screening, how to interpret the results of the Reading Screening, information concerning reading disabilities, dyslexia, the role phonological processing plays in reading assessment and reading instruction, how to motivate children who are poor readers, and what the parent, teacher, or professional can do to provide appropriate reading instruction for the child who might be experiencing reading difficulties or dyslexia.

The Reading Screening system was designed for an adult to administer to assess a child's reading and phonological processing abilities. Each of the 14 tasks is preceded by an instruction page that briefly describes the nature of the task and what you, the person who is giving the Reading Screening, should do. The tasks are presented one item at a time.

The Reading Screening was developed to be as easy as possible to give. Instructions are given on each page of each task with easy reference to instructions if further clarification is needed or if the adult giving the Reading Screening forgets the way the task is supposed to be presented, after a task has been paused.

Once the Reading Screening has been successfully completed, the child's/student's performance is analyzed and a report is generated that presents the child's/student's performance on each task and the overall score; the Global At Risk Score (GARS). From the GARS, the child's performance is rated as either At Risk, Marginally At Risk, or Not At Risk.

To prepare for giving the Reading Screening, it is strongly recommended that the adult who will be administering the tasks print the Instructions, read them, and become thoroughly familiar with them. The better informed the adult is, the smoother the Reading Screening will be. However, when giving the Reading Screening, all the things that will be said to the child or student is contained within each of the items. Although the more familiar the adult is with the tasks, the more accurate and reliable the results will be, the site was developed so that administration is as simple and straightforward as possible.

When you have decided to administer the Reading Screening, make sure that you and your child or student have comfortable chairs to sit in by the computer. Make sure that the room is as free of distractions as possible, which includes other family members or students. You will be reading the instructions presented on the computer to your child or student who will be sitting near the computer. For the first half of the Reading Screening your child or student does not need to see the computer screen. During the second half, he or she will need to interact with the Reading Screening by telling the names of letters, read words, and other things that he or she will see on the computer screen. You will still need to report your child or student's performance. You will still be the person who is giving the instructions for the Reading Screening and who is submitting the results.

If your child or student gets tired or needs a break, you can pause the Reading Screening and return to it later. Please remember your User Name and Password. You will need them to get back into the Reading Screening and resume where you stopped.

This web site is developed to assist parents, teachers, and professionals assess the reading abilities of children between the ages of 5 and 12 years of age. The results of the web-based Reading Screening Evaluation will help you to understand the strengths and weaknesses that your child or student has in relation to reading.

If you think that your child or student may have reading problems, you think that your child or student might have dyslexia, or you are concerned that your child or student is not performing up to his or her ability in reading, this web-based Reading Screening Evaluation could help you.

Depending on the age of your child/student and how advanced his or her skills are, the Reading Screening should take between 25 and 45 minutes. Time, however is not a factor. Feel free to take your time and to take breaks, if necessary.

Remember, please be patient with your child or student. The point of the Reading Screening is to determine your child's or student's strengths and weaknesses with regard to reading and the skills that are necessary for reading. The Reading Screening is appropriate for children between the ages of 5 and 12 years of age. So, your child or student may get some or many items incorrect. If you administer the Reading Screening as accurately and honestly as you can, you will begin the process of determining your child or student's reading skills. If those skills are deficient, you can get suggestions on this web site. Good luck!

There is no time limit for completing any of the Reading Screening tasks. At any point during the assessment, you can pause the Reading Screening. The next time you return, you will be able to start right back where you had left off.

Breaks are recommended. You have the option of completing the Reading Screening in a single session but there is certainly no requirement to do so. Take the time you need to complete the tasks. If needed, spread out the evaluation over multiple days.

After all of the tasks have been completed for your child/student, the results of the Reading Screening evaluation will be available to you immediately.

The results will be available from a generated report that presents the child's/student's performance on each task and the overall score; the Global At Risk Score(GARS). From the GARS, the child's/student's performance is rated as either At Risk, Marginally At Risk, or Not At Risk.

Dyslexia is defined as a learning disorder marked by an inability to read; dys (Greek, meaning difficult or disordered) and lexis (Greek, meaning word), hence difficult or disordered word. Dyslexia essentially means difficulty reading words. Researchers have now furthered the definition to include not only reading difficulties, but an impairment in areas of language development that is observed when the individual begins learning to read. These skills are measured in the Reading Screening assessment.

Learning to speak is a natural act.

The ability to learn to speak is natural and relatively effortless for nearly all infants and toddlers. For most infants, simply exposing them to a language guarantees that they will learn the language. Regardless of nationality, infants are generally born with the ability to utter all of the sounds that humans are capable of producing. After some time in a particular language environment, the infant will stop producing some sounds in favor of those that he or she is hearing in his or her language environment. The infant and young toddler's vocabulary also increases in leaps and bounds. For the most part, this process is seemingly so automatic and effortless that Noam Chomsky theorized that infants are born with a Language Acquisition Device (LAD). The LAD is a theoretic neurological device whose primary purpose is to help the individual to acquire language.

Learning to read is an unnatural, extremely effortful act.

