
Cloze and maze assessments are well-established, research-based tests of student reading that measure word recognition and comprehension ability. They are valuable tools for busy classrooms because they are quick, easy to administer, and provide a reliable data point for determining student reading levels. In both assessments, students are presented with a reading passage. The first sentence of the passage is intact. In the remainder of the passage, words are deleted and replaced with blank lines. Students are asked to identify words that might appropriately fit the blanks. In cloze assessments, the deletions are completely blank and students are asked to write in a word that would fit the blank appropriately. In the maze assessment, students are given a choice of three words to fill in the deletion.
Should reading comprehension be measured in the maze?
So much of their reading comprehension in class is measured by determining main idea, recalling basic facts, inferencing, and analyzing the use of literary elements. It seems that when the maze is used to monitor reading comprehension, it doesn’t offer much information about the reader.
How do you design a maze test?
(To design a maze test, you select a passage of 150-200 words in length, delete a word from the second sentence, and every 5 th or 7 th word after that. Provide the students with three word choices in random order: the correct word, a word that is the same part of speech but incorrect, and a word that is the wrong part of speech.)
What are the benefits of using a maze test?
The benefit of maze is that it is easy to construct, administer, and score and maze results are reasonably accurate and reliable. (To design a maze test, you select a passage of 150-200 words in length, delete a word from the second sentence, and every 5 th or 7 th word after that.
What is the difference between cloze and Maze assessments?
In cloze assessments, the deletions are completely blank and students are asked to write in a word that would fit the blank appropriately. In the maze assessment, students are given a choice of three words to fill in the deletion.

What does maze comprehension mean?
W H A 7 A maze reading assessment is a task that measures. how well students understand text they read silently. The maze task differs from traditional comprehension in that it is based completely on the text.
What type of assessment is the maze?
The maze is a type of assessment tool for reading in the context of Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM). Over the last three decades, the maze, with the contribution of technology, is evolving into an assessment tool that can be automatically administered and scored.
How do you score maze Dibels?
The formula for calculating the Daze adjusted score is the number of correct responses minus the number of incorrect responses divided by 2. your best.” The student receives 1 point for each correct word. A response is correct if the student circled or otherwise marked the correct word.
How many minutes do you have for the maze?
The students must decide which of the three choices fits the original passage. Students have 3 minutes to correctly complete as many answers as possible. What can the MAZE tell Students and Parents? see where their reading skills fall against national norms.
What does maze stand for in Aimsweb?
comprehension predictorMAZE (comprehension predictor) Grades 6-8. How long are the tests? The R-CBM is a one minute timed fluency test. Students read three one-minute passages and a median score is taken. The MAZE is a three minute timed cloze test.
What does DIBELS measure?
DIBELS ® (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) is a set of procedures and measures for assessing the acquisition of literacy skills. Learn about DIBELS. × DIBELS 8th Edition represents the culmination of decades of research into supporting students in becoming successful readers.
What does my child's DIBELS score mean?
DIBELS Composite Score. The DIBELS Composite Score is a combination of multiple DIBELS scores and provides the best overall estimate of the student's early literacy skills and/or reading proficiency. Most data management services will calculate the DIBELS Com- posite Score for you.
What is a good score for DIBELS?
According to DIBELS guidelines, by the end of kindergarten children should be able to segment 35 sounds in one minute. If their DIBELS scoring is lower than 35, the teacher should provide immediate, intensive intervention.
What is the Dibels reading assessment?
DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) is a series of short tests that assess K-8 literacy. It is a set of procedures and measures for assessing the acquisition of a set of K-8 literacy skills, such as phonemic awareness, alphabetic principle, accuracy, fluency, and comprehension.
What does the San Diego Quick Assessment measure?
The SDQA measures one's recognition of words out of context. Generally, proficient readers read as accurately both in and out of context. This test consists of 8 graded word lists from Pre-K to 7th Grade. The words within each list are of about equal difficulty.
What are maze passages?
Curriculum-based measurement (CBM) Maze passages are timed measures that measure reading comprehension. They are better predictors of future reading performance than CBM oral reading fluency probes for students in grades 4 and higher (Hosp, Hosp & Howell, 2007).
How does Dibels testing work?
DIBELS Oral Reading Fluency (DORF): This assessment asks students to read a grade level passage for one minute. They are scored based on how many words they read correctly in one minute. They are also then asked to retell the passage which gives an indication of their comprehension.
What is maze assessment?
This process is often called benchmarking, especially if the initial score the student receives is to be compared to later scores.
Why is maze assessment important?
In particular, educators want to identify students who are at risk of poor performance on high-stakes assessments, in order to provide appropriate interventions.
How does the maze work?
First, the maze identifies students’ reading ability levels, both for those whose comprehension development is satisfactory and for a broad range of struggling readers. Second, it monitors the progress of students during instruction and intervention. Online maze assessment simplifies and expedites this identification and progress monitoring and can be an effective tool in research-based instruction.
Is the maze assessment accurate?
The accuracy of the maze assessment is well-established. A general approach to increasing the accuracy (that is, statistical reliability) of assessments is to make them longer. Chung, Espin, and Stevenson (2018) found this to be true of maze assessments.
Can random guessing skew test results?
There is no clear body of research evidence that validates scoring systems that account for random guessing, but common sense suggests that on occasion teachers might be confronted with such problems.
Why did John Guthrie create the maze?
John Guthrie developed maze in the 1970s to determine how well students could read particular texts. Let’s say you have a 7 th grade science book and want to know who in your class is likely to struggle with that book.
What does "monitoring comprehension" mean?
Monitoring comprehension means not tabulating specific skills that have been accomplished, but what complexity of text language students can negotiate. Perhaps early in the year, your students will be able to score 50% or higher with texts written at 800 Lexiles.
Does maze help with reading comprehension?
If you want to identify specific reading comprehension skills so you can provide appropriate practice, maze won’t help, but neither will the testing alternatives that you could consider.
