Another year has come (much quicker than I would have liked), and it is most definitely blasting off. We have had a whirlwind of meetings as many of you have, and our students come Monday. We've learned about PLCs, LLI, RTI, the 3 Rs, and more acronyms than I can remember, but we WILL be ready on Monday. We may work all weekend to prep, but by Monday, we will be ready to roll (at least the classroom teachers will be). I, on the other hand, will be working with the classroom teachers to get a feel of who may need extra support and assessing kids to get baseline data. For my post, I thought I'd share some of the assessments I will be giving and some of the helpful forms I use. Many of my blog readers are reading specialists or classroom teachers who are very interested in reading instruction, and these forms may be very helpful to you as your working with guided reading groups or tutoring situations.
Next week, as our new students get acclimated to the school and everyone works to establish the norms for their classrooms, I will be pushing in to do some informal assessments as I mentioned. The first one we will be giving is the Screening and Feature tests from Word Journeys. This will tell us what spelling stage each child is at (which is important as that shows you the child's understanding of phonics rules and strengths with decoding). These are administered whole group and take about an hour total. Once scored, the classroom teacher can group students for appropriate spelling/vocabulary instruction.
Once these are completed, I will also give the graded word list and running records to any students the classroom teachers feel may need extra support. (maybe the 2nd-3rd day of school). We have chosen to use Fountas and Pinnell since we have it in our building (to go with the LLI program), but some schools prefer DRA or Dibels. Regardless what you choose, it does help in identifying strengths and weaknesses, and by the time this is completed, we'll also have a writing sample or two. Then, we'll get our groups firmed up for starting.


If you are a primary teacher, you might be able to use these as your students are developing skills, but I imagine most kindergarten teachers would find these fairly useless. Alas, I have something to share with you. Last week, we (the kindergarten teachers and I) were trying to pin down a screening assessment we could give to our kinders to help identify those who will need help at the beginning. We wanted something brief that aligned with the needs in the classroom, and this assessment from Tara Darwish fit our needs beautifully. It includes upper and lower case letters, letter sounds, numbers 1-10, shapes, colors, and we are having the children write their name. Check it out if you're looking for a great tool to use first semester.
I hope that these tools are helpful to you, and as the year progresses, I hope that you'll find our blog information makes your job easier and better for your students. I love sharing ideas and learning from my blogging buddies too. If you'd like to add my blog to your Bloglovin feed, you can click on the button below.
I hope you have a high flyin' year and that your kids blast off with all the learning they will do with you. Now, I believe Jessica is waiting for you, so blast on over to her blog using the next stop button below. Have a great year!
These forms are great! Thank you for sharing them (especially since I missed your post last week while I was out of town)!
ReplyDeleteDon't Let the Teacher Stay Up Late
So glad you can use them. I printed up the labels, and I think they will be quite handy. I'm bad about losing sticky notes before I get a chance to record information. Thanks for commenting!
DeleteSo cool how you got your book autographed! There are six coaches in my district and we actually took lots of pics with our literacy idols at the Illinois Reading Council Conference. Super fun! :-)
ReplyDeleteThanks for all you do for the blog hops and sharing all you did about assessment forms!
You are very welcome, Michelle. As you can see...I love it! Just linked up with your Sunday Letters linky, but saw it was closed. Oh well!
DeleteThank you thank you!!! These resources are great. I really appreciated it. The primary one will be really helpful to me now and the conferencing one will be great in a few months when I can focus more on comprehension. You are an amazing resource.
ReplyDeleteEm
Curious Firsties
Thanks Em...likewise! I have shared your blog with lots of first grade teachers. You have fantastic ideas, and I hope your posts. Hope these are helpful to you.
DeleteI LOVE that reading behavior checklist. What a great way to keep track of all the little guys and gals I see. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteI hope it will be super helpful to you, Amy. Have a great year!
DeleteI can just picture you and Andrea running up to Donalyn for autographs...I would have done the exact same thing. :) Thanks for providing such an informative post and resources. I especially like the reading behavior checklist. I'm using with my students this year.
ReplyDeleteWendy
Read With Me ABC
I hope they'll be helpful. I haven't used the labels yet, but I plan to this fall. I think they'll be very helpful. Have a great year, Wendy!
DeleteCarla
Thanks for the fabulous forms! Very cool about Donalyn Miller, too. Some literacy authors are bigger than Hollywood movie stars in my book! ;)
ReplyDeleteLiteracy Loving Gals
Truth! and much more important IMO. :-)
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