Fountas and Pinnell Benchmark Assessment of Reading Simplified

Fountas and Pinnel had first published their Benchmark Assessment for the primary grades in 1996 . This assessment was for primary reading levels 1 – 30. They have now published an assessment kit that covers grades k – 8 making it easier to assess students who have a wide range of reading abilities and do not just fall into the intermediate level reading expectations.

The levels are as follows:

Depending on the grade you have, you would need to pick either Benchmark System 1 or Benchmark System 2.

These levels would have students fall within our reporting guide:

• not yet meeting expectations

• approaching Expectations

• meeting expectations

• exceeding expectations

For example grade five levels run from s through w. If a student was assessed in April and reading at an s, then they would be approaching expectations as they are nearing the end of the school year. Ideally, your grade five student would start the year at an s or t and move towards a u or v by the end of the year.

Primary years tend to focus on decoding, while the intermediate years will focus on comprehension. This does not mean to say that meaning is forgotten in primary nor decoding in intermediate.

Administering and Scoring the Fountas & Pinnell Benchmark System

Things you should know: • this does take 20 minutes with each student

• you will quickly get a “read” on where the student’s ability lies

• it will give you a much better understanding of what area a student need help in with their reading and comprehension so that you can focus your lessons along those lines

• this information can be used to pick reading material and form guided reading groups

Oral Reading Introduce the book: read the standardized introduction to the reader. This is on your record sheet as well as on the front of the book.

Have the student start reading: record the errors made during their reading (note: for intermediate students, it is far more difficult to mark every word so just make marks on words they mispronounce, don’t know or self-correct). Some examples are:

O - omit T - teacher told Sc – self-correct ^ - inserts a word ward reads a word incorrectly word

Intermediate classes have generally 25 – 30 students and therefore take longer to complete the assessment. This simplified version makes it more manageable. You want to code the main errors and the self-corrections separately. Fountas and Pinnel have a very good system, however it uses detailed coding conventions that take a lot of time.

If you are administering a primary running record, learning to code and score the record properly is important and this quick version may not be appropriate.

Total the errors and the self-corrections: Self-corrections are important as they show that they student is developing reading strategies but they do not count as errors.

Summing it all up

If you start an assessment and the student has a lot of difficulty, then an easier text should be used. Ideally the student should have an accuracy rate of 96% (instructional) and an understanding of 2 or 3.

Use the assessment to place “like students” in guided reading groups.

Make any additional notes on the record for future reference.

Use the information obtained from the assessments to plan mini-lessons (i.e. remember to read titles and sub-titles or look for base words in words that are being decoded).