Reflecting on What I Have Learned

1. I believe that students should be assessed in a variety of ways, as only using one method may not reflect the whole of the students strengths or weaknesses. I feel that formative assessment should be on-going and a natural part of everyday activities in the classroom. It would be unfair in my opinion to just use formal assessment at the end of a big unit, wouldn't accurately reflect all of the learning that the student may or may not have accomplished. Benchmark assessment should occur within, between, and among instructional units. Information gathered from these assessments can be used to place students in terms of where they are, but can also be used to identify strengths and gaps incurriculum and instruction. I feel that a balanced approach makes the most sense as it should include a continuum of strategies and methods to help students achieve educational goals. I don't really conduct assessment becuase I am not teaching, but I would assess based on my beliefs in the fairness of a balanced assessment program. I would use benchmarking at the beginning, middle and end of the year, and if needed at other times, but on a day to day basis, things like running records and working with students to conduct formative assessment would provide the clearest data on a constant basis. Depending on the grade level, i would conduct grand-scale assessment at the end of a unit or marking period.





2. I think running records when used in conjunction with other informal assessment is a good way to monitor students progress in terms of reading. I thought the article on RTI was very helpful for me as I didn't know much about it, but heard alot about it, and of course the many articles on comprehension and fluency have all served to educate me about all of the aspects of literacy education. I really like the article Reading Comprehension Requires Knowledge of Words-And the World becuase This article was good at providing some insights into the Fourth-Grade Slump in children's reading comprehension, especially in the low-income student population, by emphasizing the importance of word and world knowledge in successful comprehension, and the importance of a well thought out and designed language arts program. I think what made this article a very worthwhile read was that it pointed out that the main cause of the achievement gap between socioeconomic groups is a language gap, and addresses the flaws in current language arts programs that fail to promote or enhance students' general word knowledge in any coherent way. I would use QRI4, I think it is a pretty conventional tool, probably wouldn't use DIBELS unless my school district mandated it.



3. My goals for assessment are to become more fluent and knowledgeable about how to analyze and best use the data that assessment provides. If you can't use the data that you gather, what good is collecting it?! Practice, practice, practice, that is how I would plan to meet that goal.

DIBELS Assessment Report

DIBELS Assessment Report

I assessed a Kindergarten-aged child (using Aarenson, Ann record in the Palm Pilot).

I assessed the student on Initial Sound Fluency (ISF, Benchmark, Beg. Of Year), Letter Naming Fluency (LNF, Benchmark, Beg. Of Year), and on Nonsense Word Fluency (NWF, Benchmark, Mid. Of Year). The results are as follows:

Phonological Awareness and Alphabetic Principle Assessments

ISF - The student scored 21 initial sounds per minute which put him in the low-risk category.

Analysis: The student seemed to have some random errors, but also had a bit of trouble remembering the names of the pictures and occasionally substituted the letter name for the sound.

Action: To continue the student’s progress in phonemic awareness, I would practice letter sound correspondence activities and activities on segmenting and blending syllables.


LNF – The student scored 54/57 words per minute which placed the student in the low-risk category.

Analysis: The student scored well on this assessment but had trouble with lowercase l (called it “i” two times), and missed lowercase c (kind of random).

Action: There were no reinforcement activities available on the handheld, but I would work with the student on identifying the letter in stories or a poem. I would also have the student practice some writing exercises with the letter so he can see it and write it and say it.

NWF – The student scored 39 letter sounds per minute which place him in the low-risk category.

Analysis: The student scored well on this assessment and produced consonant sounds correctly almost every time, but still needs to work on the difference between long and short vowel sounds, which was where almost all of his errors took place.

Action: For this area, I would work with the student on identifying letter sound correspondence, with an emphasis on long and short vowel sounds. I would use songs or websites like Starfall.com to create opportunities for the student to practice.

