| The doctor is in—and the doctor is you! A "Reading Physical" can help you diagnose the reading health of your students.
Medical Doctor: Check-up and Diagnosis. A yearly "physical" includes multiple tests: blood pressure, heart, lungs, eyes, ears, nose, and throat. From these diagnostics, your doctor evaluates your general health and determines if you need more tests to pinpoint possible problems.
Reading Doctor: Similarly, you can give students "Reading Physicals." No one measure will tell you everything about how your students read. You will use multiple measures of assessment to diagnose your students' reading condition. When you get a good picture of your students' overall reading health, you can set benchmarks and goals to help them grow. You can also figure out if they need more tests to uncover problems with basic reading skills. After you identify problem areas, you can prescribe the right kinds of instruction and intervention.
A Checkup Assessment: You may already have information about your students' reading levels in the form of baseline and standardized test scores, which will eliminate the need for more testing. Information from these tests can help you get a picture of where your students are and where they need to be. | 
