This document discusses types of informal assessments, including cloze procedures. It provides details on how to create and administer cloze passages by deleting words in a pattern. Cloze procedures can be used to assess specific reading comprehension skills like vocabulary. The document also discusses the development and effectiveness of the cloze test procedure for determining the readability level of texts for students.

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TYPES OF INFORMAL ASSESSMENT
I. Cloze Procedure
The cloze procedure is a reading comprehension activity in which words are omitted
from a passage and students are required to fill in the blanks. This procedure is incredibly
useful in reading instruction because it can be easily done by any teacher and provides
valuable reading comprehension information.
A. Creating a Cloze Passage
There are several different methods used to create cloze passages. All of these
methods entail finding a passage that is at the target student's reading level and deleting
words in a pattern. The range for deleting words depends on reading ability and what kind
of skills you wish to assess. You can delete every five words up to every 10-20 words or
more. If you wish to assess a more specific skill, such as specific vocabulary words, you can
select a passage and delete only those vocabulary words.
Let's look at an example of a cloze passage by converting the information we just
discussed into text. Notice how just about every fifth word has been deleted.
There are several different (blank) used to create cloze (blank). All of these (blank)
entail finding a passage (blank) is at the target (blank) reading level and deleting (blank) in a
pattern.
The (blank) for deleting words (blank) on reading ability and what (blank) of skills you
wish to (blank). You can delete every (blank) words up to every (blank) words or more. If
(blank) wish to assess a more (blank) skill, such as (blank) vocabulary words, you can (blank)
a passage and delete (blank) those vocabulary words.
B. Assessment Using Cloze
The cloze procedure is commonly used in reading assessment because it requires
students to use different reading comprehension skills to fill in the blank.
For example, if a cloze procedure was used to assess vocabulary, students would
need to use their knowledge of the vocabulary words as well as context clues in the passage
to determine which word should be used to fill in the blank.
Assessment using the cloze procedure is less concerned with fluent student reading
and more with targeting specific reading comprehension skills. Reading a cloze passage

2. requires students to look to either side of a blank to figure out which word needs to be used
to fill in the blank. This flexibility means that the cloze procedure can be used to assess a
variety of skills.
A Cloze Text (also called the "cloze deletiontest") is an exercise, test, o rassessment
consisting of a portion of text with certain words removed (cloze text), where the teacher
asks the participan tto restore the missing words. Cloze tests require students to understand
context and vocabulary to identify the correct words that belong in the deleted passages of
a text.
EXAMPLE:
A language teachermaygive the followingpassage tostudents: "Today,I wentto the ________
and boughtsome breadandpeanut butter.I knew itwasgoingto rain, but I forgotto take my
________, and got weton the way."
The teacher instructs the students to fill in the blanks with words that they think best fits
the passage. Both context in language and content terms are essential in most cloze
tests.The first blank is preceded by "the" ;there for, a noun , an adjective or an adverb must
follow. However ,a conjunction follows the blank ;the sentence would not be grammatically
correctif anything other than a noun were in the blank.The words " bread and peanut butter
"are important for deciding which noun to put in the blank; "supermarket " is a possible
answer ; depending on the student, however, the first blank could either be store,
supermarket ,shopormarket ,while umbrella or raincoat fit the second.
The Development of the Cloze Test
Research indicates that teachers at many elementary schools require their students
to read books and materials that they often struggle to read.This condition is largely based
on the graded system which assumes tha tall children learn all things at virtually the same
time. It seems imperative that teachers choose materials which match the students' reading
skills.
To accomplish this, the first task is to determine the appropriateness of reading
materials forvarious students.To some extent,the standardized achievement tests of feredat
least once a school year in most school systems,provide such information .However, the
results of such tests do not provide a reliable index of reading success invarious materials.
The reasons for this are:
1) Achievement tests are based on limited samples ; they can not predict achievement
accurately in specific materials which draw on varied concepts, sentence patterns,etc.
2) Achievement tests are most reliable in the middle ranges of achievement.They often
mislead in measuring the achievement of those in the lower reading ranges.

