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Quick and Easy Adult Reading Assessments

It would be nice if TABE scores told teachers and students what they needed to know to support reading instruction. Unfortunately, those scores are rarely valuable for instructional purposes because they tell little (if anything at all) about how the reader decodes, what the reader's fluency is, or how well the reader comprehends. Moreover, sometimes the TABE scores don't reflect the level at which an adult can read comfortably

By administering a simple and efficient 3-minute fluency probe, ABLE teachers can determine students' reading levels as well as some preliminary information about decoding (or word identification), fluency, and comprehension. Teachers can search the Eureka Trade Books collection to find authentic texts for students to read independently or to use for instruction.

The following 3-minute probes, developed by Dianna Baycich and Nancy Padak at the OLRC, are adapted for adult learners from Tim Rasinski and Nancy Padak's books Three-Minute Reading Assessments (New York: Scholastic, 2005). Their use provides reliable data on adult students' reading ability.

Below are links to the reading passages as well as instructions for administering the probes in PDF format.

bullet Directions for Administering the Graded Passages
bullet Form A
bullet Form B

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