Reading Assessment & Instruction

Chapter 10, Reading Assessment & Instruction, Peregoy & O. Boyle

This chapter is mainly of students in the elementary grades who are English language learners. There are three things to know about ELL students: 1) knowing student’s life experiences, interests, and aspirations is to use student’s prior knowledge to give him/her a purpose or motivation to read. 2) language knowledge, or how well they know their second language, 3) prior literacy experiences in their primary language means that knowledge of strategies can transfer over to their second language.

For the primary grades, especially kindergarten level, their experience with text varies. Students who have been read to at home, who have exposure to variety of print come to school with knowledge of concept of print (reading left to right, top to bottom, opening the page, title and author). Another assessment we give out is to see how many reading strategies they know (do they look to the illustrations to get meaning? Are they able to predict what will happen next? And how many letters do they know?). Students who have funds of knowledge about print usually get the Yugtun concepts right away.

One procedure I found interesting in the reading is on echo reading. In echo reading students are assessed to see if they are able to repeat what the teacher said. If they have difficulty repeating word for word, then the students will probably have difficulty with the book which the phrase or sentence was taken from. Another procedure I liked was the ReQuest where the students ask a question and the teacher answers the question and then asks another question. This is done after reading a passage. For younger kids the teacher says the answer and has the students ask the question for it. The purpose of the activity is to be able to question while developing student’s comprehension. I noticed that in kindergarten students tend to say a statement when someone asks, “do you have a question?” I often wonder if that is part of developmental process. Is it too early to teach students to ask questions in kindergarten?

Reading Assessment

Reading Assessment, Ch. 5, O’Malley & Pierce

What I got out of the chapter is that reading for English language learners should include: large quantity of reading, time in class for reading, appropriate materials that encourage students to read, teaching reading strategies, materials & reading strategies matched to student level of interest and language. Reading should also be holistic not skill based, it should tap into students’ prior knowledge and experience, focus on comprehension while teaching reading skills, and allow time for collaboration among students. Discussing reading materials allows students to develop language skills.

There is another book that I’m reading (and I wish I had read it before school began) called Talking, Drawing, Writing Lessons For Our Youngest Writers, by Martha Horn & Mary Ellen Giacobbe. It is about a group of teachers who teach writing to kindergarten students by beginning with storytelling. From storytelling students move onto drawing, and by drawing they learn to draw their stories in detail (drawing to the reader). The teachers say that the more students are detailed in their storytelling, the more detailed they are in their drawing. And the more detailed they are in their drawing the more writing they produce when they learn to form words. This makes sense because as little kids are telling their stories they are practicing their language skills, which transfers to their drawing don’t you think?

I noticed as I’m concentrating on comprehension how hard it is to get across questions (who, what, where, when) to second language learners. The simplest question students can answer is what is this and who is this, but most still don’t get, “who/what is in the book”. I’m starting to wonder if we failed the previous kindergarten students by not teaching them to answer those questions. Before I used to notice 1st and 2nd grade students answer “I’m fine” when I would ask, “what are you doing?”

Disproportionate Representation

Disproportionate Representation of Diverse Students in Special Education

The chapter spat out some numbers of minority groups who were identified as needing Special Education Services which was quite depressing. More minority groups were labeled as mentally retarded, emotionally disturbed, and learning disabled. There is little data on LEP students, but the data that came from Texas showed that a small percentage were LEP. But district wide the numbers increase. What I found interesting is that the criteria for receiving special education services differs in each state, so the same child that was identified as LD may not qualify for services in another state.

Was the latest information from 2002? and the book was published in 2005. The chapter starts out saying that the controversy first came about in 1968. Was there anything done to fix the problem after that?

Dynamic Assessment

Dynamic Assessment in the Language Classroom, Poehner & Lantolf

These are some of the things that I got out of the article:

Formative Assessment (FA):
- helps in teach planning and management
- provides evidence of student learning
- shows where student and teacher are in curriculum
- provides evidence of self-evaluation of teaching
- Shows what student still need to know
- Informal, hit or miss. May over or underestimate student ability

Dynamic Assessment (DA)
- Came from Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)
- Cannot separate assessment and instruction
- Mediation focuses on meaning for development
- Mediation is intervention after assessment? And it is ongoing.

The article gave a lot of information about DA, and I’m really interested to see how it can fit into our kindergarten grades. Also, is mediation given individually? Sounds like it.

Portfolio Assessment

Ch. 3 Portfolio Assessment, O’Malley

When we were first introduced to portfolios during one of the teacher inservices I tried it out without success. I didn’t know much about portfolios but I followed one of the simple forms with the smiley face (to show they liked their selected work) and a frowning face (to show dislike). Students were to circle one of them and explain why they felt the way they did about their selected piece. Since I missed the part where we get students to explain their choice, my biggest worry was in students picking their best work and not being able to say why it was their best work. And since I was the only one in our building doing the portfolios, and I didn’t know where to turn to for help, I dropped the whole thing. I don’t remember how far I went with the portfolios.
The book describes three different ways students can assess their work: documentation, explaining why they chose that piece as their best work, comparison of their prior piece to their recent piece to show improvement, and integration, by describing their improvements in general ways. The book also states that students need to know how their work will be evaluated and by what standards so that they can set goals to work for. I think this will help them to explain their choice of “best work”. The book also states that students be given examples of an exemplary piece and a not so exemplary piece. By looking at the exemplary piece students are to discuss what makes it a good piece and to come up with a criteria chart. I like the example that was given on page 40 that has the heading “What a Good Writer Can Do”. The first criteria states, “I can plan before I write,” which is stated in a positive form. I’d like to try using Portfolios with my students, and I ‘d like to start out with writing which I think will be simple. But I’d need more guidance I think.