Assessment and evaluation are integral components of the teaching-learning cycle. The main purposes are to guide and improve instruction and student learning. Effectively planned assessment and evaluation can promote learning, build confidence and develop students’ understanding of themselves as active learners.
What do you need to know? Every school and district has certain expectations for how their students are assessed in literacy. I think that some essential things to know regardless of where you teach are: how to give a running record and how to evaluate a DRA (Developmental Reading Assessment).
What do you teach them? Many schools, districts, and states are following the trend of the workshop approach. It is imperative to know the seven comprehension strategies traditionally taught within the workshop approach: making connections, creating images, monitoring comprehension, asking questions, determining importance, inferring, and synthesizing.
How do I know when they need additional support? There are many different assessments out there to determine if a student falls below grade level expectations: running records, DRA and RCBM are a few of the common ones. Once students are identified they may receive one of many interventions: Read Naturally or Lexia are the two programs we use at my school.
Kelly- Fishers, IN
What do you need to know? The most important thing to know is not only how to give the assessments but what to do with the data after the assessments are given. For example, at our school we give DIBELS assessments three times/year. Afterwards, we come together as a grade level and analyze our scores. We use these scores to guide our instruction and make flexible small remedial, on-level, and enrichment reading groups. We progress monitor our students and continually look at these scores to adjust our groups. There is no benefit to giving assessments if the data is not used to guide instruction.
How do I know when they need additional support? We use DIBELS ( Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills). On DIBELS, our students are tested on phoneme segmentation, nonsense word fluency, and oral reading fluency. We have also begun to use TRCs (Total Reading Comprehension). We use this data to determine if our students need additional support.
What do you teach them? We use the Scott Foresman basal and the Debbie Diller method of literacy stations. We teach guided reading instruction in small flexible reading groups based on assessment scores. We use our assessments to teach targeted literacy skills, from phonics to comprehension.
Shalini, Indianapolis, IN
I think the most important thing to know about assessment is using assessments that are meaningful and will help you drive instruction. Assessment includes testing, evaluation and measurement. It uses both summative and formative evaluation to monitor student progress and structure future assignments that may be beneficial to the student. Generally it is used to make a particular educational decision. The objective and learning targets should match, and the selected assessment techniques should accommodate the specific needs of the learner to whom it is applied.
Rachel, Osceola, IN
The most important component of literacy assessment is that it should be the driving force in your instruction. How you assess your students should depend on which route you will take with teaching your lessons and how you differentiate your instruction. Any assessment that you decide to give your students needs to be worthwhile, effective, and helpful! Think: Don't just test to test...What do I want to know and learn about my students from this assessment? If the assessment is not important, don't give it!
Every teacher should be giving their students high-quality instruction using best practices and teachers need to try and reach out to all learners. If a teacher notices that her student(s) are not understanding the material, early intervention is key! Teachers need to find out the "root" of the child's reading difficulties and plan appropriate interventions to fit that child's needs. I find that one-on-one or small group instruction seems to be very effective when implementing interventions.
Sarah, Columbus, IN
I think no matter what or where you teach, it is important to ensure you are using assessments that are valid and reliable. You need to understand how to administer them and review them in detail in order to let the assessments guide your instruction and your interventions. I think the most important component is that the information is being used to help determine what each child needs.
Shelley, Wolcottville, IN
How does your school handle intervention?
It seems our corporation is just starting to use the RTI model. There really hasn't been too much talk at our school but I know the school who use palm pilots (scores are sent directly to state I believe) use this model. This school is actually the first year I have heard of it. While reading the chapters assigned, it made me think about our school. Our curriculum leader at our school takes all the low students in first grade and keeps them for the entire morning. The tests that she uses are guided reading levels from kindergarten and a test called ERSY (sp?). There are about 4-5 from each class, about 10-15 kids she has. She teaches them reading, writing, and spelling. She also takes the bubble kids for 3 rd grade to help them pass the ISTEP. I believe she takes them for an hour or two daily.
Rachel, Osceola, IN
My school has a few ways of handling interventions. If the child's reading struggles are not too severe, the classroom teacher can decide how he/she wants to give instruction to that child. If a child's difficulties progressively get worse, the classroom teacher has to refer the child to TAT (Teacher Assistance Team) for help with interventions to be tried in the classroom. Then, a follow-up meeting is scheduled to see how well the child has progressed. If no progress has been made, the child could be referred for testing if applicable.
