Assessment/Bringing it all Together, Scheduling

After reading about Running Records, I think this might be an efficient way to assess children as they are reading verbally from any text. Teachers are able to review what happened immediately, and this leads to a teaching decision on the spot or a plan for the next lesson. After I read this, I thought this would be a very beneficial way to plan lessons on the skills that students might be struggling with and to even help students with skills as they are happening. Running Records also suggests to avoid using a tape-recorder to tape the assessment because it will not provide the teacher with any visual information. Even though Running Records seemed a little confusing at first, I found that once teachers learn the terms and concepts, they will be better prepared to use Running Records and better at interpreting them.

I liked how the Matching tests and readers: Leveling early reading materials for assessment and instruction article mentioned the concept of "just-right" text, which we have already discussed in class using the term the Goldilocks approach. This level, their instructional reading level, is where the student can read about 9 out of 10 words and comprehend the meaning of the passage with little difficulty, and all students should receive reading instruction at this level. This article mentions that "Leveling reading materials is a complex task" (Rog & Burton, 2001/2002, p. 348). Even though it is such a complex task, I think the 10 levels based on the five considerations (vocabulary, size and layout of print, predictability, illustration support, and complexity of concepts) would be a very helpful tool to support teachers in making decisions about reading materials. Also, I found this article very useful because it provided the reader with descriptions of what texts look like at each level. Before reading this article, I would probably just look at the reading level provided on the book and not even think to evaluate the book myself. I have found that a lot of publishers use different leveling systems, so levels might be significantly different. As a teacher, it will be important to evaluate the books in my classroom and consider the levels of all the texts.

There were a few things that really stood out to me in the Looking inside classrooms: Reflecting on the "how" as well as the "what" in effective reading instruction article. "Across all grades, whole-group instruction was coded more often than small-group instruction (Taylor, Peterson, Pearson, & Rodriguez, 2002, p. 274). Even though this is the case, small-group instruction is found to be most effective in schools; large-group instruction might be easier than small-group instruction though. So, it is important as a teacher to remember that even though an activity might be easier to do, I should also consider what the most effective strategy might be. Also, I found that "Across all grades a relatively small amount of higher level questioning or writing related to stories read was observed" (Taylor et. al, 2002, p. 274). I was kind of shocked when I read this because I think there should be quite a bit of questioning after a story is read in order to make sure the student are comprehending what they are reading and thinking critically about the story. Also, I think it would be easy to do writing activities after reading a story, and it surprises me to see that a very small amount of this actually occurs. This article also mentioned that coaching, which we already discussed in this class is seen a lot less, and telling and recitation were how the teachers mainly interacted with the students. Since we talked about the importance of coaching and how beneficial it can be, I think it should be used as much as possible in the classroom. 

In the article, The schools we have. The schools we need., I the comparisons rather interesting. In the section about experience vs. ability, it mentioned that we often confuse lack of experience with lack of ability. It is easy to confuse these two concepts with each other, but teachers should be mindful when assessing their students. Even though some students might not have the skills when they first start school, teachers must realize that this might be because of a lack of experience. Since it is easy to confuse these two concepts, it is also easy to lower our expectations. As we have discussed on several occasions, it is essential to know your students. I think that if teachers know their students, they would not lower their expectations resulting from confusing lack of experience with lack of ability. This article also advises to not label the students, but instead support their learning; "Labeling was originally intended as a sort of shorthand for describing the needed instruction, but it just never paned out" (Allington, 2004, p. 18). As a teacher, I think it would be easy to get caught up in the labeling process and sorting children based on their abilities. So, this is something I definitely need to consider as a teacher. Allington provides a very useful way to provide student with understanding, "children will need substantially less interrogation and substantially more opportunities to observe and engage in conversation about books, stories, and other texts they have read" (Allington, 2004, p. 23). Just by giving students the opportunities to explore books and any other texts allows much conversation to occur which will be incredibly beneficial to students; this strategy should definitely be implemented in the classroom.