A special education teacher wants to determine the progress that a student has made in decoding. Which of the following is the best informal assessment technique for the teacher to use?

Standardized test data provides a broad overview of a student's performance compared to their peers but lacks the specificity needed to assess current decoding skills. This method may not reflect the student's ongoing development or provide insights into their specific decoding abilities.

While criterion-referenced tests can measure specific skills against defined standards, they often do not provide the immediate, hands-on observation of decoding skills that informal assessments offer. This approach may not capture the nuances of the student's progress in decoding as effectively as a direct reading task.

Cloze activities require students to fill in missing words in a text, which primarily tests comprehension and contextual understanding rather than direct decoding skills. While useful for assessing overall reading comprehension, this method does not specifically isolate decoding capabilities as effectively as having the student read a word list.