Assessment

*This blog is for last week, and last week's blog is for this week!*

STANDARDIZED TESTS ARE NOT THE ONLY FORM OF ASSESSMENT!
These standardized tests only give a glimpse of a child's ability. There are many other ways to assess a child's ability! A variety of tests is a great way to give teachers a more "comprehensive portrait"(Rubin).

Rubin talks specifically about measuring reading ability beyond standardized testing.
It is important for students to have a level of text that will challenge them, but not enough to cause frustration. This means a level that is a step below a level that students can read independently.

Using multiple assessments is a great and effective way to pinpoint student's strengths and weaknesses in reading.

Here is a short list of optional assessments that each focus on a different element of reading
        -Cloze test
                -Helps with comprehension and vocabulary
        -Informal Reading Inventories
                -Reports reading growth over a school year
        -Running Records
                -Measures reading progress

Using multiple assessments that focus on different elements of learning can help a teacher pinpoint what exact element of reading that a student is struggling with. This makes it easier for the teacher to provide extra help to students.

After giving these assessments, it is important to organize this assessment data. Rubin suggests organizing scores in three reading levels: independent, instructional, and frustration.

Here are two examples of running records that teachers can use to assess reading

This assessment specifically focuses on fluency and comprehension

This assessment focuses on reading behaviors

Things to think about:

1. What are the different ways I can assess reading in my classroom?
2. How can I ensure to look at results from different assessments both individually and as a whole to get a complete picture of student's achievement?

Classroom Structures: Organizing for Literacy

The chapter, 'Inside Classrooms That Work', in the book, "Classrooms That Work: They Can All Read and Write" by Allington and Cunningham gives detailed schedules using all essential components of effective instruction.

Here is a sample schedule that I found on

This chart is cute, and colorful, and a great way for students to know what is coming next during the day. This schedule may be limited just because it is easy to write only one or two words for something like this, or it actually may be leaving out important aspects to a classroom schedule.

The book talks about doing choice centers and assigned centers. This chart only lists centers once. Beginning their day with a center of their choice can their day off to a good start. 

This chart also leaves out an opening to the day. Unless that is what 'assembly' stand for. It is important to open the class with the calendar, and any possible messages. 

This chart only mentions reading once. The book has illustrated that it is best to break up reading and split it up throughout the day. It is also good to have different kinds of reading- independent, teacher read-aloud, guided reading, etc. The chart leaves out writing as well. Writing is super important and it can be as simple as abc's for kindergarteners, or complex as journal writing for any upper grades. 

It is so interesting to see how just a few things can affect how a classroom works, and how effective that classroom for student learning!

Things to think about:

1. Why is opening the day with a calendar and messages important?

2. What are important things to do as a teacher during the dismissal part of the day?

Guided Reading and Book Clubs!

Guided Reading is a great comprehension strategy for students!

It's not always the most fun activity for kids, especially if they are just handed out a chart that looks like this:

It may be more exciting for students to see something that they can use other skills such as drawing or coloring such as this:

This worksheet is more about character and character development, but you can use worksheets similar to this for any kind of guided reading!

Book clubs are great ways for students to read something that interests them and share what they have learned! A great way for students to be involved in choosing what they want to do is for the teacher to have a few books picked out, and for the students to vote on which book they want to read. 

Switching jobs each week: discussion director, illustrator, word finder, connector, etc., keeps students from doing the same thing every week while still providing them with examples from each job from classmates in their book club!

Building Vocabulary

Vocabulary is so important to learning and reading comprehension. Whether you're in the Logographic stage, or the Orthographic stage, vocabulary is just as important! BUT, it is important to remember that when words are taught directly, they must be kept to a small amount- words need to be  taught thoroughly and there needs to be time for students to meet them in many different contexts in order for them to understand and remember the vocabulary! 

"When you see or hear words, your brain makes connections to those words. Your brain does not think of definition"(Allington & Cunningham 95). 

It is important to bring real things into the classroom and give them meaning!

This simple activity is such a great way for children in any stage- but ideally in the beginning stages. All you need is a cup, or bowl, and items that you can you put in it that serve as "vocabulary words". 

This activity is for children in the orthographic stage of literacy. This is a great resource for students to understand words that may not be tangible or just simply new vocabulary words that are foreign to students! Understanding all of these different aspects of the key word is such a great way to fully understand and remember the vocabulary word!

Things to think about: 

1. How many vocab words do you remember having to learn in your language arts classes in your early education? 

2. Do you remember all of or any of the vocab you were taught in language arts? 

Comprehension

The book states that in order to think while you read, you must:

1. Be able to quickly identify almost all the words
2. Have sufficient background knowledge that you can connect to the new information
3. Be familiar with the type of text and be able to see how the author has organized the ideas
4. Have a mindset that reading is thinking and know how to apply your thinking in comprehension strategies

Making story maps, making graphic organizers, making KWLs, participating in think-aloud's, and participating in literate conversations are great ways to practice comprehension strategies!

