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Needs Assessment

CRIN S05/Content Reading and Writing

Professors Throckmorton/Pontgratz

By: Sasha Dofflemeyer

October 7, 2009

Needs Assessment: A Student’s Reading Needs in a Self-Contained Science Classroom

Introduction

1 | D o ffl e m e y e r

In a high school science class, one of the most difficult tasks a teacher faces is choosing a

suitable text for all students. Most science teachers teach a variety of students, and any one class

can have a range from struggling readers to the more advanced. Teachers must address this issue

at some point. Test scores and research into grades from previous science classes may help a

teacher. The most common method for a teacher to determine the suitability or “friendliness” of

a text is to conduct a reading needs assessment. There are several parts to a reading needs

assessment, which includes a reading questionnaire, a CARI, and a Cloze Reading Assessment

(Pontgratz and Throckmorton 9/17/09). Currently, the Earth Science text is the same for all high

schools in the Williamsburg-James County School District. It is entitled Modern Earth Science

by Holt, Rinehard, and Winston (2002). This text is purportedly suitable for 13 – 15 year old

Earth Science students and the only way to further analyze compatibility is to conduct a reading

needs assessment. My cooperating teacher (CT), Mr. Stephen Deer, uses the text intermittently

with worksheets, power point presentations, laboratories, and interactive learning strategies such

as Quizdom. There have been no noticeable complaints from students thus far about the text; it

is not frequently used.

Per the standards of the assignment, I chose one student in the 4th block Advanced Earth

Science class of Mr. Stephen Deer upon which to conduct this analysis. Per stated requirements,

this student has an IEP which lists focusing and irritability as weaknesses. In cooperation with

the ideals of reading assessment, Austin (who likes the nickname “Aussie”) is a great reader with

a large vocabulary. He is also highly enthusiastic about science. All of these characteristics

make Austin greatly representative of the whole class, although he claims to be a very atypical

person. He believes he has a much higher reading level than most of the other students in the

class; it is unknown where the exact relationship lies. The three parts of the assessment were


administered to the student Austin Marty during a 4th block period. A decorative bag of candy,

featuring the school colors of blue and gold, was provided for the student for being such a good

sport about being pulled out of class for the administration of these tests. The candy was

provided to ensure as positive reinforcement for the student and also for a reward of sorts since

he was missing a lab. I gather being taken to the library for testing is not any student’s favorite

pastime. From what I know of Austin, he would not take the situation out of context, but in

general, it is important to reward students for things out of the ordinary like this assessment.

Otherwise, students may perceive the test as something negative, which is believed to be able to

increase the student’s negative feelings regarding reading (or whatever subject is at hand) in the

future. Mr. Deer and myself would like to positively reinforce a relationship with reading for

this child and further his reading development as he is already quite advanced (Deer and

Dofflemeyer 10/7/09).

A Scale to Assess Subject-Matter Motivation

The needs assessment began with a multiple choice questionnaire to determine the

student’s reading habits prior to introduction to the CLOZE and the CARI. The questionnaire

has 24 statements from which the student can choose whether he/she: strongly disagrees,

disagrees, is undecided, agrees, or strongly agrees. These 24 statements pry into the reading

mentality of the student. Each selection is given a point value, which is totaled from all

questions. It allows myself, the assessor, to determine if the student significantly reads for

pleasure/education, only sometimes reads for pleasure/education, or only reads for school

assignments. According to the scale accompanying the questionnaire, there are 3 levels of

content reading motivation at which the student can test. These 3 levels are: a student who is

disinterested in the content area (72 – 0 points), a student who is somewhat interested, but may


lack motivation (96-72 points), or a student who is highly motivated and interested in the content

area (120 – 96 points) (Pontgratz and Throckmorton 9/17/09).

Response of Student to the Questionnaire

Upon completion of the questionnaire, Aussie’s point-values were calculated. According

to the total of his responses, Aussie scored a 78. Frankly, this is lower than I expected him to

score. At 78, he is on the lower end of the group that is somewhat interested in the content area,

but may lack motivation. This is contrary to his IEP, in which it is stated that he is highly

enthusiastic about science. He is a very bright child as is evident in talking to him, and this score

will make me want to watch him more closely in the future. He is also very social and does

enjoy getting out of his seat during labs to speak with his peers. He has several close friends in

Mr. Deer’s Advanced Earth Science class. For the scoring of the questionnaire, answers that

positively reflect a student’s motivation are worth 5 points (the highest value). Negative answers

are worth 1 point (the lowest value). Of course, 2, 3, and 4 are in between (Pontgratz and

Throckmorton 9/17/09). His final scores were: 17% of responses were at 2 (negative), 58% of

responses were at 3 (neutral), 8% of responses were at 4 (positive), and 17% of responses were at

5 (very positive).

