Abstract

Secondary teachers in Georgia, those working with grades 6-12, seldom study reading as-sessment at any depth (2008). Their “content” reading experiences may include one course with a primary focus on reading comprehension strategies or a few of those strategies integrated into content methods courses. Middle school teachers, those working with grades 4-8, may have little more training if they have not selected reading or language arts as one of their two content areas. The data indicating increased failure rates among adolescent readers in the U.S. has prompted additional governmental grants for research into improving the performance of struggling adolescent readers and writers. The situation indicates that teachers in the field and pre-service teachers need to be aware of what can be determined about a student’s literacy using screening tools, as opposed to drawing conclusions based on perception or instinct. Pre-service teachers were provided with an anticipation guide that surveyed their perceptions and attitudes toward student reading performance and their knowledge of reading assessment tools. Children from a particular population, who were in an accelerated learning program, were given individual reading assessments by the pre-service teachers and their instructor. The pre-service teachers then revisited the anticipation guide and indicated where attitudes and perceptions had changed from the experience and why. This data will be presented at the conference.