Suggested Topic for Book Club Blog: In Book Club Plus!, the authors talk about “possible assessment sites” (p. 92) where teachers can gather formative and summative information about their students’ learning. Describe at least three assessment sites available in your classroom for learning about your students as literacy learners. What are the advantages and limitations of each site for providing information that is useful for deciding what the students need to learn next?
Because we have not been doing much literacy instruction in class, I have not been able to experience a lot of the examples that Book Club Plus describes. One thing we have been doing a lot of (I know everyone is…) is DRA assessments on students to see where they fall for guided reading groups. This would be considered a standardized test which we know there are many limitations too. For one thing, my MT always tells the students to read as quickly but as accurately as they can. This creates a high anxiety situation for a lot of our students because they struggle to read to begin with. We also have to time them for this assessment so the timer is sitting out and is a constant reminder that they are on the clock. The second limitation is see in this is that the students are limited to a couple books at their reading level and may not be interested in either. As we learned in 301, when students are not interested in what they are reading they are more likely to not comprehend. I see this a lot, especially with our lower level readers. When they are done reading the book they cannot answer the comprehension questions accurately at the end. One strength I see in this is the pre-reading strategy section that starts the assessment. I like that they students have time to look through the book to make predictions before they start reading. While this assessment tells us what level reader the student is and how well they can make meaning from a story, I don’t know how we are going to determine what we work on with each guided reading group.
The only other assessment site that is currently (sort of) functioning in our classroom is reading logs. The students have to fill out their reading log each week which is basically just a list of the books they read, one thing about each book, and a rating scale where they rate their silent reading effort for the week. We collect them on Fridays and then go through and give them a rating from us and send them home. One strength in this is reading through them and seeing who is putting in the effort to write something about each book they read. While most students basically write one or two words, some go beyond that and dig deeper. The downfall of that is these are the few students who are already functioning at a higher level than the rest of the students. I feel that this log isn’t used to its fully potential because we have students who write the bare minimum and then you cant even tell if they are reading the books. This assessment site only gives me information on the higher level students but still doesn’t really tell me what we could work on with them.
I am so anxious to get all of these other assessment sites running in our classroom. I want to see students reading and writing all throughout the day and then I feel I would be able to get a better idea of who needs to work on what. For example, a huge struggle in my class is writing. Every time we do MEAP practice, it is like pulling teeth to get the students to explain their ideas in writing. This usually ends with one of our two Asperger’s boys in tears and multiple other students staying in for recess because they cannot get it done. To me, this leaves students feeling terrible about their writing abilities. I want to tailor our literacy classroom around being supportive and working on students individual needs… Not what the state thinks our students need. It is all very frustrating to me!
I am interested to read about what types of assessment sites your classrooms are using and how they are working out so I can get a better idea of what I want to do and what I don’t want to do with my unit plan!
Kelli,
ReplyDeleteYes I am so familiar with the DRA testing I could do it in my sleep! We did that the first two weeks of school and there are definitely things I like about it and things I do not. When you time the students do they have a time limit or are you timing them to see how long they take to read the passage? I always tried to keep the timer hidden and if they asked about it I would just say something like, "oh that is just to keep me on track" so that they would not think the timer was for them. I had to time them to see how long they took to read the passage so I knew their wpm. I do wish that they had more book choices to choose from because I agree, most of the students only have two books to choose from and they do not seem very interested in the books.
Since we already did the DRA testing we have started our guided reading groups. I will get the chance to run my own group next week, but for this week my MT wanted to run them all because I had never done them before. I am excited to get to run a guided reading group next week!
We also have a reading log that my MT puts right in their planner so that they cannot lose it. They have to read 20 minutes a day for five days a week and their parents must initial by each day when they read. One aspect of the reading log that I like is that there are particular kinds of reading that the students must do. They have to read silently, read to someone, AND have someone read to them. That way they are experiencing a lot of different ways to read.
We have also been working on some of the students first long writing stories. They work on them in writing workshop. Each day my MT and I have a different goal for them to work on in their paper. They all have three paragraphs that went along with three pictures that they had to draw before they started writing. They have worked on their first paragraph using the SAD method (setting-and-dialogue) where they have to include the setting and some dialogue in their first paragraph. Then they worked on adding detail and finally their conclusion. Now we are working on editing their papers with red pen. Some students are really excited to put red all over their papers while other students did not want to because they thought the red ink would ruin their papers. It helped when my MT explained that after we are all done with our papers we are going to make a final draft where they will re-write their stories or they can type them on the computer. More students were willing to mark on their papers when given that information.
We have a good amount of assessments going on right now with many more to come, especially once the MEAP is over!
We haven't really even done our DRAs yet. Because my MT had to be out of town last week and various behavior issues we have had to take care of there has not been time to do DRA testing except for our students who were in TIER 3 of their AIMs web testing. The AIMs web testing would be considered a standardized assessment. Kelli I know your class did this assessment, and Aubrey I believe yours did as well. I think that one of the only advantages of the AIMs web and MAZE is that they were quick assessments. However, I know that AIMs web was administered by several people, and when we were at the PD about the AIMs web there were even disagreements in the way it should be scored. This makes me believe that it may not be 100% accurate. I also know that there were many students during our MAZE assessment who were just circling whatever word that looked good to them without actually reading the passage.
ReplyDeleteWe do many post prompts after read a louds and silent reading. I think these are actually beneficial because all of the students know how to do them now so we no longer have to model how to do it. Without having to model it allows for students to not be using what my MT says word for word in their writing. We then will look over them sometimes and comment back to them. Unfortunately these do not get read regularly, but they are kept in a folder so it will be good to see the progress once we are able to look over a time period.
We do reading logs just as you both do. However, it does not get done consistently. I think it would be nice if the students did it consistently because the students have to tell if the book was just right, too easy, or challenging to them. I think that this is a step to the "I can" statements in a reading sense. It allows the students to assess themselves on how easily they read the book.
I am also really excited to get to the end of October so that the MEAP testing is done.