How can busy teachers successfully manage the complex task of assessing their students' reading comprehension? This invaluable book--the first stand-alone guide on the topic--presents reliable, research-supported guidelines and procedures for K-6 teachers to use in the classroom. Through practical tips and realistic examples, the book demonstrates time-saving ways to implement and adapt a wide range of existing assessments, rather than creating new ones. Also covered are strategies for conducting multiliteracy assessments, using classroom assessment to complement standardized testing, accommodating response-to-intervention mandates, and linking assessment to content-area instruction. The book contains eleven chapters: (1) Defining Comprehension: A Difficult Task; (2) Defining Assessment: A Four-Step Process; (3) Assessing Comprehension: What, How, and for What Purpose; (4) Questions: Promises and Pitfalls; (5) Open-Ended Assessments: Powerful but Problematic; (6) Look Who's Talking: Assessing Comprehension through Student Dialogue; (7) Words! Words! Words!: How Can We Assess Word Comprehension?; (8) Comprehension Assessment Proxies: Stand-Ins, Not Stars; (9) Grading Practices: Taking a New Look at Grading Comprehension; (10) Measuring Comprehension through Standardized Tests: An Oxymoron?; and (11) Using Classroom Comprehension Assessment as a Counterpart to Standardized Assessment: A Possibility or a Pipedream? A glossary and guidelines are also included.