Systematic Reading Assessment and Motivating Feedback Through the Read to Me Checklist

Reading is fundamentally a forward‐directed act of interpretation—a process driven by anticipating and constructing meaning. Yet our systematic review of 52 studies finds that practices of feedback on early oral reading often focus disproportionately on error correction—a pattern especially pronounced for struggling and multilingual learners. In this study we take a teacher‐focused approach to using the Read To Me checklist, a research‐based tool for assessing and providing feedback on oral reading that fosters both decoding proficiency and motivation. The Read To Me checklist responds to the common feedback bias toward error correction by guiding teachers to attend to a broad range of reading skills, including decoding, motivation, and comprehension, and to use what is termed “agentic feedback” to foster both a positive reader identity and a sense of student agency. Findings show that teachers using the checklist broadened their focus beyond accuracy, attending also to interpretation and agency. In this resource, we provide practical tips and classroom vignettes that demonstrate how small shifts in feedback can support skill development while strengthening reader identity.