We technically do not do RTI, but we are in the beginning stages of ICT, which will eventually replace the TAT process and the process will not take as long to see results with the students. It should be a great program once it gets fully implemented. Also, we have SRA/Corrective Reading and Book Buddies which are reading programs for struggling readers. In SRA, students work in small groups and are progress monitored on a monthly basis and they have goals that they try to meet. Once the child meets his/her goal, they graduate from the program.
Sarah, Columbus, IN
I will be completely honest, I do not agree completely with the way we handle our interventions for literacy. After reading both books, I feel we have a long way to go. We are beginning to work with the RTI model in more depth and as a staff we are all learning more about how to implement it. We usually begin any of our interventions with our STAT team meeting. This is when teachers have tried strategies in the classroom, but a child is still showing a regression or is not working at grade level. We do this also with behavioral concerns. STAT team consists of the principal, teacher, title 1 teacher, school psychologist, speech therapist, and special education teacher. We review data from previous assessments ranging from kindergarten screening, Metropolitan scores, and NWEA scores.(1-4th grade) We then take information that the title teacher gathers from administering a DRA, Dibbles, and K-Bit.(Kauffman Brief Intelligence test) The school psychologist takes information from KTEA2. (Kauffman Test of Educational Achievement) We then develop the intervention strategies based on the information. Many times this includes giving them 1 to 1 title support first if they are not already receiving this.
Shelley, Wolcottville, IN
My school is unique in my district because it is one of the only Title I schools. Therefore, we have two additional staff members to help us provide interventions. My school is using the 3 tier model of RTI. At the beginning of the school year all students are tested using the RCBM (oral fluency) and the MAZE (comprehension). Students that fall below the cutoff score were those that we considered for tier 2 interventions. Due to the fact that I teach at a Title I school these interventions were usually given by the Title I teachers. The interventions consisted of Read Naturally (fluency, some comprehension, and writing) as well as Lexia (computerized phonics program). We have a daily intervention time of thirty minutes. All students in that grade level participate in RTI at that time which limits the amount of pull out throughout the day. Classroom teachers keep the remainder of their students and provide other meaningful remedial or enrichment literacy activities.
Kelly, Fishers, IN
If a student is not on grade-level, our first step is to try some interventions on our own. If no progress is made, we have a grade-level meeting where the other teachers on our team help us come up with strategies. If there is still no progress, we take our student to our school's SOS team. The SOS team consists of our school counselor, school psychologist, and teachers from every grade level who try to come up with more strategies. If there is still no progress, the student could be referred for testing. Our district's goal is to implement the RTI process in 2-3 years. In the meantime, we use the IQ-Discrepancy Model.
Shalini, Indianapolis, IN
Does your school have an intervention classroom?
Yes, we have a literacy intervention classroom. It's called Explorers. At our school it's for 2/3 graders who are considered bubble kids. Although next year, our school will only have it for 3 rd graders. The teacher is trained in Lips/Wilson and goes to workshops throughout the year. The training they receive is the latest in research. They have a full time aide in the room. The students can rotate out of the classroom and into a regular 2/3 class but usually they are in there for the whole year. The students who are with our curriculum leader, they can also rotate out of intervention and be placed back into their classroom for the whole morning to work on reading, spelling, and writing.
Rachel, Osceola, IN
No, we do not have a specific literacy intervention classroom, other than SRA which is for only first graders and they receive instruction 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week. It would be awesome to have intervention classrooms like the fourth and fifth grade classrooms in our reading. How effective! We have a special education classroom, but most of that instruction is done in the classroom since we do inclusion. Wouldn't it make more sense to have intervention classrooms for first and second grade? Try to catch those struggling readers early...
Sarah, Columbus, IN
I am not currently in a Literacy Intervention classroom. This sounds like a wonderful idea and at the building I started out in, parts of this were being used. However I think the missing component was that the child is not pulled out for any interventions. We were still pulling out for counseling, speech, etc... This really disrupts the child's schedule and therefore almost all blocks of time are interrupted.
Shelley, Wolcottville, IN
Due to the fact that my school has additional support from Title I we do not have any literacy intervention classrooms. All of our students who are being progress monitored in literacy are receiving services through Title I.
Kelly, Fishers, IN
We do not have any literacy intervention classrooms at our school. In fact, we are the only elementary school in our district that does not have a literacy coach at this time, due to our standardized testing scores.
Shalini, Indianapolis, IN
