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)