PROBE BLUE

Purpose: To assess reading accuracy, reading behaviour and in-depth reading comprehension.

Age: 8-15 years

The PROBE BLUE is primarily designed to be a controlled in-depth interview to help teachers achieve a greater understanding of how readers engage with text and what specific teaching is required.

Suitable for students ages 8-15, the PROBE BLUE can also be used with younger students who decode well, or with students learning to read English as a second language.

PROBE2 becomes PROBE BLUE

A companion/parallel resource to the PROBE BLUE, PROBE GREY is due for release in 2021. PROBE2 has thus been revised, upgraded and rebranded as PROBE BLUE to seamlessly match this parallel resource.

The PROBE BLUE contains the same forty fiction and non-fiction stories as the PROBE2.

Improvements have been made to the PROBE BLUE Manual, including layout updates and a revised and upgraded guide.

The PROBE BLUE includes more comprehensive taxonomy notes, more comprehensive notes with answers and a more consistent format of notes with answers.

Key Features

• 40 original new texts
• Twenty levels (5 to 15.5 years with 6 month overlaps)
• Fiction and non-fiction at every level
• Targeted, defined comprehension questions
• No pictures & minimal title clues (for testing text only)
• Culturally & geographically non-specific texts
• Greater Precision with questions design and matching the answers
• Inclusion of the Determiner in the Manual (not a separate book as with the older edition)
• Expanded answer section – one page per text
• Key words with all answers

There are six targeted and defined question types for a clearer analysis of the reader’s comprehension ability:

1. LITERAL: Finding information that is given directly in the text. Answers are found in a single sentence.
2. REORGANISATION: Reconstructing two or more literal pieces of information contained in the text. Pieces can be within two adjacent sentences or scattered throughout the text.
3. INFERENCE: Deducing information not given directly in the text. 'Simple' inference (relevant information is not widely scattered).
4. VOCABULARY: Determining the meaning of unknown words from context. Vocabulary questions can be solved within context.
5. EVALUATION: Gathering information and drawing inferences. 'Complex' inference (relevant information is more widely spread).
6. REACTION: Expressing an opinion based on information given in the text. The text has to form the basis of that opinion.

When multiple copies of the (full) PROBE BLUE Assessment kit are required and budgets are limited, the PROBE BLUE Supplementary kit provides an alternative.

The KEY series is directly linked to PROBE question types. Find out more about the KEY into Reorganisation, Inference and Evaluation.