Dynamic Assessment of Oral Reading Fluency for Second Graders

Abstract

Purpose: The primary objective of this study was to examine the feasibility of using dynamic assessment to distinguish struggling readers from non-struggling readers during an oral reading fluency task with monolingual English-speaking second graders. Method: Six children (two with high reading level and four with low reading level) participated in the study. Children participated in two sessions of dynamic assessment, which were each thirty minutes in length and separated by two days. A timed one-minute cold oral reading served as pretest 1 and another timed one-minute cold oral reading of a different story served as pretest 2. Children participated in a 25 minute mediated learning experience, which the children reviewed their decoding errors in a systematic fashion and reread the passages from pretest 2 chorally and independently. Finally, the children were timed for a hot read using the pretest 2 passage and a transfer reading. The first dynamic assessment session consisted of all narrative passages and the second dynamic assessment session consisted of all expository passages. Words correct per minute and accuracy were scored for each reading. Overall children’s responsivity was scored using a mediated learning observation form. Results: The difference in words correct per minute in hot to transfer narrative reads as well as the modifiability of children after the mediated learning experience session and transfer stage were found to exhibit distinctions between the high reading level and low reading level groups. Discussion: Results suggest that the difference in words correct per minute in hot to transfer narrative reads as well as the modifiability of children after the mediated learning experience session and transfer stage are indicators of children’s reading ability. Clinical implications and future research are discussed for application of procedures to other populations of children.