FTCE Professional Education Practice Exam

What are running records primarily used for in education?

1. Assessing mathematics skills

2. Documenting reading performance

3. Evaluating student's emotional responses

4. Tracking physical activity levels

The correct answer is: Documenting reading performance

Running records are primarily utilized in education to document and analyze a student’s reading performance. This tool allows educators to capture real-time data during a reading session, noting how a student navigates a text, including their ability to decode words, their fluency, and comprehension. By analyzing running records, teachers can identify specific strengths and areas of need in a student's reading skills, inform instruction, and guide future reading interventions. Running records provide detailed insights into a student's reading behaviors, such as self-correction, mispronunciations, and the strategies employed to make sense of the text. This kind of assessment is crucial for formative evaluation, enabling educators to tailor their instruction to better meet individual students' reading needs. In contrast, the other options, such as assessing mathematics skills, evaluating emotional responses, or tracking physical activity levels, do not focus on the specific reading behaviors and skills that running records are designed to measure.