Signs Around Town

The assessments included eleven tasks that involved students in silent reading to obtain information, answer questions and make decisions.

Six of the tasks were identical for year 4 and year 8 students. Three further tasks used the same procedures, instructions and content for year 4 and year 8 students, but the year 4 material was presented in a larger format so that the font size was more appropriate for the younger students. The other two tasks were given only to year 8 students.

Three tasks are trend tasks (fully described with data for both 1996 and 2000), four are released tasks (fully described with data for 2000 only), and four are link tasks (to be used again in 2004, so only partially described here). The tasks are presented in that order, with the tasks for year 8 students only following tasks for students at both levels.

When results for year 4 and year 8 students in 2000 are compared, it is clear that year 8 students demonstrated consistently higher levels of reading comprehension than year 4 students. Averaged across 115 components of 9 tasks, 25 percent more year 8 than year 4 students succeeded with the components. The margin was greatest for two tasks involving scanning for information under a time constraint (Garage Sale and Link Task 2), for which the margins were 35 and 34 percent. Many of the students did not appear to be very efficient at scanning for information. Differences on individual components were largest for components that students found difficult, perhaps because year 8 students had little scope to do better on the easy components (due to a ceiling effect).

Comparative results for 1996 and 2000 were consistent with the trends reported in Chapter 3: year 4 students made very substantial gains while year 8 students made slight gains. Averaged across 34 task components, 11 percent more of the year 4 students succeeded in 2000 than in 1996. The differences were greatest on the more difficult components towards the end of An Elephant Story. Averaged across the same 34 task components, 3 percent more of the year 8 students succeeded in 2000 than in 1996.