3. Because standardized tests can not accurately determine the suitability of given reading
materials,many reading authorities suggest informal test sof the involved materials.The best
test of reading skill relies on the student's ability or inability to readt he given material.
Thus,if a sixth grade teacher wishes to find out which students can read and compreh end
the sixth grade geography text,the teacher must:
1. Direct each student to read a specified portion of the text.
2. Direct the student to demonstrate some degree of understanding.
A student can do this by answering questions about the selection. This method of
testing materials is generally called "informal reading inventory testing. "In most instances
the label is equated with the task of finding pupils' reading levels by asking them to read a
series of increasingly difficult selections (followed by comprehension questions).
Students in the earlier stages of reading development read the various materials
both orally and silently,while higher level students read silently before answering the
questions.
Although potentially valuable, "informal reading inventory testing " involves many
qualitative decisions on the part of the teacher,such as :
1) Oral Reading
Mute are oral reading errors? What are the maximum number of oral reading errors that
can be permitted? How fluent should the oral reading be? How do you determine fluency?
2) Silent Reading
What is a reasonable amount of time to read the given selection?
3) Comprehension
What are the most important elements that the student should remember about the
selection?
To what extentare the questions relevant to the main elements of the selection?
The quality of judgments in the above depends upon verys ophisticated judgments.
Infact, the judgments canbe so so phisticated that reading experts suggest that teachers
may make completely in appropriate judgments if they use the prevailing error marking
systems.
At this point the question many teachers ask is, "If teachers can not depend upon
achievement tests or their own observations to determine the suitability of reading
materials for different children,what, then can they use?'

4. We have two very different ways. Several diagnostic reading test authors have
developed tests that can more accurately predict the proper instructional level of texts,and
others have presented data to indicate that their special instruments will predict more
accurately than achievement tests.
Another way has been seen in the "cloze technique"procedure as developed by John
Bormuth (1967).
In the "Cloze Test Procedure,"the teacher instructs student store store omitted
words (usually every fifth word) in a reading passage. Based on reviewing students' restored
words from the text passages, the teacher can determine a more accurate level of
comprehension.
Because the Botel Read ability Formula and Spache Read ability Formula (as well as
other formulas) suffer from the same limitations as achievement tests, it appears that their
usefulness to determine the appropriateness of reading material is limited.
The Cloze Testis different. Devoid of such restraints and geared to the
exactmaterial,the Cloze Test Procedure adds more value to determine the read ability of any
selected text for any student.
WilsonL.Taylor introduced the term "cloze procedure" in 1953 and thoroughly
researched the value of closure tasks as predictors of reading comprehension.Basic to the
procedure is the idea of closure where in the reader must use the surrounding context to
restore omitted words. Comprehension of the total unitand its available parts (including the
emerging cloze write-ins) is essential to the task.
To use the Cloze Test Procedure to score material, follow this protocol:
Administration
1. Omite very 5th word,replacing it with a blankspace for the student to write in the answer.
2. Instruct students to write only one word in each blank and to try to fill in everyblank.
3. Guessing is encouraged.
4. Advise students that you will not count misspellings as errors.
Scoring
1. In most instances,the exact word must be restored.
2. Misspellings are counted as correct when the response is deemed correction a meaning
sense.
Validating the effectiveness of the Cloze Test as a measure of read ability and
comprehension is interesting because of:

5. 1) the ways in which reading comprehension is scored ;and
2) the almost universal finding of high correlations between cloze and other prediction
instruments.
Initially Taylor(1953) compared cloze score rankings of passages of varying difficulty
with read ability rankings of the same passages by two common read ability formulas, Dale-
Chall and Flesch formulas.
The passages were similarly rankordered by each technique.The Cloze Test scored
the readability of very difficult text passages more accurately than the Dale-Chall and Flesch
formulas.
Modality Testing
The techniques of meta-analysis were used to arrive at a quantitative synthesis of
findings from 39 studies searching for aptitude-treatment interactions.The primary findings
indicated that neither modality assessment normodality instruction were efficacious. When
subjects were assessed to as certain modality preferences, considerable overlap was found
between groups exhibiting a modality preference and those not exhibiting such a
preference. Modality preference groups were not as clearly differentiated asassumed. With
respect to instruction,no benefits accrued to subjects taught by methods matched to their
modality preferences. When compared to control subjects receiving no special instruction,
the subjects in the modality preference groups receiving differential instruction exhibited
only modestgains. Insum,noempirical support was rendered for the modality model.It was
concluded that,although intuitively appealing, the modality model should be dismissed and
efforts be directed at enhancing general instructional methodology.
Assessment Probes
Today's elementary teachers are faced with many different types of learners in their
classrooms. Students come to the science classroom with a wide range of out-of-school
experiences,different cultural and economic back grounds, languages, learningstyles, and
cognitive levels that affect how they engage in and learn science.
Page Keeley, developer of the science formative assessment probes for the
"Uncovering Student Ideas" series, tries to anticipate and address the needs of all learners
who might be using the probes.
However,each classroom is unique and teachers are encouraged to modify the
probes to best address the diversity in their own student populations. This column describes
some of the features of formative assessment probes designed to broadly address all
students as well as ways teachers can make further modifications to meet the diverse needs
with in their own classrooms.