How to Administer and Interpret Running Records

Running records A running record is a tool that helps teachers to identify patterns in student reading behaviors. These patterns allow a teacher to see the strategies a student uses to make meaning of individual words and texts as a whole. Running records, when paired with comprehension inquiry, can be used to identify an instructional reading level for individual students. While running records are a diagnostic tool, they can and should be used to inform instruction and to help extend a readers use of strategies for working on text

Finding the instructional level Texts selected for running records should challenge a student sufficiently that he or she makes some errors for the student to analyze, but not enough that he or she becomes frustrated. This level is called the instructional level. Each student has three levels of texts for reading:

Instructional A student’s reading level is determined to be instructional when an accuracy rate is between 90 and 94 percent. This is a text that the child can use to learn to extend cuing systems with guidance from the teacher.

Independent A student’s independent (sometimes labeled easy) reading level corresponds to an accuracy rate is over 94 percent. This is a text the student is able to read by him or herself without teacher support.

Frustration A child’s frustration (sometimes labeled hard) reading level is determined when a student’s accuracy rate is below 90 percent.

Recording Errors

Error ratio The error ratio, the ratio of errors to running words (total words read), should fall between 1:10 and 1:20 in order for the teacher to have “good opportunities…to observe children’s processing of texts.” 1 If the student makes too many errors, the reading is too difficult, but too few errors means too few opportunities for the teacher to analyze the student’s difficulties. 1 To find the error ratio, place the number of errors over the number of running words, then simplify the ratio so that the top number is 1 and the bottom number is the number of running words per error. If E is the number or errors and W the number of words read, this can be expressed as 1:(W/E). For example, if a child read a passage with 119 words and made 6 errors, the fraction you would make would be 6/119. You would then divide both the top and bottom parts of this fraction by 6, the number of errors. My error ratio would be 1:19.8. In words, we can say that the student made 1 error for every 19.8 words read. Since this ratio falls between 1:10 and 1:20, it would offer good opportunities for me to observe this student working on text.

Running Records Calculator Good link for the math impaired!

Practice