Running Record Training Wheels

I have been doing DRA's like a madwoman for the last week or so. Even though the section where the student reads out loud has the words printed on a page for me to look at and take notes on while they read, I have been practicing with my running record training wheels on. I haven't tried the checkmarks, but I have been making more notes about what they are saying, how they are sounding out or chunking words, etc. Before I would write down their substitutions, and other errors and make notes about their expression and phrasing, but that's about it. So I guess my next step would be to try out the check marks, time to jump into the deep end of the pool. . .

One thing I am intrigued with this week is a student I have in my class that dropped several levels of DRA assessment over the summer. She went from a 16 to a 10 (from the end of first grade level back to the beginning/middle of first grade level). She has an identical twin in another class who stayed at a 16 over the summer. The other teacher and I talked after school and we are going to delve deeper to try and find out how much reading each one did over the summer. I am also going to talk to her last year's teacher about the DRA to see how that went.