Chapter 3 Teaching Reading in Today's Elementary Schools Roe, Smith

1. Teaching reading in
today’s elementary
schools
Assessment and Intervention
Chapter 3

2. Current trends in assessment
 Assessment is the process of collecting and analyzing
data for the purpose of measuring student
achievement.
 Enables teachers to discover student’s strengths and
weaknesses
 Plan appropriate instruction
 Evaluate the effectiveness of teaching strategies
 Should involve multiple measures
 Observations
 Conferences
 Interviews
 Work samples
 Formal means

3. Formative Assessment Summative
Assessment
assessment
Continuous and End of an instructional
ongoing period
Feedback on progress Summarize progress of
for both teacher and students
learner
Formal- standardized
tests
Observation records

4. Current Trends in Assessment
 Curriculum standards- statements or descriptions
of expectations outlining what students should
know and be able to do at a particular grade
level and in specific content areas
 AYP- adequate yearly progress- a component of
NCLB that requires states and school systems to
collect annual data that represent the progress
of students in meeting established assessment
goals or progress
 Disaggregated data-scores that show progress
of subgroups including racial/ethnic groups, SES,
students with disabilities, ELL. Goal of NCLB all
students will demonstrate proficiency by 2013-
2014

5. Current Trends –
Standards movement
 Standards Movement- education movement
aimed at getting all students to a specified
level or stage.
 Purpose of movement – to challenge schools
to improve
 Academic- core subject knowledge and
performance
 Content –basic agreement of the body of
education knowledge for all students
 Performance- what level is good enough for
students to be described as advanced,
proficient, basic, below basic

6. Current trends-
no child left behind act (NCLB)
4 Pillars-
1-Stronger accountability
2-More freedom for states
3-Proven education methods
4-More choices for parents
 The federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001
(NCLB), a major reform of the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act (ESEA), was passed
by Congress and signed into law by the
president on January 8, 2002
 Long term goal of NCLB- all students will
demonstrate academic proficiency by the
2013-2014 school year

7. Current trends in assessment-
high stakes testing
 Emphasis on accountability created an
environment of high-stakes testing
 Teachers prepare students to demonstrate
progress on tests mandated by their states and
school districts
 Creates a climate that encourages “teaching
to the test”
 Greater emphasis on reading and math leads to
less emphasis on other subjects
 Testing has resulted in higher qualifications for
teaching

8. Formal Assessment
 Formal assessment-The use of a testing instrument
based on extensive normative data for which
reliability and validity can be verified.
 Standardized tests-a formal assessment that has
been constructed by experts in the field and is
administered, scored, and interpreted according
to specific criteria.
 Norm-referenced tests-standardized tests that
measure a student’s standing in relation to
comparable groups of students across the nation
or locally.

9. Formal assessment
 Validity- the extent to which a test measures what
it claims to measure
 Reliability-the consistency of scores students would
receive on alternate forms of the same test
 Grade equivalent- grade level in years and months
for which a given score was the average score in a
standardization sample.
 Percentile rank- score in terms of its position within
a set of 100 scores
 Stanine- scores are divided into 9 equal parts with
5 as the mean

10. Limitations of standardized
tests
 Do tests really reflect what we know about the
reading process today?
 Is the test fair to diverse learners?
 How are test scores being used?

11. Criterion-referenced tests
 Criterion referenced tests- designed to yield
measurements interpretable in terms of specific
performance standards
 Designed to match standards or expectations of what
students should know at successive points or benchmarks
 Intended to be used as guides for developing
appropriate instruction
 Students do not compete with other students but only try
to achieve mastery of each objective
 Can make reading appear to be a series of skills taught
 Difficult to set appropriate standards- too high or low

12. Alternative
authentic assessments
 Alternative-
all types of assessment
other than standardized tests
 Authentic- a measurement of a
student’s performance on activities
that reflect real-world learning
experiences

13. Alternative assessments-
informal
 Observation-
>Anecdotal Records- written accounts of
specific incidents in the classroom
>Checklists and rating scales-a quick glance
on accomplishments and weaknesses
 Conferences and Interviews-scheduled or
spontaneous
 Retellings-a student’s retelling of a story can be
done oral or written response
 Rubric
 Portfolio-enables students and teachers to
reflect on student work to evaluate progress

14. Informal tests- reading skills
 Informal tests of specific skills- worksheet type
format
 Cloze procedure- a method of estimating
reading difficulty by omitting every nth word
(usually 5th) in a reading passage.
 Multimedia and computer approaches-video
recordings, presentations, on-line testing
 Informal reading inventories (IRI)-designed to
help teachers determine a child’s independent
(on his or her own), instructional (read with help),
frustration (baffles), and listening comprehension
levels (comprehend when read to).

15. Informal tests- reading skills
 Miscue analysis-reading miscue inventory
(RMI) considers both the quantity and quality
of miscues (unexpected responses)
 Running records- detailed account of a
student’s reading behavior. Used to record
miscues during a student’s oral reading and
gain information to guide further instruction.

16. Alternative assessment
 Subjective- the teacher’s personal biases may
influence judgment
 Can be time consuming it takes longer to write
narrative reports about each student than it
does to grade a test
 Teachers must know how to interpret and apply
information gained
 Collect alternative assessments from multiple
sources

17. Assessment of emergent
literacy
 NAEYC- National Association for the
Education of Young Children sets guidelines
and recommendations for assessments that
are developmentally appropriate for young
children.
 Marie Clay- Concepts About Print-1st 2 years
of literacy instruction- provides observation
data An Observation Survey of Early Literacy
Achievement – another component used in
early literacy assessment

18. Using assessment to guide
intervention
 Teachers use information collected on student
performance data to identify instructional
needs for each student and implement an
intervention plan of strategies to scaffold
student learning.
 An intervention plan includes:
 What is to be taught
 How it is to be taught
 What will provide evidence that learning
occurred

19. RTI
Response to Interventions
 The RTI model provides a framework for a
responsive classroom where the learning
environment is modified by three tiers of
differentiated instruction
 Tier 1- Primary Instruction-classroom level
 Tier 2- Secondary Intervention- involves
instruction delivered to those students who are
not making adequate progress in Tier 1, the
interventionist delivers instruction in small
focused groups
 Tier 3- individual/small-group instruction-
students who fail to make progress in Tier 2 are
placed in an individual or small group for
instruction by a specially trained educator

20. Assessing text difficulty
 Methods of identifying text difficulty include
the use of readability formulas, cloze tests,
and text-leveling techniques.
 Readability-the difficulty of written material
 Cloze tests-teachers create a cloze passage
from a particular text to determine text
difficulty
 Text leveling techniques-a process that
organizes texts according to a defined
continuum of characteristics so that students
may be matched with appropriate materials

21. Assessment is-
A process not an event
 Ongoing
 A necessary part of an instructional
program
 Key way to analyze
strengths/weaknesses
 Best done in a variety of ways