Wrap-Up
Overall the student was low-risk in all of the assessment categories, but needs reinforcement work to strengthen his phonemic awareness and understanding of the alphabetic principles, paying particular attention to letter-sound correspondence and short and long vowel sounds. I thought the tool got a little easier to use the more assessments that I did, but in general, I felt it to be a little difficult to coordinate all of the actions while keeping the student on task as well; I think it would take a lot of practice to really feel comfortable with this tool. It’s not my favorite assessment tool, but it is quick and provides feedback automatically and sometimes even reinforcement activities to address specific problem-areas.

Reading Comprehension Video

Comprehension is the goal of all reading and in the video Professor Duke said that it can be defined as the simultaneous extraction and construction of meaning.

I thought the video did a good job at pointing out the types of things that good readers do. Here are some of the examples they used:

• They preview the text and think about what it is about and what they are going to learn from it (purpose of text)
• They are extremely active when reading
• They look at the text structure
• They make meaning as they go, question the text and react to it as well
• They apply background knowledge

The video also informed about what teachers can do to develop comprehension; things like:

• Explicitly teaching comprehension strategies
• Building student vocabularies
• Engaging students in discussions about the text and negotiating meaning in a social context
• Building students knowledge base

To help develop comprehension and help struggling readers teachers can:

• Create mini-lessons that focus specifically on comprehension and work in small groups
• Explicitly explain the strategies that they are teaching and model those strategies for the students
• Use coaching to engage students instead of relying too heavily on whole group instruction
• Provide lots of opportunities for students to listen to text and practice independent reading and writing (both in and out of school)
• Teach multiple strategies (context clues, prior knowledge & world knowledge, drawing inferences, look-backs) and teach them how to coordinate multiple strategies
• Build vocabulary by way of interventions
• Ask rich questions that are open-ended and complex. These types of questions help students make deeper connections to the text and they will eventually incorporate these questions and automatically use strategies as they read
• Create authentic learning activities
• Especially important for struggling readers is for teachers to monitor students to help them clarify the text they are reading
• Students who struggle tend to have a hard time with metacognitive activities, like thinking about their own thinking. Teachers can have students re-read sections for clarification and use graphics like charts or pictures to help make connections between and to the text

I thought that there were many great ideas about teaching comprehension. The ideas in the video that I really liked were the explicit teaching of multiple strategies that students can use to help them understand and make connections and modeling those strategies. I also like the idea of coaching students and using mini-lessons for the majority of instruction time rather than relying on a whole group instruction model.

I think I will try to focus on creating authentic learning activities whereby students will be more likely to make meaning from text and apply it to their own lives. I like the expample in the video where the teacher had the students interview their parents about their experiences in America versus those of their home countries, I think the book they were reading was called Why People Move. She did a good job of having the students connect their own personal family experiences to the text.

For the struggling readers, I think monitoring their thinking and modeling text are some of the best ways to help them increase their ability to make connections and increase comprehension. I like the re-read strategy and having them use whatever graphics are available to help them understand and clarify the text. Also helping students improve their metacognitive skills by questioning and re-reading are very good techniques I will use to help these students.

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Article Reflection: Reading Comprehension Requires Word Knowledge

This article was good at providing some insights into the Fourth-Grade Slump in children's reading comprehension, especially in the low-income student population, by emphasizing the importance of word and world knowledge in successful comprehension, and the importance of a well thought out and designed language arts program. I think what made this article a very worthwhile read was that it pointed out that the main cause of the achievement gap between socioeconomic groups is a language gap, and addresses the flaws in current language arts programs that fail to promote or enhance students' general word knowledge in any coherent way. The author states that the drop-off in student performance between third and fourth grade is not as sudden as previously believed, but rather it is there, "unmeasured" earlier in the student's academic schooling.

A big part of the problem is that many of the current lang. arts programs use basal readings that are fragmented and jump from topic to topic, and are usually based on trivial literature. This lack of coherent structure prevents the enhancement of general knowledge and does not help motivate students to want to read. The author also references research that supports the importance of expanding students' understanding of what the language they are learning refers to, as the best way to expand their language skills, and understanding of what they are hearing and reading.


