Assessment Prompts with the Reading Comprehension Strategies

Carol Brewer
Oct 05, 2009

Learning-Focused has strengthened if not perfected the Acquisition Lesson with the new Assessment Prompts.  Assessment Prompts make the Distributed Summarizing and Distributed Guided Practice "come alive.”   If you were not quite sure how to implement the Distributed Summarizing and Distributed Guided Practice, Assessment Prompts will guide you through the process.  Use the following steps to think about and plan Assessment Prompts to help you incorporate and focus on reading comprehension throughout your lessons.

  • Think about what the students need to learn to answer the question
  • Look at the Essential Question for any comprehension connections or Identify the Text Structure of the reading material
  • Use the Text Structure/identified comprehension strategies to develop the format of each Assessment Prompt
  • Distribute the assessment prompts through the lesson at strategic points

Let's look at an example.  Think about teaching Weather in Science.  The Essential Question is, "How do I identify the different types of clouds?”   In order to answer this question students need to know:  1) the different types of clouds, 2) the characteristics of each type of cloud and 3) be able to recognize the different types of clouds based on characteristics.

Now, ask yourself, "What are the comprehension strategies that can be used to understand this content?"  In this one lesson, students could use their understanding of compare and contrast, inferencing, and any of the "ongoing" comprehension strategies such as prediction, visualization, questioning, and summarizing.  Choose the ones that will best help deepen students understanding of the specific material as well as provide an opportunity for students to apply and reinforce the use of comprehension strategies they have learned.  For this lesson we'll choose compare/contrast, visualization, and developing questions.

Now that we have identified what students must learn and the comprehension strategies that will assist them in learning that content we are ready to design the specific Assessment Prompts.  When students are reading the text that explains the differences (compare and contrast text structure) in the types of clouds, they can stop every now and then to summarize with their partner, and add that information to their compare and contrast graphic organizer (a matrix works great for comparisons).  The Assessment Prompt could be, "How do the first two types of clouds compare and contrast?"  When reading through the text, the students might have to infer or visualize the location of the different clouds to assist with the characteristics.  When the students stop and summarize this time, they might draw a picture of the different clouds in the sky.  The Assessment Prompt would be, "Close your eyes and visualize the location of the clouds in the sky."  "Share this 'picture in your mind' with your partner.”  The students could read the rest of the text and the third Assessment Prompt could be to create questions to ask their partner.  These questions should be answered in their Science writing journal.

Developing assessment prompts that incorporate reading comprehension skills and strategies is a powerful way to ensure that at the end of the lesson when it's time to answer the essential question; no student will be left behind.

For more on Assessment Prompts see Connecting Exemplary Practices in Acquisition Lessons and Unlocking the Secrets of the LEARNING-FOCUSED Strategies Model V.7. See the Learning-Focused Reading Resources in the Literacy Collection by clicking here.