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Test Description
The Test of Silent Contextual Reading Fluency (TOSCRF; Hammill, Wiederholt, & Allen, 2006), as its name implies, is designed to measure contextualized silent reading fluency in students aged 7 to 18. Its purposes are to identify good and poor readers, to measure contextual fluency, and to monitor reading development. The TOSCRF measures how quickly students can determine individual words within a series of passages that increase in difficulty. The passages progress from the preprimer up through the adult level; the content, vocabulary, and grammar within the passages become increasingly complex. As the TOSCRF involves so many different aspects of reading (i.e., fluency, word identification, reading comprehension), it can be used as a screener of general reading skill.
Test Administration and Format
The manual is straightforward and easy to navigate with clear administration and scoring instructions. There are four forms of the TOSCRF (Forms A, B, C, and D). Each form consists of a series of 12 passages, which are delineated by numbered boxes. Within each passage, the words are printed in uppercase, omitting spaces and punctuation; the students are allowed 3 minutes to draw lines between as many words as possible. Materials needed for administration are few, including only test protocols, the instructor booklet, and a writing utensil for the examinee. Administration of the entire form takes approximately 10 min, including explaining directions and going through example items. The TOSCRF can be administered individually, in a small group, or in a whole-class format. Neither should this test be administered to students younger than 7 years or older than 18 years, 11 months nor should it be administered to students who have visual or motor skill impairments as they will not be able to meet the test demands. Overall, administration is easy and uncomplicated.
Scoring begins at the last attempted row and goes backward. The student earns credit for every correctly marked word. An entire skipped row invalidates the test, and a new form must be readministered to the student. A series of rules are presented to address issues related to misplaced lines (e.g., lines drawn in the middle of letters, lines that do not fully separate words, lines with strong right or left slants). However, no scoring aid (e.g., transparent overlay or...