Some of the important principles regarding successful comprehension that are covered are:

1. Decoding mastery allows students to better concentrate on comprehension, but must not be over-taught (Should comprise 20-40 min. of instruction depending on total instr. time).

2. Vocabulary knowledge that has depth and breadth correlates to successful comprehension.

3. Domain knowledge (background knowledge) is necessary and helps us to construct meaning within a specific context. (Remaining 1-2 hrs. should be comprised of activities that foster vocabulary, domain knowledge and fluency).


The article was very interesting in how it laid out the components of successful comprehension as being made up of both knowledge of words and the world, and this illustrates the ineffectiveness of the instructional programs that teach language in isolation, not connected to what we experience on the world in which we live; this is bad for all students, especially students who struggle. It is so important to teach students content within the context of things that they experience in their everyday lives. I also like how the author points out the value of reading aloud to students way beyond second grade, and the importance of emphasizing more nonfiction in early lang. arts classes.

My big take-away from reading this article is that words and world knowledge cannot be separated when designing a language arts curriculum. The approach to designing a coherent and comprehensive curriculum is one that is focused on a particular knowledge domain over and extended period of time, and gives students many different opportunities to enhance and expand their word and world knowledge. This method is has been shown to be the most effective approach to reading instruction in terms of enhancing vocabulary, and improving fluency and motivation to read. It makes you think about just how important it is for schools to provide not only good, but effective language-arts programs, especially for those in the mid to lower socioeconomic groups, whose only academic learning time happens in school. When designed in a way that emphasizes content in a relevant knowledge domain, over time, providing lots of opportunities for the development of vocabulary, language conventions and knowledge of the world, this type of instruction will help to not only raise reading achievement, but will hopefully help to narrow the reading gap between groups.

Second Sample QRI4

I administered another QRI4 to the same student, but this time I chose what seemed to be a non-fiction story versus the narrative type that I selected the first time. The results were pretty similar however, the student had much better detail recall this time compared to the first. Also, he seemed to be able to answer the questions with greater accuracy. Here is a breakdown:

I began with the Word List for the Pre-Primer level, and the student scored: -14/20 for Total Correct Automatic (70% - Instructional Level)) -15/20 for Total Correct Identified (75% - Instructional Level) -29/20 for Total Number Correct, so it seems that this student is on the Instructional Level for word list knowledge, so I then proceeded to have the student read the passage "People At Work". This student had 5 miscues (4 self-corrects), which resulted in a 91.8% accuracy and placed him on the Instructional Level and is very close to where he scored with the prior reading. I then asked for details from the story, or ideas recalled. The assessment listed 17 ideas and the student came up with 6-which was an improvement over the last QRI4. Last I asked the student the questions and the Number Correct Explicit was 4, which placed the student at the Instructional level. I'm not sure if the student had an easier time reading the passage because of the text structure, or maybe he was just not as tired as last time.

I found that after I administered the test a few times, I practiced on my older child as well, it got a bit easier in terms of how I prepared the student and myself for the different components, for example, I focused more on the content of the text, while carefully watching for miscues so I would be more informed at the detail and questioning phases. I like this tool, I feel that it is easy enough to use so that the data can be used to help drive instruction, it's not too intense or too long but by the end of the assessment, the students seemed to be happy to be done!

Sample QRI4 assessments

I administered one QRI4 assessment a student in Kindergarten.

I began with the Word List for the Pre-Primer level, and the student scored:
-13/20 for Total Correct Automatic (65% - Frustration Level))
-14/20 for Total Correct Identified (70% - Instructional Level)
-27/20 for Total Number Correct (74% - Instructional Level)

So it seems that this student is on the Instructional Level for word list knowledge, so I then proceeded to have the student read the passage "Spring and Fall". This student had 6 miscues (2 self-corrects), which resulted in a 92.8% accuracy and placed him on the Instructional Level (What is Total Acceptablility? Does it include self-c0rrections?)

