Q: Can I skip levels when assessing a student?
A: Yes. Your goal is to have the student read the fewest number of books that will give you the data you need. Ideally, you would start at the student's independent level, progress to the instructional level, and then to the hard level, but the starting point is the key. If a book is very easy, you may want to skip ahead a level or more in order to find a book that is closer to the student's instructional level. The same applies when a text is very hard. In this case, you may want to skip down one or more levels to find the instructional level text. Be sure to consider comprehension as a significant factor and use the rubric.
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