How does it guide instruction? Assessment How does it guide instruction?

Why do we assess?

“The primary purpose of assessment is to gather data to inform teaching. If assessment does not result in improved teaching, then its value in school diminishes greatly.” Irene C. Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell Look at your note taking book- take a minute to list all assessments that you currently give your students and how do you use these assessments to inform your instruction?

Assessment guides… Richardson, J. (2016). Now think about your assessments in each of these areas- What assessments are given whole class? If you are an administrator or coach- whole school? What assessments are given in order to determine an instructional reading level? I will guide your students in reading? How do you use these assessment in order to plan and prepare your independent practice in your classroom? This can be centers, indpendent work or stations, worksheets, journal writing, etc. Richardson, J. (2016).

Screening Screeners are typically given 3 times a year to assess an entire school or grade level. What, if any screeners are used at your school? Fountas and Pinnell, Scholastic Reading Inventory, STAR, PALs, others?

Help! I need more help! Reflect that MOST of Virginia gives the PALs assessment 2 times per year and some give it 3 times a year. K-3 are the typical grades- but now assessments are higher grades. What are you currently doing in your sites and how often? Who gives these assessments and how are they used to inform instruction? Do you feel strong in your abilitiy to use the results you obtain? I did not as a special education teacher. I had to go to the “teacher of record” to get scores of my students and I discovered in the beginning that not all of my students were assessed. We changed this practice immediately.

Scores Rhyming and concept of word were two areas that my school had overall weak scores. Not being able to rhyme may be the result of phonological processing disorder OR just lack of exposure. Whole class activities like- oral poetry reading on smart board (choral reading) are VERY helpful for this. Song lyrics can be used in upper levels and middle schools. This can be a great whole class activity used for warm-up. Vocabulary building can take place at this time as well.

Groupings PALs can aid a classroom teacher in grouping students according to reading level and/or skill set. You may see a particular small group based on similar reading levels, but you may also see groups based on spelling or word study, etc.

Electronic Lesson Plans Now what??? Once you have used your assessment data to determine groupings and areas that need to be targeted- PALs has on it’s website- Lesson plans and guides that can help you plan instruction in whole class, guided reading and independent practice.

How do we assess more often? Assessing in between screening! What if we need more frequent checks?

Quick Checks Discuss how to take scores of a group- plan instruction- use quick checks to monitor progress- Do you have an example of this that we can plop into presentation? Which instrument? HEE HEE do I need to use to measure what I need to teach? How do I target here and once I decide on the correct quick check assessment? Which lessons do I use?

Teaching Materials Materials for intervention are on the PALs website

Quick Check Data How do we know our students are getting better?

The Running Record is a record of errors, or miscues, that readers make as they are reading. Why do we use running records? To evaluate text difficulty To group students with similar needs To monitor progress To allow students to move through books at different paces To guide classroom instruction Fontas and Pinnell provide an assessment system that uses running records for more information about reading. Informal running records can be taken weekly or ever other week for most deficit readers. Those readers will need progress monitored more frequently.

The Fountas & Pinnell Benmark Assessment System

Let’s watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQtLFZHWP88

Let’s score and analyze https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7qhJZzuiLQ

Older Students https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUr1og9lPWM&t=44s Let’s finish reflecting? What type of assessments do we need?

Progress Monitoring Why do we need to progress monitor? How can a data wall be helpful to guide our decision making?

Other screeners- STAR, Scholastic Reading Inventory, Dibels- etc.