Module 1: Response to Video

"Watch and Learn: Assessing Reading Skills"

I noticed that at the beginning of the video, the young girl was asked to read a scaffolded word list. This tells me that they were assessing her word identification skills. I found it interesting that this student was overall so high achieving, but with so much trouble with fluency and comprehension. It only makes sense that one affects the other but usually there is not such a large discrepancy as the one mentioned in the video. That makes me wonder if there was a reading disability that was affecting her ability to decode. I’m also curious about her writing skills and how her fluency issues affected the length and quality of her writing.

I agree that assessment must be ongoing and formative to maintain progress and measure the effectiveness of implemented strategies. I believe that assessing students’ informal writings such as journal entries and quick writes is a good way to assess reading comprehension and language skills. 

Module 1: Response to PowerPoint

As a Special Education Teacher, when reading the PowerPoint I found it incredible that by 2014, 100% of students are supposed to have reached academic proficiency. I just don’t see this happening for all students. Of course, that is because my class is split on the number of kids who are on standardized assessments with accommodations and those that are on alternate assessments. But even so, the system is set up so that not all students can or will obtain proficiency. The assessments that are used don’t allow all students to be successful and yet that is the expected goal.

Having stepped off that soapbox, I did like that the information presented supported the use of direct and explicit instruction for struggling readers to support prerequisite skills. I’ve been on the fence about which direction is generally better, top-down or bottom-up, but overall my opinion is still that the instructional choices have to be made based on the individual child and what works for one won’t work for another. I have always based reading instruction on literature but also provide systematic phonics instruction to those who show progress with this method. 

Module 1, p. 14, Activity #4

Opitz, M., Rubin, D., & Erekson, J. (2011). Reading diagnosis and improvement: Assessment and instruction. (6^th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Recently, a friend of mine asked me to tutor her son, who was in second grade and on the RTI tier 3, because he was having problems with reading comprehension, spelling, and finishing his math work in class.  As I sat down with him to complete some assessments and get an idea of where he was, I had him read passages from the QRI-4 to get a miscue analysis.  After getting an idea of his independent reading level from the word lists, I had him read the passages silently first and then aloud while I noted any miscues. While he did not use expression or pause for appropriate punctuation, he did monitor what he was reading which was indicated by the self-corrected miscues; about one in five were corrected. However, when he approached an unfamiliar word, his only available strategy was to sound it out and once he had read past the word, was very unlikely to self-correct. He did not skip any words unless he was told to try.

His readings were the same, regardless of the genre with no indication of purpose-based variances. It seemed that although he was beginning to monitor comprehension, as indicated by the self-corrected miscues as well as the miscues that did not change meaning, he had not yet gained enough strategies to be a completely proficient reader. 

We’ve used a literacy-based approach to instruction, including all components of a balanced literacy program. When we meet, we always begin with a book and use that to springboard into phonemic awareness, vocabulary, and conventions. Many of our lessons include word study to draw attention to parts of speech and word parts. Then we follow up with a journal response to the literature. He has shown tremendous progress.