How to Assess Independent Reading During Remote or Hybrid Learning

One of the biggest challenges we have had to face when teaching remotely is how to assess our students’ independent reading. During a normal school year, we provide twenty minutes at the start of class each day for students to silently read. During that time we walk around and confer with each of our students independently. During our conferences, we discuss our students’ reading lives. We assess their reading habits and discuss reading strategies to help our students grow as readers. We also take that time to recommend new books (admittedly our favorite part). 

So, with shelter in place orders in effect in our county, all schools in our district will be taught remotely until at least January. We needed to come up with a plan to be able to assess our students’ reading lives in a way that worked for not only remote learning, but also for the hybrid format when we start teaching that way in January. Without having authentic conversations about our students’ reading lives, it is very hard to determine the readers from the non-readers. 

Below is a list of ways we assess our students’ independent reading during remote and soon to be hybrid instruction. 

Reading Conferences

The most effective way to assess whether a student is actually reading at home is to hold a reading conference. During remote learning, we use the breakout room feature in Zoom. During silent reading, we push each student into their own breakout room and join individual rooms one at a time to hold our one-on-one reading conferences. These reading conferences look very similar to the ones we hold in person during the normal school year. We use our handy paper reading conference logs (link me) to take notes and refer back to when conferencing with our students. 

We like to verbally conference with students twice a month or every two weeks. We have 30-34 students, so it takes us about two weeks to have a real conversation with each student about his/her reading. During conferences we talk with our students about characterization, plot, conflict, theme, point of view, predictions or series analysis. We also go over each student’s reading level test scores, reading pacing goals, and book suggestions.

Written Reading Responses

We expect our students to write two written reflections per month. We designate two weeks throughout the month where students pick one day to reflect instead of independently reading. This helps to give our students agency and freedom to complete the assignment in class depending on where they are at in a particular book. We assign the reading response through Google Classroom and provide our students with the Reading Reflection PDFs and an editable Google Slide. We attach a rubric that we have created as a team to the assignment, which makes grading the written reading responses a dream. It also provides our students with expectations for their written reading responses. 

Reading Selfies

We got this idea from Megan DuVarney Forbes from “Too Cool for Middle School”. She posted a video last year about how she started grading her students’ reading. She creates a Google Slide for each of her students and has them take a selfie with their book and then write a one sentence summary of what they are reading. 

We took her directions a step further and change up our expectations depending on the month. Some months we have our students focus on summarizing, other months we have our students analyze characterization, plot, or foreshadowing. Sometimes we have them work on their reading strategies such as making inferences, predictions, or we have them discuss what they visualized or their schema and connections they had with the book. We try to mix it up depending on what we are teaching.

Book Talk Videos

Similar to the reading selfie, we use Flip Grid to have our students create a quick book talk video when they finish reading a book that they want to recommend to their class. Some students create multiple book talk videos, while others may only create one or two. The goal here is to have clear expectations and guidelines for what every good book talk looks like. We create a model book talk for the students to preview outlining expectations and the students take it from there. If you want to read up a bit more on book talks, we really like this article from We Are Teachers. They provide some great examples of a solid book talk video that we use as a model book talk for our students. We love using this example from Raina Telgemeier. 

Book List and Challenges

Students love a good challenge. Amanda McEvoy from EnglishElixir has a great digital reading challenge and book list that we love. It has plenty of editable reading challenges (although why mess with perfection we say). She uses laptop stickers as a way to motivate her students. Our students are partial to Hydro Flask stickers. You can buy them in bulk from Amazon for cheap. It is amazing how motivating a sticker can be. 

However you are assessing reading, it is important that you keep it consistent. We hope some of these strategies help you in these challenging times. If you happen to try any of them, let us know how they worked out! You can find us on Instagram and Twitter @theteachingdistillery

Until next time teacher friends. 

Bottoms up!