Learning to read, on the other hand, is not a natural process and takes an extraordinary amount of effort. Allowing young children to have exposure to text without someone reading the text to them does not result in spontaneous reading.

Most young children are quite motivated to learn to read and look forward to attending school in anticipation of learning how to read. This excitement can turn to frustration and disappointment for children who are experiencing weaknesses in the skills that are necessary to begin learning to read.

Poor phonological processing abilities are related to reading difficulties.

Researchers have identified the causative agent involved in the difficulty some children have when trying to learn to read as phonological processing deficiencies. Phonological processing refers to the ability of the individual to understand that words are comprised of sounds and that these sounds can be used as linguistic building blocks. As an example, when children who are not at risk for reading difficulties are asked to say a word such as dog, and then to say it again without a particular sound, they are able to do it. That is, say dog without the /d/ sound. The child not at risk for reading difficulties would say og. Children at risk for reading difficulties typically are not as able to consistently do this. Learning to read involves decoding the text into sounds and then combining those sounds to produce words. Without the ability to understand that words are made up of sounds, children have a very serious difficulty learning to read. In other words, phonological processing is a prerequisite skill when learning to read.

Some children are able to essentially memorize the visual representation of a word along with the sounds that it represents. Unfortunately, this strategy fails when the child's memory system becomes overloaded. This is one of the reasons that many children who have reading difficulties are not identified until after third grade. This is when the memorization strategy fails.

The alphabetic principle.

When children come to understand that letters of the alphabet represent the sounds of language and that they can manipulate these sounds and symbols, they have the essential skills to begin the process of learning to read. Linguistic researchers refer to acquiring this ability as having learned the alphabetic principle. Comprehending the alphabetic principle is the key to deciphering the phonological code stored in the visual representation; the word. It is also the same strategy that adult readers use to read a word they have never seen before.

Reading difficulties are a social problem, not just an academic one.

Children with reading difficulties are not just disadvantaged academically, they are likely to experience a number of other important difficulties. They are likely to have lower self-esteem and experience some conflict with their parents.

Imagine knowing that you are relatively intelligent. You know that you are at least as smart as your friends. However, your friends are learning to read, but you are not. Unfortunately, children are likely to attribute their difficulties learning to read with "being stupid." Of course, they are not. But when children are unable to do particular tasks or do not have specific skills, they typically attribute this lack of ability as a deficiency in intelligence. In addition, parents get very frustrated with their children with reading difficulties. They know how critically important the ability to read is. Teachers many times suggest that in first grade children learn to read, while after third grade, children read to learn. The educational system relies on child's ability to read. Parents also know that, to a large extent, their children's ability to later gain and maintain employment will be related to their children's ability to read. Most jobs today require the applicant or employee to have the ability to read. Parents who are not aware of the reasons for reading difficulties sometimes believe that since their children are intelligent enough to learn to read and are not doing well learning to read, are simply not trying hard enough. This sometimes leads to harsh and hurtful words. Because parents love their children and want the best for them, they feel that they need to help motivate their children to work harder. Regrettably, this motivation does not work. Children with reading difficulties need specific and explicit instruction that will not improve with "increased motivation" or with the simple passage of time. Waiting simply delays improvement and widens the gap between good and poor readers.

Reading Screening

The Reading Screening was created to help parents, teachers, and other professionals thoroughly understand the nature of their child, student, or client's reading ability. It is hoped that the results of the Reading Screening, and the assistance offered at the CARRD web site will not only provide information about reading, but will help to clarify the individual's skills and abilities and to provide suggestions for improving their phonological processing and reading abilities. In essence, correcting a reading difficulty will do much more than just improve academic skills. It opens up tremendous opportunity that might not otherwise be available to the child with reading difficulties

CARRD—The Center for the Assessment and Remediation of Reading Difficulties.

Established in 1996 after nearly a decade of research and development. The CARRD offers three programs:

• the Identification and Intervention program (IIP)
• the After School & Summer Program (ASSP)
• the ADHD Screening Program

Web Browser

The Reading Screening site is developed conforming to XHTML 1.0 Transitional standards. Netscape, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, as well as other browsers generally support this W3C standard.

If you are having difficulty browsing this site, please let us know. Please, send us a message if you experience difficulties.

Sounds

Some of the tasks in the Reading Screening assessment will include sound bits for complimenting some of the question/responses.

To test to see if your computer system can please give the Sound Test a try.

If you do NOT remember your Reading Screening password, please use the Password Recovery located on the Guest Services page.

If an individual decides not to begin a Reading Screening assessment after he or she has become a member of the Reading Screening system, the user is entitled to receive a full refund provided that less than 15 days have passed since enrolling a child. If the user enrolled a child who is unable to begin a Reading Screening assessment, the user can also request that the enrollment be transferred to another child.

Please note, once an assessment has been started, no refunds or transfers will be allowed.

To request a refund or transfer an assessment, submit an email message to CustomerService@readingscreening.org with specifics for the request.

If you need to know more about the web-based Reading Screening Evaluation, please use the Comments/Questions form or send an email to questions@readingscreening.org.