I then asked for details from the story, or ideas recalled. The assessment listed 28 ideas and the student came up with 8-not sure if that is scored or just noted. Last I asked the student the questions and the Number Correct Explicit was 3, which actually placed the student at the Frustration level, but I think the student was getting tired by then:)!

So my reflection on this student is that he still has work to do in terms of developing fluency and comprehension in his reading. Although word list knowledge was sound, I was concerned that there was too much effort going on to decode, that the student had a hard time recalling details from the story. I would work to help develop the phonemic awareness as well as sight word knowledge.

I know I still have one more to do, I think I am going to have the same student read an expository passage, but the word list is the same, correct?

Week 5 Observation Reflection

My observation this week took place in the reading room with my cooperating teacher, who is the K-level reading teacher. I was able to administer four running records, including one on my target ELL student, and my cooperating teacher gave me the copy of the letter identification assessment I administered a few weeks ago as well. I was able to see that my student knows her letters and is very comfortable with letter sounds, as she scored almost perfectly on the uppercase letter identificaiton and letter sounds. I also started to work on some writing with my target ELL student, and had a discussion with the cooperating teacher about her skills in terms of the SOLOM matrix and the NYS Learning Standards for English as a Second Lang. students.
I have been able to participate in many different learning situations and my cooperating teacher does a good job modeling the lesson and her strategies so I can try them out when it's my turn.

Interview with cooperating teacher

Here are the guiding questions and answers from my cooperating teacher.

Interview Answers

1. Please describe your ELL teaching experience.

My ELL teaching experience has been working with children in grades K and one in both large group and small group instructional settings along with non ELL students.

2. What is your perception on ELLs in terms of their learning motivation and performance (especially in reading and writing)? What learning difficulties do ELLs usually encounter in schools? What is the role of family and community in helping ELLs’ learning?

The motivation and performance of ELL students vary according to individual personalities and learning styles, just as children who are not ELL students. One issue that has come up during instruction is the difference in background knowledge and schema a student has coming into school and about different subject matter. It is important family reads to students and exposes them to a variety of experiences and subjects.

3. In your opinion, how do classroom teachers resolve ELLs’ learning difficulties? What strategies do you adopt? Are they effective or not? Do you participate in on-going professional training for teaching ELLs? What is your experience in terms of working students from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds? How do you make sure that your teaching is culturally responsive? How do you go about reaching out to the family
and the community?

Classroom teachers can help students develop schema and give them background information to gain more knowledge. In a primary classroom, music helps children learn and provides them with a multisensory approach to the subject matter. Any multisensory activities assist in the learning of an ELL. It is important to respect the different cultures and expose all children to a variety of cultural ideas, concepts, and literature.

4. If you have an ELL in your class whose culture you are not familiar with at all, how do you go about teaching the child?

If I have a child whose culture I am not familiar with, I will try to learn more about the ideas of the culture and learning styles typical of the children. I would expose the student to new ideas while attempting to respect the child’s home life and culture.

PALS article summary and links to phonemic awareness assessment links

PALS (Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening) is a web-based system implemented by the State of Virginia in a statewide early literacy initiative that was created to help early elementary (K-3) teachers with assessment tasks as well as identifying students within that grade-range who are in need of additional instruction.

My first impression of the PALS web-based system is that it seems very impressive. The benefits of using such a system are many and provide a clean, organized way of giving teachers’ a clear and concise way to see how students are performing and what that means in terms of shaping instruction. This data can help to drive instruction for many different areas of literacy including phonological awareness, alphabet recognition, letter sounds, invented spelling, etc. I like that this system also provides information about reading levels, and spelling/phonics knowledge. Another plus to using this system is that it helps teachers to form instructional-level groups for guided reading as well as providing a good starting point for grouping students for phonics and spelling instruction.

