The best part about FINALLY getting my textbook in the mail is FINALLY figuring out how to set up this blog!
I'm not a blogger, never have been and probably never will be after this so whoever decides to read this sorry if you were COMPLETELY bored. ;)
In the first chapter of our assigned readings in "Strategies for Reading Assessment and Instruction" I got the most useful information from the section on the importance of running records and the reasoning behind how and why teachers should use them. I agree that assessing students with a running record is a fairly easy procedure that takes little practice to master giving. However, if a teacher is unaware of how to read the information gathered from the running record then they are truly missing out on valuable information about the student. I've always seen running records with the MVS Analysis component connected to it, so I was surprised to see that running records can be given without them. I believe that having the MVS Analysis attached is an invaluable tool because it shows the teachers what the students is doing when they encounter a new word.
When listening to Peter Afflebach I loved, loved, loved when he said that there were certain things in reading that students MUST learn in order to be successful in reading in and out of school. Some key points he said were students need to:
- learn, master and practice basic reading skills
- build sight word reading
- learn to independently understand the meaning of a new word
- learn to read as quickly and as accurately as the text demands
- have comprehension...students need to comprehend what they are reading!
- make inferences
- render judgement about the things they are reading.
Afflebach also said that there needs to be
daily accountability to get us AYP and not a singe test! He made this point throughout the entire podcast, but really said it perfectly at the end when he was talking about what parents should want out of their teachers. I couldn't agree more. I hate how my entire school is graded based on the FCAT! One test should NOT be what measures teacher goodness, achievements and accountability throughout the school. I agree that there should be assessments, but I don't agree that formal assessments should be taking place daily. I believe that a good teacher will give her students multiple informal assessments on a daily basis and know where her students are academically without having to constantly assess her students. A lot of schools require teachers to give assessments weekly and these are usually criterion referenced assessments. Teachers will track their students through data trackers to monitor their progress towards a certain benchmark. This helps teachers to plan their instruction and diagnosis where a student is having difficulties. However, it's frustrating that a teacher will have to teach to these tests instead of truly teaching students to think critically about what they are reading. Afflebach also stated in his podcast that most of the text that we have to read in the real world we didn't learn about in the classroom. We have to teach students to decode, comprehend and critically think about everything they read. We can't do that teaching to a multiple choice test.
