This spring, about a year after we first introduced it, there is a lot of buzz about MAP Reading Fluency! Check out these educators who have been writing about our groundbreaking, K-3 oral reading fluency assessment. And, one of our own early learning experts—Lynne Kulich—recently led a webinar about what makes MAP Reading Fluency unique, A Better Way to Assess Early Readers: Discover MAP Reading Fluency.
- In MAP Reading Fluency: A New Tool to Save Teachers Time and Focus on Instruction, educator and writer Shaelynn Farnsworth writes in her review of MAP Reading Fluency: “I want to stress, NOTHING takes the place of an Expert Teacher, but when resources like this become available and save teachers time to then reclaim and use for instruction, it is a WIN-WIN for kids.”
- Over at Emerging EdTech, Kelly Walsh, who focuses on exploring the use of technology as an instructional tool, writes this about MAP Reading Fluency: “This powerful tool set can save teachers a great deal of time while also providing instructional guidance to support individualized, adaptable reading development for every student. It is a vast improvement over having to sit with students one at a time in order to assess these vital measures.”
- In Reading Fluency Assessment for Elementary Students, educator, author, and edtech consultant Dr. Monica Burns writes that, “Connecting with NWEA, the not-for-profit creator of MAP Reading Fluency — within a few days of an email from an educator asking about online reading assessments — seemed like a techy-coincidence. I was ready to learn more about MAP Reading Fluency and had a chance to dive into their resources.”
- Here on Teach. Learn. Grow., NWEA customer Carrie Wright, the Curriculum and Instruction Director at Christian Life School, wrote a two-part series (which you can find here and here) about her experience as an educator using MAP Reading Fluency this year.
MAP Reading Fluency is the first and only K-3 computer adaptive oral reading fluency assessment using speech recognition technology with automatic scoring. The 20-minute assessment of oral reading fluency, comprehension, and foundational reading skills is delivered online, enabling group administration and saving teachers hours of time. MAP Reading Fluency with Coach also gives students personalized, in-the-moment tech-enhanced tutoring, saving teachers time while giving kids the support they need.
The measurement approach to MAP Reading Fluency is a bit different from other fluency assessments. Rather than looking at fluency in isolation, we use a holistic approach that considers comprehension alongside fluency. The purpose of reading is to derive meaning, and the purpose of gaining fluency is to support comprehension of text. Too often a child will learn basic decoding skills but lag in comprehension.
In third grade and beyond, it will be difficult for that child to keep up. Comprehension is important to screen in addition to fluency, and MAP Reading Fluency includes basic comprehension questions about each text, as well as vocabulary and listening comprehension measures for pre-readers. This way, the test is closely aligned to the way reading is taught. Meaning matters, and we’d never want to suggest otherwise to kids by measuring them based only on their reading rate.
MAP Reading Fluency gives teachers actionable data about individual needs, regardless of where kids are on the path from emergent to fluent reading. Reports include either an instructional reading level and reader profile, or an early literacy skill profile that indicates the child’s progress through the sequence of foundational reading skills that come before fluent reading. Teachers get an efficient universal screening process that provides both outcomes: valid screening data and actionable instructional data in one step.
As the test adapts up, it’s also going to present more challenging material to kids who demonstrate an understanding of grade-level text. Rather than look only at the rate of reading across grade-level text, we look for the ability to process ever more complex text. This aligns to true growth in reading, not just picking up speed on easy text.
To learn more about the scope of content used in the assessment, the structure of the adaptive test, what the reporting looks like, and what’s coming this fall, be sure to check out the webinar recording. You can access that webinar here.