Content Area Reading Inventory (CARI) Assessment

A CARI is a test often used for instructional planning which does not affect a student’s

grades. The CARI is constructed specifically to determine the compatibility a reader may have

with a text. There are 2 major parts to the CARI: the selection or passage chosen from the

textbook (which is usually 5 – 8 pages in length) and the corresponding 9 – 12 comprehension

questions which the preparer administers after the reading of the passage has been completed.


There are no limitations to what passage the administrator may choose, the guidelines solely

state that the passage may not be in the first 50 pages of the text.

To attempt to reiterate and drive home how much reading matters, I chose a section on

Matter to be the passage the student is to read for the CARI. The passage is 9 pages in length,

from page 138 – 146, and exists in chapter 8, section 8.1 of the Earth Science text. Nine pages

may seem long in length, however, 2 of those pages is the Periodic Table of Elements – which

the student does not have to read and can be omitted. The passage on Matter is one essential for

the understanding of the building blocks of science – and has important vocabulary words

featured as well. I also tried to make a pun and incorporated the title of the selection “matter” to

“reading matters” when discussing directions with the student. It was a display of humor that I

believe he understood; this is a technique I use when building a pneumonic for students who are

studying units or systems in which they have to memorize a very large amount of information.

The basics of atomic structure are presented in the selection, along with further

information on isotopes and solids, liquids, and gases. Eleven questions were pulled from this

reading to assess the student’s comprehension. The assessment was administered following the

guidelines provided in Curriculum and Instruction (CRIN) S05 (Pontgratz and Throckmorton

9/17/09). The guidelines for administering the CARI are as follows: the student is to read the

passage while being timed. Then, the student is to answer the first comprehension question,

which is short answer, with to book closed. After completion of this question, the student may

re-open the book and answer the following 11 questions, which are true/false, multiple choice,

and short answer.

Response of Student to the CARI


Aussie completed the reading of the passage in a short amount of time. I informed him

that he may skip all graphic aids, organizers, and tables, and this still left him with approximately

6 near-full pages of text to read. He completed this assignment between the times of 12:58 pm –

1:04 pm, which is 6 minutes. Upon completion of reading the text, Aussie was asked to use his

creativity to write a short response to the question of what he thought the passage was about.

Aussie apparently could sum this up in one sentence – “This section was about matter, its states,

its forms, and its composites.” I’ve determined that he does not have the neatest handwriting.

After writing his one sentence, he was given back the book to answer the following

true/false, multiple choice, and short answer questions. These questions were a mixture of

literal, think and search, and inferential questions. These three types of questions are different

and equally important in a reading comprehension analysis. Literal questions are the exact of

primary meanings of words. Questions 1 – 4 in part A of the student response form were all

literal questions. Think and search questions are findable in the text. Basically, they are

constructed by taking part of a sentence out of the text and listing multiple choices (also findable

in the text) as possible solutions. The student then has to search through the text or remember

the correct answer. Numbers 1-3 in section B and 1 – 2 in section C are think and search

problems. Questions of inference do not appear exactly as written in the text as they do in the

problem. Number 3 in section C is an inference problem. Aussie answered all questions

correctly, which indicates that he both understood and retained all information contained in the

passage.

The student is regarded as very bright, and this is stated in his IEP. I do not find it

surprising that all questions on the CARI were answered correctly. He is a student in an

Advanced Earth Science class and I find his responses are indicative of how the entire class


would perform. This assumption is made by comparing Aussie’s performance from previous

classes and labs to that of his classmates.

Cloze Reading Assessment

Like the CARI, the Cloze is also used for instructional planning while being an

assessment that does not affect a student’s grade. The Cloze also has several uses, with the main

2 being: (1) to determine the readability of the passage, and (2) to test a student’s reading ability

for placement (Unrau 2008). There are 4 major steps to the preparation of the Cloze. First, the

administrator must select a passage of approximately 300 words from a text relevant to the

students and the course. Second, the selected passage must be transposed into a word document

or some such formatting software. Subsequently, every 5th word is deleted and replaced with a

blank – while leaving the first and last sentences intact. Finally, an answer key is made,

consisting of all the words that were replaced by blanks. For comparative purposes, 2 passages

were selected from 2 separate texts: one from Modern Earth Science by Holt, Rinehart, and

Winston and one from Earth Science by Spaulding and Namowitz. The first selection is entitled

Continental Drift while the second selection is entitled Mineral Resources.