With all this in mind I found a great acronym for comprehension strategies!

The acronym "RISE" uses Retelling, Inferring, Synthesizing, and Envisioning/Connecting to make up the comprehension strategies being used. This is a great exercise to follow along with after reading text. Talking about the story is more effective for students than answering simple questions about the story. This makes students think, comprehend, and communicate about the text.

This is a slightly different, and more visual version of the last activity. This activity expands on the connections part of RISE. Making connections and communicating those connections to peers is a great way to enhance comprehension for students. Discussion groups would be a great vessel for this activity.

What other ways can you incorporate comprehension into your classroom?

Word Study

   Morphemes, Context, and the Dictionary are three helpful things to help students refine the meanings of words.

   Learning root words, prefixes, and suffixes makes it easier for students to predict a word that they do not know.

   Learning how to use context to figure out a word, or what a word means, is an important concept in learning how to read.

   The dictionary is an important tool for young readers to be able to know how to use. Looking up words that are unknown and copying the definitions are a great way to use the dictionary to learn new words.

This Word Study chart is a great way to build                       This is a great worksheet that could be
vocabulary for your students. Each day of the                        added to either the word study chart on
week is a different activity, all incorporating                         the left, or used in the beginning of a new
word study! If teachers have new vocabulary                         lesson or vocabulary list! This is a great
every week, then this is the perfect way to study                    way for students to really understand
the new words throughout the week before a                          everything about the new word!
spelling or definitions test!

Choral Readings:
What are they?

• Reading aloud in unison with a whole class or group of students. After hearing the teacher read and discuss a selection, students reread the text together
• Choral reading helps build students' fluency, self-confidence, vocabulary knowledge, motivation, and enjoyment of literature. 

Fluency

"In order to become avid and enthusiastic readers who get pleasure and information from reading, children must develop fluency." -(Classrooms that Work)

     Modeling behavior is so important for kids who are learning how to read. Reading aloud to kids can be the first step in developing children's fluency where they can at least learn what fluency sounds like. Finding easy material and having students read and re-read that material is also important for developing fluency. Finding material that is interesting to the student helps create a desire to read rather than reading something that is boring to them.

Echo and choral reading are other great idea for developing fluency. In echo reading, kids can echo sentences at a time after their teacher or even their parents at home. In coral reading you can divide students into groups and have each group read a part in a script, or a book. 

     I found this activity on Pinterest and loved it! With this activity you read every word in a box in one breath. This is a great way to practice saying words fast which will in turn help fluency in reading! It is also a fun way for students to participate- kids love to be silly and I think this incorporates an aspect of silliness in it (:

     Another great way to incorporate fluency in the classroom is to have a sight word wall. This can be set up according to preference, but as for me I think I would like to make the sight words and the caterpillar bigger so that students would be able to read it from across the room. 

Here are some questions to think about regarding fluency in the classroom:

1. What are other ways you can incorporate fluency in the classroom?

2. How are fluency and word recognition related?

Word Recognition

Reading is a complex problem-solving process in which readers actively pursue meaning 

- (Graves, Juel, & Graves, 2001)

     As I was reading through What Can I Say Besides "Sound it Out"? Coaching Word Recognition in Beginning Reading by Kathleen F. Clark, I found some great 'coaching' methods to incorporate into teaching. Here are a list of coaching cues that I found helpful from reading this article:

1. General Cues: Prompting readers to use their knowledge of word recognition strategies and think about how to apply them to this task

          Ex: How am I going to figure this out?, What can I do?

2. Specific Cues: Prompting specific action to provide readers with more detailed information about the word-recognition task. Focusing on: graphophonic knowledge, word-part identification strategies, and contextual supports. 

          Graphophonic Knowledge Ex: Direct them to consider individual letters and sounds- It's a hard c., The y is acting like an i., What does str- say?, Remember, ph- can make an f sound.

          Word-Part Identification Ex: Take off the (-es, -ed, -ing)., Is there a little word in here? It's a compound word; the first word is..., Is there a chunk you know?

          Contextual Supports Ex: Focus attention on inappropriateness of a word- You said waking [walking] the dog., Use pictures and words., Let's read to the end and see what makes sense.

< This sight word pounding strategy is great for recognizing words. The kids are able to participate in something fun while engaging in word recognition!

This activity I found on Pinterest belonged to a mother of two kids. She writes a set of word cards and her and her child review them daily, once he starts to read the cards fluently without hesitation they are reviewed every other day and are moved to the "even days" or "odd days" tab and new word cards are moved into the "daily" tab. Then the "even days" and "odd days" cards are moved to a day of the week tab, and then to a month tab while the other cards are moved back as well and new daily cards are added (and so on). This is a great way to help students learn words and become better readers! 