As we have heard in class many times, assessment is meaningless unless it can help a teacher to tailor an instructional plan that can best meet their student’s needs. A clear positive in terms of using internet technology in this case is that once teachers see the results of reports that inform them on student progress, they can click on links to activities that are created specifically to address the instructional needs of the students; I like that. PALS reports also helps teachers to match books to the proper instructional level.

At the Administrative level, the reporting features can be used to evaluate the needs of each school in terms of instructional emphasis, staff development, etc., while tracking school-wide progress over time. This is a great tool for those administrators who value and in vest in on-going staff development and support.

After reviewing the site I have a dumb question, do all of the teachers who use this system have to input data manually, I mean do they transfer the scores from their paper and pencil assessments into the system by typing it in? It seems like it would take a lot of extra time to do this, although the payoff is powerful and obvious, using this system removes the variability that is typical of all of the different skill sets that teachers possess in terms of their ability to interpret and effectively use data from assessments to create targeted, student-specific instruction. In addition, the PALS system provides a consistent and scientifically sound process for designing such instruction. I wonder if teachers eventually start to “get it” in terms of students instructional levels or even grouping considerations when they become familiar enough with the data that they are inputting.


Links to Phonemic Awareness Assessment Tools:

1. Link to Reading Rockets
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:kHQMxRVx418J:www.readingrockets.org/firstyear/assessment_phon.pdf+phonemic+awareness+assessment&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEEShtPrCjzltgFcKo1q4GlAs7GaQiM0zqUvR1GLbS5Pho6bubSgSo-OaTfq7PlkfRaq33BRmDXPkIyDUIYq2xaxHFa-eIHLqc_vSgm1r89ZWIs6BLYSCxL-lx1lrWZNrkaCt7_YU&sig=AHIEtbTAZK6wFlwZyfXPgm05Co5LEWiS4w/

2. Yopp-Singer
http://teams.lacoe.edu/reading/assessments/yopp.html/
http://teams.lacoe.edu/reading/assessments/assessments.html/ (This link has several phonemic awareness assessments)

3. Scribd
http://www.scribd.com/doc/12386152/Phonemic-Awareness-Assessments/

4. http://www.mlpp-msl.net/assessments/phonemicawareness/Phonemic-Awareness-A.pdf/

Week 3 Observation Reflection

When I reflect on my observation, I think about all of the different types of interactions that I witnessed between mainstream teachers, aides, resource room teachers, and students.
This past week I observed the first grade reading teacher because my cooperating teacher had a meeting to attend and would not be meeting with students. I accompanied this teacher to a first grade mainstream classroom where she presented a lesson on how to use a SCE (Setting, Character, Events) chart. It was interesting to see the way she interacted with the students and it seemed like what she was presenting had already been covered by the classroom teachers as there was signage on the wall with the information about SCE on it, and the students seemed fairly knowledgeable about the structure, but seemed to benefit from the practice that the lesson gave them about identifying the main characters, describing the setting and events in a way that is succinct, accurate and informative.
Next, it was back to the resource room where I saw some guided reading/stop and discuss/retell going on, and some informal assessment during that lesson. The Reading dept. was piloting a new piece of software that could test and report on 41 different literacy domains, so there was a bit of discussion amongst the teachers and aides about the capabilities, pros/cons of using the technology for these purposes as well as observing how students were able to navigate and operate within the program. I like the environment of this school, and I feel that the reading department is competent and has clearcut procedures and processes in addition to a firm grasp on the materials provided by the publisher that they use.

Interview with Reading Room teachers regarding types of assessments they use

I interivewed the Kindergarten and First Grade reading teachers at the school where I do my observations.

I asked about the screening assessments first and the K teacher said that they use Dial 3 for initial evaluation and placement before the start of school.

