Avenue Maze

Silent Reading Comprehension and Fluency

What Is It?

Maze is a widely-used progress monitoring tool developed by Deno and Marsten that measures silent reading comprehension and fluency.

The Basics

All students begin at Reading Level 1 (the snail) with passages that are typically read at the end of 1st grade. Each Maze level represents a change of a half-grade reading level. If a student meets the goal of the number of correct minus incorrect responses within a level on six occasions, he or she will move up a level. If a student completes three passages meeting the goal without error, he or she will move to the next level. If the student does not meet the goal, the student moves back one level.

The Rules

Maze is a one-minute timed task. Students are presented with a short passage with every seventh word deleted and replaced with a set of three words placed below the deleted word. Two of the words are distractors. One word is the correct response. The distractors used are words that are grammatically and semantically incorrect. The student reads the passage and clicks on the word that completes the sentence correctly. If the student completes the passage before the end of one minute, the student clicks on the "done button". At the end of one minute, the screen changes to "Time's Up"! The student can review the correct and incorrect items and view their score on the game bar.

The Standards

The passages include narrative and expository readings, with more narrative passages at levels 1-4 and increasing numbers of expository passages at levels 5-12. Passages within a level are equivalent in difficulty. Students' performances within a passage level may vary depending on background knowledge, vocabulary, and motivation. Using scores across three or four passages and across time provides a more robust database for decision-making.

Progress Monitoring

Teachers, students, and parents can review the students' scores on the data graphs by clicking on the History button. Avenue records the data in a visually graphic display and a printable data table. A chart depicting the reading levels and goals set for each level is available on the Avenue login page.
Click on the Links to Documents button for additional information.

The goal for each reading level is based on a number of studies among general education students using paper-pencil Maze passages. As data are collected with a larger sample using the Avenue PM software, the goals may change.