Daily Running Records

Daily Reading Records are very simple and easy-to-keep records of daily reading done by your students. Their purpose is to give the teacher an idea about how well students are progressing in developing positive reading habits. Students also gain a better sense of their own reading habits. I have attached some links to some great resources. The first one I think you will find most helpful. There is a free printable sheet of a daily record sheet already put together for you as well as instructions as how to use them.

Daily Reading Record Teacher Observation Page: Includes a printable ready to use sheet and instructions on how to complete this type of assessment.
http://dk091.k12.sd.us/Reading_files/Daily%20Reading%20Record.doc

Materials to purchase for Daily Independent Reading Record Sheets.
http://www.buyteachercreated.com/estore/product/8722

Great information on Scaffolded Independent Reading
http://www.ncte.org/Library/files/Free/recruitment/ST0102January05.pdf

Political Stances on Education

I thought it was interesting when I was looking at two of the front runners for the Presidential Election in 08. I looked at Hilary Clinton's stances on education and Barack Obama's. Although this is not an exact assessment tool, I think it is important to look at what these candidates have in mind for our schools as well as the NCLB act that was established during Bush's adminsitration.

1. Attracting and supporting more outstanding teachers and principals, and paying them like the professionals they are.
2. Reforming the No Child Left Behind Act. This law represented a promise -- more resources for schools in exchange for more accountability -- and that promise has not been kept.
3. Giving new parents support and training to promote healthy development for their children.
4. Increasing access to high-quality early education and helping to create Early Head Start.
   
   Innovating Teacher Pay and Teacher Support
   School districts across America face systemic barriers to attracting and putting the best teachers in schools where they are needed the most. Although the federal role in education is limited, one way the federal government can make the most of its scarce resources is by fostering innovation -- identifying the best programs and practices, and helping expand them around the country. Senator Obama introduced the Innovation Districts for School Improvement Act to award grants to school districts that try new methods to improve student achievement and reward effective teachers. Under this initiative, 20 districts across the country would get grants to develop innovative plans in consultation with their teacher unions. High-performing teachers would be eligible for pay increases of 10 to 20 percent of their base salary. These innovation districts would be required to implement systemic reforms and show convincing results. These best practices would provide models for other school systems to adopt.

Quality assessment is described by the National Forum for Assessment as:
"High-quality assessment must rest on strong educational foundations. These foundations include organizing schools to meet the learning needs of their students, understanding how students learn, establishing high standards for student learning, and providing equitable and adequate opportunity to learn."

I think it is important to look at alternative or authentic assessments in a standardized world. Alternative assessments are qualitative. Some alternative assessments that are more "performance-based assessments" include essays, oral presentations, open-ended problems, hands-on problems, real-world simulations and other authentic tasks. Some examples are portfolios, experiments, mathematical computations, artwork, designs, journals, and performances to name a few.

What types of authentic or alternative assessments are you using? Do you feel that they give you a clearer picture to what your students are capable of? Why are you for or against this type of assessment?

To learn more about alternative assessment and types of assessments visit the following sites:
http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/methods/assment/as800.htm
http://www.emtech.net/Alternative_Assessment.html

Vocabulary Assessment

Vocabulary instruction and assessment is very important in literacy. Students need to identify low-frequency words and be able to use strategies in order to find the word's meanings. This will aid overall comprehension. Cloze passages are great to help students use the context to identify plausible words to fill in blanks within the passage.
The following sites will help you build custom cloze activities to meet the needs of your students.
Schoolhouse Tech: http://www.schoolhousetech.com/products/vocabulary/activities/cloze.aspx?gclid=CMDbzdaY_4wCFQrVOAodaCN_DQ;
Ed Helper: http://edhelper.com/cloze.htm;
Lake Munmorah Public School: http://www.lakemunmor-p.schools.nsw.edu.au/cloze/cloze.htm

Once you have modeled this with your students many times, you can use cloze passages to assess your student's vocabulary knowledge. The passage should be less than 250 words with certain vocabulary words missing for students to fill in. To increase reliability, the blank spaces should all be the same length.

Administering the assessment: Give the students the passage and the directions. This should not be a timed test. Encourage students to read the entire passage first, then use the context clues to help fill in the blanks.

Scoring the assessment: To score the Cloze passage, count only exact replacements. Do not count synonyms as correct. Do not penalize spelling errors. The raw score is the number of words that are correct. Use the raw score to find the student's percentage.

Cloze Scores:

Material is too easy Independent Level 90% and above
Material is about right Instructional Level 70-90%
Material is too difficult Frustration Level under 70%

The passage should be on the student's instructional level. Therefore, the passage may differ from student to student. This will really help give a clear picture of the misunderstandings students have about word meanings.

Have you used cloze passages for assessments? What are some pros and cons? What did you do with the information you gathered?

Great Site

I wanted to share a site with you that I found particularly interesting. The site's address is http://www.sedl.org/reading/rad/database.html. This site allows you to choose specific criteria in order to identify an assessment tool that best meets your need for assessing. For example, you can specify languages, ages, norm or criterion referenced tests or both, and knowledge domains that you want tested. This site then matches your criteria with the best assessments. The results tell you cost, time to administer, how to administer (group/ individual), grades used for, cognitive elements, subtests, languages, score reporting and test design data, and more. It can be very useful for individual use as well as school-wide use.

ISTAR

Our school does not give ISTAR assessments and I was curious as to what they entailed. ISTAR or Indiana Standards Tool for Alternate Reporting gives a clearer picture as to what high-end or low-end students are actually capable of in regards to achievement. Just like the name states, this is an alternate assessment component. Standardized tests cannot adequately measure those students whose scores are significantly higher or lower than grade-level. To ensure validity, accountability, and reliability of test scores, ISTAR is used to measure the progress of individual students within Indiana's assessment system. Students with disabilities, gifted/ talented students, and ELL students are most often administered this test.

The following was taken from the ISTAR website and defines ISTAR's intended purpose:(https://ican.doe.state.in.us/istar/istarmore.htm)

Identifying the baseline abilities of each student allows teachers to design curriculum specific to the individual needs of the student. Within ISTAR, each student is rated on appropriate educational standards, through the use of a three-point rubric. Teachers base their ratings on evidence such as observations, work samples, and portfolios. These ratings are tabulated to provide a score relative to the student's abilities, grade level, and individual progress from one year to the next.

Do you use this assessment at your school? How have the results helped shape your classroom instruction?

Assessments

In our school we currently use DIBELS as a huge part of our assessment piece to quickly assess students growth. We have created a data wall that quickly allows us to view students progress. There is a post-it for every child in grades k-3. After progress monitoring, we move the students to either green (meeting benchmark), yellow (close to benchmark), red (far below benchmark). This gives a clear picture of the students we really need to work with during interventions.

We also use DRA, ISTEP, Instructional Focus Assessments, and other assessments that vary across grade levels. What types of assessments are you using in your schools? Do you feel they are effective? Why/ why not? How do you use the information that is gathered from these assessments?