Reading Testing

www.thephonicspage.org Reading Grade Level Tests and Diagnostic Phonics Tests

There are a variety of tests you can use to determine reading grade level. There are also some diagnostic tests to determine if phonics training will be helpful. Spelling tests are on another page.

The Miller Word Identification Assessment (MWIA) is a diagnostic test that measures the reading speed and accuracy of 2 different sets of words–sight words and phonetically regular words that are not commonly taught as sight words. If you have a slowdown of more than 10% on this test, you should try our online spelling lessons. For a slowdown greater than 15%, our phonics lessons are recommended. The MWIA is available from Don Potter’s Education Page. The MWIA is a very powerful test which you can use to determine if you could benefit from phonics instruction. A much shorter version has been developed and tested, it is the MWIA Version 3 It also has a short version of the original MWIA I called the MWIA 1 short. To help you understand the MWIA scores, 40L has developed a document called Understanding and Using MWIA Scores. You can also watch 40L’s YouTube MWIA playlist for more about the MWIA.

books.google.com The Iowa Spelling Scales: Their Derivation, Uses, and Limitations, Volume 3

www.thephonicspage.org Ayres Test

One of the most famous lists of spelling words in the history of reading instruction is the Ayers list. It was developed with tests of thousands of children in schools throughout the United States in 1914 and 1915. The most common 1,000 words at that time were tested. You can test your children today using the Ayres scale and see how they compare with children taught with good phonics and spelling programs in the early 1900’s.

The book that Ayres wrote explaining his scale and how to use it to test a classroom of children or an individual child is called “A Measuring Scale for Ability in Spelling” by Leonard P. Ayres, 1915. It is free online

from Google Books . Instructions on how to give the test to an individual student are on page 37, the scale you’ll need to reference is on page 28, and the word lists you’ll need to use start on page 51.