Jessica Jackson
RE 5710 Dr. Koppenhaver
April 21, 2011
Introduction
Seeded deep in the heart of every teacher is the unquenchable desire to teach. We see young minds learn new things. We see the future of tomorrow overcome challenges, embrace new ideas, and ultimately develop what it takes to lead our country and this world years from now. Some days my impact on these happenings feels small, other days the job seems insurmountable, but every day the rewards are worth the hard work! I enrolled in the Reading Education program because of my awareness that there is always more to learn in the field of teaching reading! I was interested in the latest research, best practices, and not allowing myself to fall behind in my field. My coworker was in her last semester in the program. Daily she brought new things to the table. My desire to continue to learn grew and grew. The things that I have learned in the program daily influenced the decisions that I made in my classroom and our efforts as a grade level to give the Kindergarteners at Pilot Elementary a developmentally appropriate education that focused on best practice and not just what the county and state thought looked good on paper. My experience in the classroom has paused briefly upon the birth of our little girl, but even now, I find myself striving to incorporate best practice into the experiences to which I expose my nine month old and the students I tutor each week. One day soon I will return to the classroom and will continue to encourage best practice as I have before. This paper is written based on my experiences and instruction in the classroom that I loved, left for a season, but will return to as a better teacher!
Assessment
Assessment is perhaps one of the most important things that happens in the classroom. Assessment is an ongoing thing. It happens every single day and takes on many different looks all day long. Assessment is what drives and motivates all of the instruction that happens in my classroom (Paris & Hoffman, 2004). Through assessment, I gain an understanding of where each child is and I then make decisions on how to proceed to ensure that each child learns successfully.
In Davidson County we administer a Fountas and Pinnell formal running record three times a year—beginning, middle, and end. During this assessment kindergarten students read a book (they can choose fiction or nonfiction) aloud to the administrator. The administrator marks down any miscues that are made. Following the reading the administrator asks the child several questions about the story and they respond verbally based on the story (Fountas, & Pinnell, 2007). There is a place on the recording form where the teacher is to consider fluency and make a checkmark on the description that captures how fluent the child sounds, but there is no focus on computing a fluency score. As long as a child scores 90% or higher on the level that he or she is being tested on, that level is considered the instructional reading level. If a child scores 95% or higher, the administrator is encouraged to test the student on an additional level. I enjoy administering this formal assessment as it shows me just how much my students have grown in this area! After administering the assessment, I go back and analyze if the errors were meaning, semantic, or visual errors. Analyzing the errors in this way allows me to see what is causing the student to make mistakes and helps me to make decisions about areas where a student needs more instruction. This running record also shows me how well the student comprehends what he or she is reading. If the child is unable to answer the comprehension questions and carry on a meaningful conversation regarding the book, I know that comprehension is an area that needs our attention next.
When I administer the Fountas and Pinnell running record there are a few things that I look for because of what I have learned in the program that are not recommended as a county. First, as learned in the program, fluency should be monitored in students reading on a first grade level or higher. We do not focus on fluency at all in Davidson County. I feel like we often send students to the next grade with highly inflated running record scores because of the fact that we ignore fluency. The way we do it, students can read VERY slowly but still read at a high reading level if they are a good word caller. Once my kindergarten students are reading at a level that is considered a first grade reading level I begin calculating a reading rate for them. If they cannot read the number of words per minute that Dr. Morris has deemed appropriate through his work, I do not advance them to the next level. They remain on the lower level (which is already higher than they need to be able to read in kindergarten) until their reading rate and expression are such that they are considered fluent (Samuels, Ediger, & Fautsch-Patridge, 2005). This focus on fluency is important as students who read in a choppy manner often lose their understanding of the story and are not able to comprehend with success (Allington, 2009). Another change that I make is that I do not test students on the next level book unless they can read the prior level at 98% or higher. I do not feel like the county’s standard of 95% is high enough to merit another text. I do not feel that there is any reason to rush students through the levels if they are not ready for them, so I once again stick to Dr. Morris’s standard for this as well (Morris, 2008).
Davidson County also requires several other literacy assessments as part of our K-2 portfolio. These are given at the end of each quarter. One is the letter identification assessment. Students are shown alphabet letters out of order and asked to identify the letter, the sound that it makes, and a word that begins with that letter. We do this for upper and lower case letters. We also administer a letter production test. We call out a letter and a word that begins with that letter and the student must write the upper and lower case forms of the letter. Both of these assessments give us an idea of the child’s understanding of alphabetic principle. We feel this is an important assessment following the study of Adams, Stahl, and Murray (as cited in Morris, 2005). We also assess a high frequency word list. Students are required to know these words in the amount of time congruent with what is allowed for the flash word assessment given in the IRI (Morris, 2008). In kindergarten we assess the 25 words that Fountas and Pinnell suggest for kindergarteners, but in the classroom we teach many, many more high frequency words (Jasmine, & Schiesl, 2009). We also administer a phonemic awareness assessment. Some of the tasks in this assessment focus on beginning and ending sounds, some on medial sounds or on rhyming. Many of the tasks assess the child’s ability to delete or manipulate phonemes in different parts of the word. An assessment that shows book and print awareness is also required. It demonstrates the student’s ability to differentiate letters from words, identify punctuation, identify front, back, spine, direction to read, and it also shows the child’s concept of word as described by Morris, Bloodgood, Lomax, and Perney (as cited in Morris, 2005). I often get frustrated at the many, many assessments that are required. I often feel like if we administered the IRI specially designed for emergent readers that we could cut out several of the tedious smaller assessments that we are required to administer. In the meantime, in an effort to be positive, all of these assessments are helpful in determining to what degree the student has developed beginning reading skills.
