Reading Resources

Skilfulness in reading requires an ability to recognise or decode written words together with an ability to understand and interpret what is said or intended by the writer. This chapter focuses mainly on the former aspect, with just two tasks including some components focused on comprehension (although comprehension clearly helps oral reading). Chapter 4 reverses the emphasis, focusing mainly on comprehension (which is usually only possible if many of the words can be recognised or decoded).

This chapter has two sections. The first part of the chapter details the three Reading Record tasks. These were administered as three parallel oral reading tasks that followed similar assessment procedures, but focused on different categories of text: fiction books, non-fiction books and non-book materials. Each task had two reading texts in each of six reading bands (levels). Both of the texts in each band had been used in the 2000 assessments (which had three passages in each band), and one had been used in the 1996 assessments (which also had three passages in each band). This allows trustworthy comparisons between the 2000 and 2004 results, with a clear link back to the 1996 assessments.

The remainder of the chapter reports results for six other tasks. One was a trend task involving reading Mäori words, one involved reading nonsense words to check phonemic awareness skills, and one examined attitudes towards books and reading. The final three tasks are link tasks (to be used again in 2008 so not revealed in any detail here). One of these involved reading Mäori texts, and the other two involved reading in English.

All tasks were administered to both year 4 and year 8 students, eight in one-to-one interviews and the ninth using the station’s approach.

Reading in English
Averaged across 88 components of seven tasks that involved reading in English, 22 percent more year 8 than year 4 students succeeded well. Three of these 88 components were the three Reading Record tasks (fiction, non-fiction and non-book). On these major tasks, an average of 33 percent more year 8 than year 4 students were judged to be in the highest two of the six reading bands. These results indicate very substantial progress in reading between year 4 and year 8.

Four years ago, we reported substantial improvement in oral reading between 1996 and 2000 at year 4 level, with smaller improvement for year 8 students. The results for the three Reading Record tasks in 2004 show further worthwhile improvement in oral reading of fiction and non-fiction texts, for both year 4 and year 8 students. However, there was no change for year 4 students and only a slight gain for year 8 students on oral reading of non-book materials. Averaged across the three tasks, 56 percent of year 4 students in 2004 were judged to be in the two top reading bands, eight higher than in 2000 and 24 higher than in 1996. At year 8 level, 64 percent of students were judged to be in the top reading band, eight higher than in 2000 and 13 higher than in 1996.

Reading in Mãori
Averaged across 24 components in two tasks, 18 percent more year 8 than year 4 students read successfully in Mäori. On the trend task used in both 2000 and 2004, there was no change in average performance on task components for year 4 students, but a seven percent increase for year 8 students.