Response of Student to the Cloze

The Cloze Reading Assessment was presented to the student in a fashion as a selection

the student has to read that has every 5th word missing, up to 50 blanks. The first and the last

sentences were left to be complete. The student, of course, grumbled with this test as it is his

least favorite. “It makes no sense,” he would often complain. This is the phrase used by all

students when a world that would fit in the blank does not come to them. Upon scoring of the


Cloze, it was noted that Aussie received 66% on the first selection and 60% on the second

selection, with synonyms being accepted as the correct answer.

Conclusion

These tests are informative and indicative of the reading needs of the student and the role

of the teacher as the educator and administrator of such tests. The needs assessment really

opened my eyes to the reading potential of Aussie, and by inference, the entire class. The CARI

appears to be more student-friendly, while the Cloze Reading Assessment provided more

difficulty. Ideally, the student score would be closer in the 70-percentile to find true

compatibility with the student and the two Earth Science texts. However, with both passages

being from sections of the text that Aussie has not yet been exposed to, it can be determined that

the text is not too difficult for the students of the Advanced Earth Science class taught by Mr.

Deer.

WORKS CITED

Deer and Dofflemeyer. 2009. Personal Conversation 10/7.

Holt, Rinehart, and Winton. 2002. Modern Earth Science. CNN: Austin.

Namowitz and Spaulding. 2003. Earth Science. McDougal Littell: Evanston.

Pontgratz and Throckmorton. 2009. Lecture. 9/17.


Unrau, Norman. 2008. Content Area Reading and Writing: Fostering Literacies in Middle and

High School Cultures. Pearson Merrill Prentice Hall: Upper Saddle River.


CARI Reading Assessment

General Directions: Read pages 138 – 146 in your textbook. You may skip the table on pages 142 – 143. I will inform you as to how long it took you to complete the selection. Record this time in the space provided on the response sheet. Close your book and answer the first question. You may then open your textbook to answer the remaining questions.

Student Response Form

Reading Time: _______________________________ min. ____________________ sec.

I. Directions: Close your book ans answer the following questions: In your words, what was this selection about? Use as much space as you need on the back of this page to complete your answer.

II. A. Directions: Open your book and answer the following true/false questions.

1. Every object in the Universe is made up of matter.a. Trueb. False

2. An electron cloud is the region of space in which electrons move about the nucleus.

a. Trueb. False

3. Atoms of the same element that differ from each other in mass number are called isotopes.

a. Trueb. False

4. The mass number of any atom represents the total number of protons and neutrons in that atom.

a. Trueb. False


B. Directions: Answer the following multiple choice questions.

1. A substance that cannot be broken down into a simpler form by ordinary chemical means is:

a. A mixtureb. A gasc. An elementd. A compound

2. The mass number of an atom is equal to itsa. Total number of protons.b. Total number of electrons and protons.c. Total number of neutrons and protons.d. Total number of neutrons.

3. The number of protons in the nucleus indicates the atom’sa. Mass number.b. Electrical charge.c. Isotope.d. Atomic number.

C. Directions: Answer the following short answer questions.

1. Look at the pie chart on page 139. What percentage of the Earth’s crust is made of Oxygen?____________________________________________________________________________________________

2. Look at figure 8-4 on page 145. How many neutrons does Tritium have?____________________________________________________________________________________________

3. What are the three ways to classify the three physical forms of matter?____________________________________________________________________________________________


CARI ANSWERS

I – a short response from student about matter, atoms, and parts involved.

II – A.

1. True

2. True

3. True

4. True

B.

1. an element

2. total number of neutrons and protons.

3. atomic number

C.

1. 46.6%

2. 2

3. solid, liquid, gas


CLOZE Reading Assessment

4.1 Continental Drift

One of the most exciting recent theories in earth science began with observations made more than

400 years ago. As explorers such as _______________ Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan -

_______________ the oceans of the_______________, they brought back _______________ about new

continents and their_______________. Mapmakers used the information _______________ chart the

new discoveries _______________ to make the first _______________ world maps.