A state writing test is administered three times a year. The students are given a prompt and asked to write and draw a picture that answers the prompt. The piece is then graded by the teachers on the grade level according to a rubric generated by the state. This test is a way to see the growth in developmental spelling patterns used by the student across the span of the year. It is amazing to see the difference in the writing that my students produce at the beginning of the year in comparison with the writing produced at the end of the year. This assessment also shows how well students are generating ideas, progressing through the stages of the spelling inventory, (Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton, & Johnston, 2008) and using punctuation in writing.
Informal assessment is something that happens in the classroom every single day. A teacher who waits for results to formal assessments is way behind. The hundreds of decisions that I make every single day are impacted largely by the informal assessment data that I collect. Each time that I meet with a reading group I administer an informal running record so that I can see to what degree the child is progressing through the Fountas and Pinnell levels, to note what errors are being made, and to calculate a reading rate if necessary. Each time I also ask some brief questions to assess comprehension. All of this is recorded on a post-it note and organized by date in a notebook where I keep similar records for each child. In another notebook, I have a checklist that entails all of the strategies and skills that I hope to see a kindergartener using in reading. As I listen to students read at different times throughout the day I check and date the strategies that I see them using. If there is a strategy that I have taught until I am blue in the face and a child is still not using it, or using but confusing it, I note that too. A quick glance at this checklist shows me how far the child has come, where misunderstandings lie, and any skills that need to be reviewed or retaught. I also have a log where I record conferences that I have with students during self-selected reading and writer’s workshop time. On these logs I record a complement that I give each child regarding their reading or writing, a teaching point that I have asked them to focus on, and any anecdotal notes that are important in my making wise, productive decisions regarding where to go next in my instruction of each student. Formal assessment is important (and required!) but the informal assessment data collected is irreplaceable because of the role that it plays in planning curriculum.
At our school, we record all reading progress on an Assessment Wall. The assessment wall has a place for all reading levels—Emergent through level Z. These letters represent the Fountas and Pinnell guided reading levels. Each student in the school is represented by a post-it note with their initials. Each grade level is represented by a different colored post-it note. Each child’s post-it is placed on their current reading level at the beginning of the year. Colored dots are placed on post-its to show if a child receives ESL, EC, or Title 1 services. Every two weeks we mark on the back of the post-it note the date that the child was given an informal running record and the level where they are currently reading. If the child moved up a level, we move their post-it note to the next place. If not, we have documented that we do know where they are reading. Every two weeks we meet as a grade level with the principal, lead teacher, title 1 teacher, and any specialists involved with teaching the specified student. One struggling student is chosen and as a grade level we discuss ideas that we could use to help the student progress. This is a pain in the tail to teachers, but it is nice to be able to see the school at a glance. It takes away from worrying about my students alone and promotes a school wide feeling that we are looking for ways to meet the needs of all children every day in a meaningful way. We look for ways to help each other with struggling students by pulling from everyone’s ideas of best practice and recently read research. In some cases this means tutoring (Lane, Pullen, Hudson, & Konold, 2009), extra instruction, or just coming up with a different way to teach what is being misunderstood so that it works for the student having trouble (Slavin, Lake, Davis, & Madden, 2009). The assessment wall is also a good way to make sure that all students who are struggling are receiving extra services and not falling through the cracks.
B. Materials, Technologies, and Media
Many, many materials are used in designing an effective reading and writing program. Things that people would call junk are absolute treasures in a kindergarten classroom! Probably the most important materials in the classroom are books. Books of all kinds are of utmost importance. As a kindergarten teacher, I am always on the lookout for books that are appropriate for the lowest level beginning reader to read on his or her own. This is quite the job. Very few companies sell a large selection of these lower level books at a price that teachers can use their own money to purchase. Having many different titles of lower level books is very important in giving students experiences with on level texts. Quality trade books for read alouds are also important materials in a classroom.
Games, activities, and manipulatives that can be used to encourage literacy are materials that I collect for literacy tubs. Letter tiles, magnetic letters, games that work with words or letters, old magazines, game pieces and other random things are great materials to use in exposing students to print, developing phonemic awareness, growing alphabetic principle, etc (NAEYC, & IRA, 1998). Clip boards are valuable in assisting students in doing hands on work around the room. For my minilesson time I use chart paper with markers and the big books and trade books that come with our basal series as materials. Pointers are often used for teaching finger pointing. The word wall is a necessary resource for helping students learn high frequency words.