Acadience Reading 7-8: Maze
What is Maze?
Maze is the standardized Acadience Reading version of a maze testing procedure for measuring reading comprehension. The purpose of a maze procedure is to measure the reasoning processes that constitute comprehension. Specifically, Maze assesses the student’s ability to construct meaning from text using word recognition skills, background information and prior knowledge, familiarity with linguistic properties such as syntax and morphology, and reasoning skills.
Maze can be given to a whole class at the same time, to a small group of students, or to individual students. Using standardized directions, students are asked to read a passage silently and to circle/select their word choices. By design, approximately every seventh word in the Maze passages has been replaced by a box containing the correct word and two distractor words. The student receives credit for selecting the words that best fit the omitted words in the reading passage. The scores that are recorded are the number of correct and incorrect responses. An adjusted score, which compensates for the possibility of guessing, is calculated based on the number of correct and incorrect responses.
Overview
| Literacy Skill | Reading Comprehension |
| Administration Time | 10–12 minutes for a triad of passages (3 minutes per passage) |
| Administration Schedule | Beginning of seventh grade to end of eighth grade |
| Scores | Number of correct words minus half the number of incorrect words |
| Wait Rule | None |
| Discontinue Rule | None |
Scoring Rules and Tips for Paper and Pencil administration (digital administration is automatically scored by the software)
The student receives 1 point for each correct word, minus half a point for each incorrect word.
- A response is correct if the student circled or otherwise marked the correct word.
- Mark a slash ( / ) through any incorrect responses. Incorrect responses include:
- Errors,
- Boxes with more than one answer marked, and
- Items left blank (if they occur before the last item the student attempted).
- If there are erasure marks, scratched out words, or any other extraneous markings and the student’s final response is obvious, score the item based on that response. If the marking is ambiguous, score the item as incorrect.
For more information please see the Assessment Manual located on the Acadience Resource Hub.
