The big idea from this article was using an informal reading inventory to determine individualized plans for students when it comes to assessing word recognition. Since I knew the article was discussing word recognition, I figured it was most likely something I could apply to my first grade classroom. To me the strategy explained in the article was efficient and an organized approach when you are working with a whole class. All the students read from the same grade level reading passage and after that passage is read by the student apporximately 5 minutes of reading then the teacher will decide if it indicated the student is fluent at his/her grade level or not. If they are not then they should be given some type of sight word assessment and some type of phonics assessment dealing with decoding strategies and from there, there are four categories they could fall into: Weak sight vocabulary and weak decoding, good sight vocabulary and weak decoding, weak sight vocabulary and good decoding and good sight vocabulary and good decoding. Depending on where the students fit as a result of the informal assessments they will be narrowed down to what they specifically need help with.
I think this strategy could have been very effective in my classroom. First grade focuses a lot on word recognition and what it means to be a fluent reader. We also did a lot of assessments anyways and I feel like I do not have any specific information about the reasons why individual kids are having trouble with fluency. We began assessing right away with just having the kids read lists of 200 sight words but this strategy seems like it would save time since the students who read through the passage fluently would not have to go through all the 200 sight words as another assessment. Also, by doing a sight word assessment as well as a phonics assessment for the students that had trouble with the passage, will help the teacher understand why they are not quite fluent readers yet. I have students in my class that I am not sure where they are struggling but by doing the assessments in this order and if i did the sight word and phonics assessment right after each other I think that would help so when I am done meeting with that student right away for a couple minutes i could reflect and make notes about what was weak or good. I think starting with this strategy narrows it down to find out what assistance and extra practice is needed instead of waiting and seeing if I notice along the way where they are struggling.
As a professional depending on my grade level I would need to figure out how to determine what an appropriate passage would be to use to do the informal reading inventory. I would also need to make sure I am consistent when determining if a student is fluent or not.
For my unit I am focusing on class discussion and within those discussions some of the goals is to have the students connect the text to themselves which can relate to writing in the sense that if they do journal write the topic could be about how they connected to the story of the week. I will also be reading aloud so there will be a lot oral vocabulary some of the student may try to incorporate the oral vocabulary I will be teaching into their writing. As writers i know my students need more practice in adding details to their stories and that can connect directly to group discussions about the book of the week or when we make a graphic organizer and how we are sharing ideas to add details to our graphic organizer or pointing out the details in the books we read so they can try to create more details in their own writing.
I think its really interesting that this assessment strategy suggested you give all the students in your class the same reading passage. In our classroom they all start at different levels with different books based on our initial observations or what their previous teachers said they ended the year at. I think it would be good to see how all of your students compare to each other but it might be problematic to determine exactly what they need. Some have the philosophy that you should start with what students already know and work from there and if you have them all use the same passage there is a good chance they all wont know it.
ReplyDelete