"Norma has a reading age of 6 years."

What does this mean?

It is common practice in schools for teachers to obtain standardised test results in basic skills areas especially for younger students and older students such as Norma who present as experiencing learning difficulties. Norma's reading age was most likely obtained on one of several established standardised tests that enable comparisons to be made of an individual's score with an average obtained from a large representative sample of students of the same age.Often the sample is obtained from testing large numbers of children while they are attending school.Such tests often include a score on sight vocabulary, how many words can be recognised from a l ist of words of increasing difficulty plus a score for performance on a comprehension test in which the child reads a passage then answers questions about the meaning of the passage.

An example of a comprehension test item geared at about the six and one half year level would be:

a. "I have a pup .It is black and white.It is one year old. It sleeps in a box.

It likes to play with a ball of wool."

Where does the pup sleep?

The ability to recognise common words such as "big, little, book ", might also be included in the word recognition component of the test.

As is evident from this item child at this level does have some reading skill.

Back to Norma: The Characters

Enquiries/Comments to: mteach.IT@alex.edfac.usyd.edu.au