The debate about the complexity of the reading paper for grade 6 last week has been raging for several days. Some of the children who took it reportedly cried afterwards while the government said so Tests are “demandingly designed”.
Many parents and teachers complained that it was just too difficult for students to complete it in the allotted hour. One principal said this has caused her school’s “able” readers to be “broken”.
The test paper, which the Department of Education says has been “rigorously tested”, has now been released.
So how hard is it exactly?
The scoring scheme, also published, shows that 36 of the 38 questions were designed to test three specific reading skills. Students who could demonstrate this ability had the opportunity to reach a possible total of 50 points. However, analysis shows that high scores were only possible for those who displayed a fourth, unspecified skill.
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Regardless of your age, you can test yourself below and assess if these skills are a reasonable expectation for an 11-year-old.
Perhaps the simplest questions were those that offered 16 points for answers where the skill required was to “retrieve and record information or identify significant details”.
Some questions simply involved finding the correct sentence in a long passage of text and repeating the information, as in these two examples:
Texas, in general, is a paradise for bats because of its delicious insects.
Q: The Congress Avenue Bridge attracts bats to Austin. What else attracts bats to Texas?
Many campaigned for the eradication of the bat colony. It was scary. At that time we thought that they would attack us by pulling our hair out or that they would transmit diseases.
Q: According to Harriet, why did some people in Austin not like bats? Write two reasons.
Slightly more challenging questions required students to piece together the relevant information from two different parts of the text, such as these two examples:
The howl pierced the darkening sky, bringing Innis Munro to an abrupt halt. He pulled his hood down [and] listened carefully. The only sound was his heart beating. That was a wolf, he thought.
But that couldn’t be. There were no wolves on the Isle of Nin, there were no wolves in Scotland for almost 300 years. It was just a trick of the wind. He continued but let the hood down. The afternoon light in early March was fading quickly, it was snowing and he was still a good half mile from home.
Q: How far was Innis from home when he first heard the wolf howl?
During the day, the Congress Avenue Bridge in the city of Austin couldn’t look more normal: a grey, drab downtown street bridge. At night it is the scene of one of the most amazing shows that nature has to offer. More than a million bats live on the underside of the bridge, and every summer evening they all swarm out at once and soar into the city sky like a tornado before spreading in all directions like clouds of smoke. Standing on the bridge, you might even feel the wind on their wings as they pass by.
Austin is the capital of the state of Texas in the United States, but also the bat capital of North America.
Q: In which American state is the Congress Avenue Bridge located?
Nine points were offered for questions that tested how students actually understood the words and phrases used. In this case, the range of students’ general vocabulary was tested, as in the following examples:
No, this large number of bats is fairly new. Some bats had lived under the bridge for years. It made headlines when they suddenly flocked in by the thousands after engineers rebuilt the Congress Avenue Bridge in 1980 — little did they know they were creating such an ideal bat home. When these bats first came, they were seen as uninvited guests. Many campaigned for the eradication of the bat colony.
Q: Find and copy a word that means “a group of bats living together.”
It’s true that there are far more bats than people in Texas, but they are endangered because they live in very large groups.
Q: Harriet describes bats as endangered. Which of the following [four terms] is the closest thing to meaning “vulnerable” – stupid, vulnerable, scary or tormented?
He continued but let the hood down. The afternoon light in early March was fading fast, it was snowing and he was still a good half mile from home.
Q: What does pressed mean in the text?
It was the unmistakable silhouette of a wolf.
Q: Which of the following? [words] comes closest to meaning “unmistakable” – improbable, unknown, possible or definite?
The highest score – 23 – was given to questions which, according to the assessment guide, were intended to show students that they could “draw conclusions from the text or explain and justify conclusions with evidence from the text”. This seems to be the most challenging reading skill and sometimes requires showing a bit of life knowledge or “reading between the lines” rather than literally saying what’s on the page.
These three examples really require the reader to put themselves in the character’s shoes:
Priya woke up startled, her heart pounding fast. Something had bothered her, but she wasn’t sure what. Abby was still sleeping quietly beside her and the night light was glowing, but now she could see things in the tent and realized the moon must have risen. She took a deep breath and tried to calm herself, but then she heard some rustling outside.
Q: How do you know Priya was nervous? Write in two ways.
Priya was surprised and now she was fully awake. They had only seen a few cars all day and now two had passed together.
Q: Why was Priya surprised to hear two vehicles driving by?
Very quietly, so as not to wake Abby, she unzipped the tent. Pulling back the gap, she realized she could see the whole valley, blue, black, and silver in the moonlight. Directly across the valley, she saw two sets of headlights that didn’t move.
Q: How do you know the moonlight was very bright?
And finally, these two questions would be the most likely to trip up an inexperienced reader, since the answers aren’t spelled out at all in the accompanying text, no matter how closely you look. It relies on the average 11-year-old’s understanding that “it hit her” is an abstract statement rather than a literal description, explaining how someone would react if woken up in the middle of the night
“Then it hit her”
Q: What is “it”?
“You better not make that up.”
Q: Why is Abby saying this to Priya?
The fourth ability was not particularly emphasized, but close analysis of the work shows how important it would have been for any student.
The examples given above were among the 38 questions that had to be answered in one hour to get 50 points – however it is important to emphasize that the Sats test was not broken down into slices and cubes as described above.
The students were presented with three passages of text, each 623, 817, and 612 words long—respectively 2,052 words in total. The Department of Education doesn’t give an expected reading speed for an average 11-year-old, but US education studies suggest that 150 words per minute is a good target for silent reading at this age. So it would take a lot of time to read these passages just once 14 minutes.
The 38 questions contain another 1,142 words, and every clever student remembers the advice to read each question twice so that it explains a different question 15 minutes.
So look at the above questions from a new perspective. After the students completed each question, they had an average of 49 seconds For each question, go through the relevant passage again, work out your answer and write it down.
In comparison, last year’s Sats reading test offered three passages with a total word count of 1,563 Words and only 35 questions – and the students were then given the same time of one hour to complete the test. A year ago, for example, the students had the comparative luxury of having an average of one minute to find and record each answer.
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