Assignment 4: Content Area Reading Instruction

Assignment 3: Content Area Reading Instruction 

The content area reading inventory is a teacher-created assessment that is used as a diagnostic tool; it allows you to determine reading speed and comprehension. Because the CARI is an informal tool, it allows for you to use it at any time during instruction, which in turn allows for more differentiation and adjustment of plans. It, in essence, creates flexibility in lessons and learning. 

The steps to administering a CARI are as follows: 

• ·      Explain the purpose of the test to students. 
• ·      Mention that is informal and will not be graded.
• ·      Explain that it will be used to guide learning and lessons. 
• ·      Briefly introduce the chosen text and give students some direction in their reading to help facilitate comprehension.  (Vacca et al., 2021, pp. 110-111)

The purpose of a CARI is to obtain information “needed to adjust instruction and meet student needs” (Vaca, p. 110). A CARI can be broken up over several days in order to gauge students’ comprehension, knowledge, reading speed. This in significant because it still allows for gauging student understanding in a way that does not interrupt daily lessons. 

A typical CARI will include a reading passage, either a shorter text or an excerpt from a longer text. For younger grades, the passage may be around 250-500, and for higher levers, the passage may be upwards of 1,000 words. For younger grades, you may have around 10 questions, and upper grades will be around 15 or higher. Question types will be similar to those found on standardized tests for each grade level. Questions should represent various levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy or DOK levels.

                                                                                     

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CARI in a 7th Grade RLA Classroom

 

Next steps: I would have a private conversation with students about their results. I would discuss what they did well on and areas of growth. I would also explain to students the relationship between reading fluency and comprehension. 

 After reviewing the data, I noticed that students struggled the most with how author’s use of language developed tone, mood and voice and using text evidence to support a response. This was followed closely by identifying theme.

Because a majority of students missed one or more of these question types (there was more than one question on 7.6C and 7.9F), these are concepts that I would focus on in the classroom and provide more support to students on. On 7.9F and 7.6C, I would do a think aloud and model how to find and answer these types of question whole class. I would also discuss 7.7A at the same time. 

I would then provide examples for students to work on in groups, with various degrees of complexity (for students who got these questions correct, they would work on a text that was more complex than for students who misses these questions).

 I would do station work for some of the less missed question types. There would be a station for 7.2B and 7.5F. I would also have more stations on the other concepts to continue to provide more practice for students. To address reading comprehension, I would implement daily timed reading for students. We would also practice read alouds. Some indirect ways to improve reading speed would be to work on vocabulary and increase background knowledge. 

Resources: 

Improve Reading Fluency

Implement Small Groups

More Information on a CARI

Reference:

 Vacca, R. T., Anne, J., & Mraz, M. (2021). Content area reading: Literacy and learning across the curriculum. Pearson.