Once placed, the AIS program is used and the K teacher told me that RTI is built right in to that program, so they have always been using RTI. What is different now is that the school formed a new commitee to work on creating a process for and organizing the documentation that is now required. It is my understanding that this program (AIS) is where most of the diagnostics, progress monitoring take place.

They use Fountas and Pinnell (publisher) and do:

Reading Recovery
Running Records
Reading Records (Adds in fluency testing - 1st grade)
Guided Reading w/Re-tell

They also do alot of informal assessment, taking notes while students are reading, and seem to keep folders and logs for on-going progress monitoring for all of the students.

The teacher I work with most uses Letter-Sound Identification test to test for phonemic awareness, and the Hearing and Recording Sounds in Words (HRSIW)test to test for listening and writing skills, as well as comprehension.

While at the school today, I saw the roll-out of a new software program that the reading dept. will use to help children with 41 different literacy domains while working in a program on the computer. The program provides teachers with reports that can help pinpoint areas of strengths and weaknesses in different domains.

End-of-year larger, high stakes assessment:
Terra Nova (1st grade teacher said they were disappointed with this test as it was not specific enough about student ability and problem areas, so they are not going to use it anymore)
Tonies (although the 1st grade reading teacher told me that the publisher is not making this one anymore)

Week 2 Questions

1. What is your experience in terms of working or friends with people from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds?

I have been fortunate to get to know and work with people from many diverse cultures and linguistic backgrounds. When young, I was fortunate enough to spend summers in Germany, where my mother was born and members of our family still live. I spent time in Australia in my late teens and early twenties and toured a good deal of Europe. My brothers have married girls from other countries, one from South Africa and one from Germany and I was able to go to both places for their weddings and I continue to have very nice relationships with them both.

Professionally, I worked with many people from diverse backgrounds during my time at Computer Associates, mostly from India, China and the Middle East, but also from Russia and other parts of Eastern Europe. I really enjoy meeting people from different places because you can learn alot about their cultures and compare their experiences to those that you had growing up in the United States but the thing that always amazes me is how similar we all are as human beings, no matter where we are from!

2. Do you have experience in working with ELLs?
Not much, just from my observations last semester while building my ELL case study.

3. Do you have experience in teaching ELLs?
No.
4. What is your perception on ELLs in terms of their learning motivation and
performance in general and in reading and writing specially?
I can only speak from my experience last semester where I observed children at the primary elementary level, but it seemed like the students were motivated to learn and tried their best to read and write.
5. What learning difficulties do ELLs usually encounter in schools?
I think when students are pulled out of their mainstream classrooms and they are given services or interventions that don't relate to what they are doing in their main classroom, this prevents them from being able to transfer the information.

6. In your observation, how do classroom teachers resolve ELLs’ learning difficulties and improve their learning motivation?
I didn't have any experience with this yet.

What strategies do they often adopt? Not sure but if I had to guess just based on what I've learned so far, I would say read-alouds, guided reading and maybe grouping students with peers depending on the age group.

Are these strategies effective? Are you familiar with these strategies? Are family and community involved? I think if a variety of strategies are used, the chances increase of finding what works best for different students. Also, when a variety of strategies are used I think you get a more well-rounded view of the strengths and weaknesses of the students.

7. What intervention strategies would you adopt if you have ELLs in your class? How do you go about teaching the child? How do you go about reaching out to the family and the community?
I think that I would try to provide the students with culturally relevant materials or find out what their interests are so I can make the learning as interesting, motivating and relevant to their lives as possible. I would also try to incorporate the students first language as much as possible in our classroom environment and also have them work in homogeneous and heterogeneous groups so they can benefit from working with students who are very similar and also those who can provide additional supports. I guess I would try the RTI probes that are research-based as much as possible.

I would request to meet with the student's parents and also work on keeping the lines of communication open by sending home work that can go back and forth and will allow them to see a progression and have a role to play to help their child.











































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Introduction

My name is Tammy and this blog will be used to exchange ideas and information about the ELL case study and research that we will conduct for EDLI 636.