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About Running Records

Three-Part Process

1 Students record themselves reading aloud Benchmark Passages or Benchmark Books (Levels aa-J) and send recordings to your Kids A-Z In Basket. You score their reading behavior on online running records.

2 Students record a retelling of the text and send it to your Kids A-Z In Basket, where you use online rubrics for fiction and nonfiction texts to score their comprehension.

3 Students take a Comprehension Quick Check Quiz, and our software scores it. Skill Reports help you identify comprehension skills for additional practice.

Running Records are one part of a three-part process to place students in instructionally appropriate level texts and determine whether students are ready to move up a level.

How to Use Running Records

Use the three-part assessment process at the beginning of the school year to place students into appropriate texts, and use the process throughout the year to monitor students' progress. Use the schedule below to assign assessments as students complete self-paced assignments at each reading level.

Note Students can be assigned only one assessment at a time.


Assessment Schedule

Developmental Level Reading Level Schedule
Beginning readers Levels aa-C every 2 to 4 weeks
Developing readers Levels D-J every 4 to 6 weeks
Effective readers Levels K-P every 6 to 8 weeks
Automatic readers Levels Q-Z every 8 to 10 weeks

Note Students who are not progressing at the expected rate should be assessed even more frequently than the Assessment Schedule suggests.


How to Score Running Records

Tip
Assessments like running records that require your interaction get delivered to your Kids A-Z In Basket.

Taking a running record takes practice. To learn more about running records in general read About Running Records on Reading A-Z. Information covered here is specific to our online running records.

  • Omission
  • Insertion
  • Mispronunciation
  • Substitution
  • Repetition
  • Self-Correction
  • No Errors

The information gathered while doing an online running record is used to determine error, accuracy, and self-correction rates.

The recording will pause while you are selecting an error type. Once an error is selected the recording will resume at a point slightly before the error.


The Running Record Scorecard

Scorecard formulas are automatically calculated based on recording length and errors you have marked.


Place and Move Up Students

Use the chart below along with the information in the Assessment Report to determine if students are ready to move up a level. To move a student up levels in Raz-Kids, select the appropriate level from the student's Kids A-Z profile page to create a new self-paced assignment at the student's developmentally appropriate level.

Scores

Running Record Accuracy Rate Quick Check Comprehension Quiz Action
95% + 100% Advance Student a Level
95% + 80% Instruct at this Level
95% + <80% Lower a Level, Assess Again
90-94% 80-100% Instruct at this Level
90-94% <80% Lower a Level, Assess Again
<90%* N/A Lower a Level, Assess Again

* Some teachers may choose to instruct students at a level in which they have scored lower than 90 percent, but generally will not instruct using texts in which students score below 85 percent.


How to Choose an Assessment Text

Views differ as to whether students should be assessed using text they have never read or familiar text. We believe using a previously unread text will give a more accurate measure of a student's ability to read and comprehend text at the assessed level.


How Do I Reward Students' Reading Progress?

Reward your students' progress with Incentives in the interactive Kids A-Z student-learning environment. Students earn stars for completing assessments and other activity on the site. You can award bonus stars after scoring assessments. Students spend earned stars to personalize their avatar in the Avatar Builder and their Raz Rocket.