My daughter, on the other hand, is having extreme difficulty learning to read. Like others mentioned in the FAQs, she will sound out the correct sounds, but then say a completely different word. She will also substitute ‘chair’ when the word is ‘seat’, or ‘boat’ for ‘ship’. Also, words she read fine in one sentence are completely foreign a couple of sentences later. She can spell almost any 3 or 4 letter word orally when I ask, but not be able to read it in print. Do you know why this happens? I pulled her out of her K class
because she was driven to tears every night with all the writing homework they were required to do and am now homeschooling her. Thank you so much for any information you can give me.

It sounds like you have two children with different approaches to reading.  Whether or not you’d call it, ‘formal,’ it sounds like you’ve already exposed your son to reading fundamentals. Many children in ‘formal’ preschool settings are still learning all of their letters and sounds and extending what they learn to authentic settings like reading signs or piecing together words in books.  I personally don’t see  harm in moving forward your sons’ reading/literacy development, but at his young age, I would make sure to follow his lead.  That is, employ activities that are engaging and that are useful to him.  Make sure he doesn’t get frustrated with the activities, as he might start associating reading as a punitive event.  The idea is to encourage his curiosity and excitement about reading. 

I can’t say for sure why your daughter exhibits some of the reading behaviors you described, but for a kindergartener, it doesn’t seem out of the ordinary.  At that age, students are learning to negotiate and attend to the different visual, sound, context cues and strategies involved in reading.  The fact that some of her reading errors involve subtituting words that ‘make sense’ to what she’s reading (i.e., boat for ship, and chair, for seat) shows that she’s trying to understand the text as she attempts to orally read it.  That shows that she has a good purpose for reading!  However, it also sounds like she might ‘compartementalize’ different aspects of reading (i.e., sounding out words, making meaning, spelling, etc.) as separate events and perhaps doesn’t connect her memory for spelling words, with what she knows about letters and sounds and when she’s reading, doesn’t connect her errors (as sensible as they are) with what’s actually written on the page.  Manipulating, negotiating and attending to the different aspects of reading is a sophisticated process that takes more scaffolding for some young children.  You can help your daughter by validating the good the things that she does and making her aware of what doesn’t make sense.  For example, when she finished reading the sentence or the page of the book in which she said, ‘boat’ for ‘ship’ you could pause and say, "I noticed you said, boat here - that makes sense because....., Now let’s look for another word that makes and matches the letters in the book!"   If the word ‘ship’ is not in her vocabulary, then quickly sound out the word ‘ship’ and introduce what that word means.   The idea is to help your daughter make connections between what she sees, the sounds letters make, what she says, and what makes sense. 

Yes, she or both of you can be assessed. However, reading and spelling are not going to get easier for a seventh grader with out some intervention. (Instruction in reading is part of a school’s curriculum through the fourth grade in most states) The first step to intervention is assessment. It will be important to know what her reading strengths and weaknesses are. If she has coped thus far, she is probably strong in some areas and weak in others. As high school and then college approach, she will be expected to complete larger and larger quantities of reading and writing. She may be able to get by but she may feel like there is not enough time in the day to do all the work required. Getting help now will be more effective than later. As for you, adults from every walk of life have difficulty with reading. Studies show that 20-30% of the world’s population has weakness in the processing abilities necessary for reading. You may want to think about taking an online assessment; this can give you or anyone the dignity and privacy they may desire. Or you can go a different route and have your daughter and or yourself assessed by a local professional who can explain everything to you if you are not comfortable reading a report that would be generated by an online assessment. If you are interested in improving your own reading level, go for it by all means. I personally have worked with business men, construction workers, moms, grad students and even a few people in their seventies. It is never too late.

Sometimes these kinds of spelling mistakes are made because the speller has a hard time making a mental image of letters. This difficulty will make spelling very hard. Good spellers have the ability to picture a word in the mind’s eye. After the speller is exposed to the word a few times, the speller can hold onto the image. However, this task is very difficult for some people. It is some times called "symbol imagery weakness." This same weakness may make memorizing words for reading difficult too. But aside from all that, knowing your daughter’s specific strengths and weaknesses in this area will be important. The first step to any problem like this is assessment. Having your daughter assessed by a reading professional will be very helpful for you. Several of the same learning processes involved with spelling, are essential to reading. It sounds as if she has some strengths with spelling if she is able to think of several ways to spell words. Determining the gap between her strengths and weaknesses will help you to make the most informed decisions about instruction.

Another factor that can make scores on DORA seem lower is if your students have been tested using traditional teacher-mediated, pen-and-paper assessments.  On these assessments there is larger room for discrepancy, as teachers often ask follow-up questions to clarify students’ responses and students often become familiar with the administration protocol.  Let’s Go Learn’s DORA removes some of this variability often associated with teacher-mediated assessments. 

Also, because DORA is criterion-referenced--that is, based on a set of criteria identified by experts--it is possible that the items might differ from other criterion-referenced assessments you may have encountered.  This does not preclude the utility or meaningful information produced by DORA’s comprehension sub-test.  It just means that one must consider its difficulty relative to other available comprehension tests. 

The avoidance of false positives, as mentioned in the previous question, is also a factor that can make scores appear lower. If other comprehension measures used in the past have a lower degree of false positive aversion, then the difference when comparing DORA to this other measure may appear significant.  Our philosophy is that it is worth it to avoid incorrectly labeling a low comprehension student as high, even if it means on occasion labeling a high comprehension student as slightly lower than his or her real ability.  And have no doubt, comprehension measures must choose one or the other possibility.  There is no way to avoid biases. 

One final factor that should be considered is the student’s motivation.  Longer assessments do run a higher risk of fatiguing the student.  And the factor that causes the greatest test score variance is student motivation.  Therefore, students need to be properly introduced to the idea of DORA.  Teachers should stress that this assessment will help them do a better job of instructing the students.  Also, the assessment should be broken up into manageable sessions and students should be monitored during testing.  If some students seem fatigued, the teacher should consider stopping the assessment and resuming it later.

In summary, many factors might make it appear, on occasion, that students’ scores on DORA’s Silent Reading sub-test are incorrectly lower than their reading ability compared to other reading measures.  However, when examining the biases of each measure and interpreting DORA for what is seeks to do, these discrepancies, if any, can usually be explained or accounted for.  Furthermore, there is low probability that any discrepancy between measures will be large enough to negatively affect any particular student’s instructional plan.

By allowing students to read the passages only once, DORA provides a better indicator of how well students will perform in realistic reading situations.  This gets back to the purpose of DORA, which is to provide diagnostic data for teachers to guide instruction.