Course Description:

This course discusses the reading process and the factors that influence its development, the role of assessment to inform and adapt literacy instruction, the evaluation and use of formal and informal assessment tools for individual learners and groups of students, and the interpretation and communication of assessment results. A 30-hour practicum is required.

Monday, September 12, 2011

Developing a Plan for the First Weeks of School

I am finally able to differentiate between the approaches to assessment of reading. This feels great to have some momentum back when it comes to assessing my students. I have an opportunity this year to work with a class of struggling readers who I can tell already have some serious attitude problems when it comes to approaching any level or genre of text. My first days have been spent setting behavior expectations, building community and watching how they are handling and reading from a wide selection of non fiction and fiction texts. I am very interested to learn how the reading interviews turn out tomorrow so I can begin to plan how I am going begin my assessments. With real poor attitudes around reading I can’t help but wonder how much repetitive assessment and “low” intervention groups have played into their less than favorable attitudes around reading. Chapter 5 in the Clay text was really helpful and I have a new found respect for the patterns and unique info running records reveal about the individual. I also enjoyed the u-tube video’s on the live binder.
Posted by at

1 comment:

  1. Tonia BoyerSeptember 18, 2011 at 4:12 PM

    I feel your pain. If you've ever read Cris Tovani's book "I Read It, But I Don't Get It", there's a chapter called "Fake Reading" which describes her first day of reading intervention class. It is nearly identical to my experiences teaching middle school reading. I always remind my principal at the beginning of every school year that my real mission in life is to convince middle school kids that books are not evil. So many goals are written about improving test scores and reading rate and accuracy, and yet the most important factor of helping kids become better readers is often overlooked. I cannot repeat enough times that attitude is everything. Reading interviews are often interesting. I find that most kids, if they feel safe, are brutally honest. I always take it as a challenge to improve those views of reading by the time they leave my classroom at the end of the year.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)