As people studied the_______________, they were impressed by _______________ similarity of

the continental ______________ on either side of _______________ Atlantic Ocean. The continents

_______________ as though they would _______________ together, like parts of _______________

giant jigsaw puzzle. The _______________ coast of South Africa _______________ to fit perfectly into

_______________ west coast of Africa. _______________ seemed to fit _______________ North

American and northwestern ______________.

These observations soon led _______________ questions. Were the continents _______________

part of the same _______________ landmass? If so, what _______________ this landmass to break

_______________? What caused the continents ______________ move to their present

_______________? These questions eventually led _______________ the formulation of hypotheses.

_______________ 1912, a German scientist _______________ Alfred Wegener proposed a

_______________ called continental drift, which _______________ that the continents had

_______________. Wegener hypothesized that the _______________ once formed part of

_______________ single landmass, which he ______________ Pangaea, meaning “all lands.”

_______________ Pangaea was a huge_______________, Panthalassa, meaning “all seas.”


_______________ to Wegener, during the _______________ Era, Pangaea began breaking

_______________ into smaller continents, which _______________ to their present locations.

_______________ speculated that this motion ________________ have crumpled the crust

_______________ places, producing mountain ranges _______________ as the Andes on

_______________ western coast of South _______________.

_______________ addition to the similarities in the coastlines of the continents, Wegener soon found

other evidence to support his hypothesis. If the continents had once been joined, he reasoned, research

should uncover fossils of the same plants and animals in areas that have been adjoining parts of

Pangaea.

ANSWERS:

1. Christopher2. Sailed3. World4. Information5. Coastlines6. To7. And8. Reliable9. Maps10. The11. Shorelines12. The13. Looked14. Fit15. A16. Each17. Seemed18. The19. Greenland20. Between21. Europe22. To


23. Once24. huge 25. caused26. apart27. to28. locations29. to30. In31. Named32. Hypothesis33. Stated34. Moved35. Continents36. A37. Named38. Surrounding39. Ocean40. According41. Mesozoic42. Up43. Drifted44. Wegener45. May46. In47. Such48. The49. America50. In


CLOZE Reading Assessment Passage #2

7.1 Mineral Resources

You’ve probably heard that it’s important to “protect Earth’s environment,” but what does that

phrase mean? Earth’s environment includes all _______________ the resources, influences, and

_______________ near Earth’s surface. We _______________make responsible decisions about

_______________ use of Earth’s resources if _______________ first know the types _______________

resources available and how _______________ they are used and _______________.

Some of Earth’s most _______________ resources, including air water, _______________, and

sunlight, are basic _______________ life. Other resources have ________________ critical to the world

_______________ coal and oil and ______________ materials such as minerals _______________ metal

ores.

Earth’s resources _______________ classified as renewable and _______________. A

renewable resource is _______________ that can be replaced _______________ nature at a rate

_______________ to its rate of _______________. Examples are oxygen in _______________ air, trees

in a forest, _______________ grown in the soil, ________________ energy from the sun.

________________ nonrenewable resource exists in _______________ fixed amount or is

________________ up faster than it ________________ be replaced in nature. ________________

resources include geological resources ________________ as oil, and the _______________,

nonmetals, and other energy _______________ listed in the table _______________ the following page.

Some ______________ resources can be reused. ______________, especially those used as

_______________ resources, are destroyed once _______________ are used.


Included among _______________ resources are the mineral _______________ mined from

Earth’s surface. _______________ United States citizen consumes, _______________ average, about

40,000 pounds _______________ new materials a year. _______________ provide, for example, stone

_______________ cement for building, silicon ______________ fiber optics and computer

______________, fertilizers for farming, and _______________ for cars and trucks.

_______________ Chapter 5, you learned _______________ chemical elements can be

_______________ into two general categories, the metals and nonmetals. Of the two, the metallic

elements are of greater importance.

ANSWERS:

1. Of2. Conditions3. Can4. The5. We6. Of7. Quickly8. Renewed9. Important10. Land11. To 12. Become13. As14. Raw15. And16. Are17. Nonrenewable18. One19. In20. Close21. Use22. The23. Food24. And


25. A26. A27. Used28. Can29. Nonrenewable30. Such31. Nonmetals32. Sources33. On34. Geological35. Most36. Energy37. They38. Nonrenewable39. Resources40. Each41. On42. Of43. Minerals44. And45. For46. Parts47. Aluminum48. In49. That50. Divided


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