Engaged Learners and Reading

     Children need to be active and engaged in their learning process. This is most important when children are learning how to read. In the articles I read for this week's class this was the common theme that I recognized.

     Reading aloud to children is one of the most important activities that you can do to help a child learn to read. There are several aspects of reading that young children learn through the process of learning how to read. One of those aspects is phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is the awareness that spoken language consists of a sequence of phonemes. There are several ways to help children to learn phonemic awareness. The article, "Supporting Phonemic Awareness Development in the Classroom by Yopp & Yopp states that, "...songs, chants, and word-song games are ideally suited toward developing young children's sensitivity to the sound structure of language"(3).

   


     Dr. Seuss rhymes are also highly recommend to teach kids phonemic awareness for his use of rhyming words, as well as his use of made up words! Dr. Seuss as well as other rhymes also help develop children's linguistic awareness.

   




     Learning the alphabet, and understanding the relationship between letters and sounds is very important to learning how to read as well. This "feed the alphabet monster" is a great activity for kids to practice recognizing letters and producing their sounds.

     Using something like this in the classroom is great for children! Kids love to recognize their names and use it as an example. This is a great way for students to see letters of the alphabet in their name, and their classmate's names. Such a great idea when learning the alphabet and learning how to read!

Something to Consider:

• Why is it so important for children to be read to in order to be successful in reading?

Background in Reading

     How cool is it that each student in a classroom comes from a different background? They all grew up differently with different parents, homes, siblings, rules, etc. This diversity brings fun to the classroom, but it also poses a challenge to the teacher. 

"Young children want to do everything that grown-ups can do...and if they grow up in homes where the grown-ups reading and write, they pretend they can read and write. As they engage in these early literacy behaviors, they learn important concepts" (Cunningham P.M., & Allington, R.L. (2010).)

     Kids come into the classroom with a big range background knowledge in literacy. Parents dictate the beginning of their child's knowledge in literacy. If the parents are consistently reading with their kids, and displaying their own feelings of importance of reading and writing (such as reading or writing themselves) then the probability of their child achieving in these early stages is high. If the parents are not involved in the child's literacy and don't seem to display importance for reading or writing, then the probability of their child achieving in the early stages is low.

Something to consider:

• How can teachers begin to teach students how to read if they are all on different levels? 

• How was the foundation for your own literacy affected by your background?

   

     Reading through chapter three I found many great ways to build the on foundation of reading. I came across "teaching letter names and sounds." Letter names and sounds are incredibly important to the foundation of reading! Without learning these, you would not be able to read! I found this activity on Pinterest and I think it is great for students learning letter sounds. This activity allows students to think and use prior knowledge by recalling the picture. It also is interactive- allowing students to cut and glue the pictures! I think that this activity incorporates several important factors to learning and that it is a fun way to learn letters and their sounds!

Read, Read, Read

     The main idea across chapter 1 and 2 in "Classrooms that Work" and the article, "What I've Learned About Effecting Reading Instruction" by Richard L. Allington has persuaded to be confident in the fact that children need to read as much as possible in order to improve their reading. Allington's article gave "six T's" of effective elementary literacy instruction that stuck out to me:

1. Time

2. Texts

3. Teaching

4. Talk

5. Tasks

6. Testing

     While describing each "T" Allington provided much information about the difference between an exemplary teacher and just a teacher for each "T". I put together a list to summarize his points that I have found extremely helpful.

Exemplary Teachers

-Maintained a "reading and writing versus stuff" ratio that was adequately balanced
-Supplying a rich supply of books that students can actually read (appropriate complexity)
- Showed explicit models of the cognitive strategies that good readers use to read ("watch me" "let me show you")
-Encouraged and modeled much talk through the school day (purposeful talk in a conversational tone)
-Use of longer assignments over the course of a few days, rather than multiple short tasks to fill the day
-Evaluation of student work based more on effort and improvement than just achievement.


     Another main idea I have come across that has really interested me is the fact that teachers may have a lesson plan, but just going by that plan is not sufficient enough. Making students fill out a worksheet, or asking interrogative questions looking for a right answer are not good ways to assess or further student's knowledge. Teachers cannot just give multiple assignments and grade them based off of those assignments. Teachers are consistently working hard, re-planning, facilitating discussion, evaluating student's skill levels to help them learn in a way that will resonate with them individually, and so much more. Student choice, or managed choice is a huge part of engaging students. There are so many helpful and interesting things and ideas that these sources provide when describing what these exemplary teachers are doing in their classrooms.

     I came across this "Daily 5 Station Ideas" while I was on Pinterest. This seems to me like such an awesome idea when integrating reading into basically everything that students are doing. Each box gives great ideas on how to incorporate that type of reading into the classroom, or even at home. It is crazy to know how much reading effects your education- and with these ideas you can incorporate reading into your lesson planning all day long, all week long, etc.!