A Look Inside: Resource Reading-Assessment

Day 2:  Assessment 

Now that planning for the Common Core is out of the way, it's time to get down to what really matters to me the most in the resource classroom...meeting individual needs!  I begin my looking at each student's IEP and seeing what strengths and weaknesses each student has, particularly in the area of reading in this instance.  As mentioned in the previous post, my students that I work with for resource reading have difficulty in one or all three areas of reading, comprehension, accuracy (basic reading), and fluency.

After I determine which area the student is having difficulty in and what goals and benchmarks that I will need to monitor, I begin doing reading assessments.   I typically do assessments within the first week of school, so that I begin groups right away.  

Here is a list of assessments that I use to measure each area of reading (and this gives me great baseline data):

In no way have been paid to endorse, sponsor, or review these products.  I am just giving you the facts and letting you know what I personally like to use for assessing my students.

School-wide:

We give the MAP test from NWEA as our school-wide reading screener.  This test gives me an accurate depiction of the student in all areas of reading.  I use these scores and the data that comes from this test to determine groupings and to easily sees areas of weakness and strength.

Comprehension & Basic Reading Skills:

Dr. Fry's Informal Reading Assessment is my go-to book for assessment for reading skills!

This book has a silent reading test that measures comprehension.  Sometimes I read the test to the students that have greater difficulty with basic reading skills, but I do not prompt, cue or eliminate any answers.  Students must answer the questions on their own.  

The book also includes sight word assessment and benchmark passages to help determine instructional and frustration levels of reading.

I use SRA Corrective Reading with my students that are lacking in basic reading skills and accuracy of calling words.  This program is expensive, but I have seen the success of it with my own eyes! This program comes with its own assessment.  It assesses what the student knows and direct your instruction by placing the student in the correct level of book.  In the beginning it mainly focuses on basic reading skills and phonemic awareness, but eventually moves on to comprehension.

Fluency:

I love Jen Jones and her blog and plethora of resources that she makes available.  For fluency this year I have downloaded her RTI: 60 Fluency Passages for Progress Monitoring Reading Skills and Interventions.  

I have used the passages from this document to assess baseline fluency targets.  I use the information from this assessment and find other fluency passages for the students to work on weekly.  My students may need to spend more time in grade level 1 passages than what is available in this resource, so I look for those extra passages at Reading A-Z.  You all know how much I love this website!!

After I have collected all my data, I set up monitoring sheets and for each area of need and then begin the fun work of...teaching!! :)

Until tomorrow...

Kim

PS-Click on the pictures for the links to each resource