The curriculum-based issue that was identified through the teacher leadership team was student Lexile Levels. Members of the team consisted of representatives from second and third grade homeroom teachers, Title I, Program for Exceptional Children, Early Intervention Program, and Administration. The team evaluated 3rd grade English Language Arts End of Grade Milestones Assessment data to identify a weakness in 3rd grade students not performing within the College and Career Ready Lexile Stretch Band and achieving the identified minimum Lexile Level. The teacher leadership team agreed to explore literacy practices that would improve student Lexile levels. The team understood the importance of reading and how this skill is carried throughout …show more content…
With a clear agreeance on moving forward with best practices for improving literacy the team decided to investigate the Lexile Framework, student interventions, and reading aloud in the classroom.
For the purpose of this task the school’s Better Seeking Team met to discuss school improvement. Through this process the topic of student Lexile scores continued to be brought to the table. From this initial collaborative look at the data, a team was organized to focus on Improving Lexile Levels Action Research Team. The team gathered to begin analyzing 3rd grade English Language Arts and Lexile data from the Georgia Milestones Assessment. I led the team to formulate a connection between student Lexile Levels and the student scale score along with the student achievement level based on the English Language Arts End of Grade Georgia Milestones Assessment. Consequently, I believed the team should have focused on more than one source of data. Upon this they chose to analyze student
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I guided the team in identifying a progress monitoring tool for as well as a projected outcome for students. The team chose a comprehension diagnostic assessment that began with Phonemic Awareness and Phonics/Decoding skills for second and third grade students. The team also chose to use Accelerated Read and GRASP screeners to monitor the students’ Lexile levels and comprehension. The team chose to utilize the STAR reading Lexile levels as lagging data. The data revealed that 67% of second and third grade students were not at the projected Lexile level at the beginning of the year. In the spring there was a 16% decrease in students who were not at their projected Lexile level (51% of students did not meet their projected Lexile level). The team was disappointed with the results. I directed the team to spend time reflecting over the intervention process and the data results. The team members revealed that the interventions were not always delivered with fidelity. There were times when the intervention would be cancelled due to unforeseen circumstance yet this still affected the student outcome. As the team leader, I knew they had made great strides in using data, research, and implementing an instructional plan to improve reading comprehension. I led the team back to the data and ask them to look
This is a reading intervention classroom of six 3rd grade students ages 9-10. This intervention group focuses on phonics, fluency, and comprehension. The students were placed in this group based on the results of the DIBELS Oral Reading Fluency assessment. Students in this class lack basic decoding skills.
RtI was designed to provide early intervention to students that are experiencing difficulties in developing literacy skills. Throughout RtI, assessment data is collected to monitor student progress, and is used to determine if the intervention should be continued or modified (Smetana 2010). A common consensus is that the RtI framework consists of three tiers: Tier I, Tier II, and Tier III. In Tier I, primary interventions are used that differentiate instruction, routines, and accommodations to the students that need little to no interventions. The students in this tier are often times classified with the color green.
Assessments should guide instruction and material selection. Any likely manner, assessments should measure student progress, as well as help, identify deficiencies in reading (Afflerback, 2012). One important indicator of reading deficiencies is spelling. Morris (2014), advocated the importance of administering a spelling assessment in order to have a better understanding of a student’s reading abilities. My school uses the Words Their Way spelling inventory to assess students’ reading abilities at the beginning of the year and throughout the reading year.
The program was doing well to improve student literacy, until there became a problem with the fluency monitoring. The teachers would administer the prompts to the children in three different levels. They would collect their data on the students by recording the number of words read correctly per minute. The scores seemed to improve at all levels in the first through fourth grade and at the first and second level of fifth grade during the first year. But, at the third level of the fifth graders the scores took a huge drop. The scores continued to drop the following year at the same level as well. The teachers reported their problem and the passage at the fifth grade level was more difficult than the passage of the sixth grade level. When the passage was later analyzed, it was placed at the 9th and 10th grade level. The committee examined all the prompts and assessed the readability levels of all the passages. They chose two prompts for each grade level and devised a protocol whereby the teachers will use the same prompts at each of three points during the year. The teachers will give the difficult prompt first and if the student scores in the 50th percentile, the student will not require any further testing. The student’s success with a reading will depend on the difficulty of the text and the students background knowledge and own interests.
Wilson, J. A., Luby, M. F., & Wei, Y. (2013). Planning for adolescent tier 3 reading instruction.
Build on learners' prior knowledge; (4.) Provide constant review; (5.) Simplify language; (6.) Build other skills while developing English. The use of standardized testing to identify and assess the progress of English language learners with special needs is problematic. Normally designed for native English speakers, many assessment instruments do not reliably assess speakers of other languages because they ignore differences among linguistic and cultural groups (Schwarz & Burt, 1995). Assessment of English language learners with special needs should...
In the article: Effects of Small-Group Reading Instruction and Curriculum Differences for Students Most at Risk in Kindergarten by Debra Kamps, Mary Abbott, Charles Greenwood Howard Wills, Mary Veerkamp, and ,Jorun Kaufman they argue that the implementation of small group reading intervention done on the three-tier model of prevention and intervention were beneficial to students. The study was conducted using 83 at risk (reading failure) students during the winter of kindergarten. It was an evidence-based curriculum done in groups of one to six. They concluded that students in the small interven...
Diane Pedrotty Bryant, J. E. (2001). Iris. Retrieved April 1, 2011, from Secondary Students with Learning Disabilities in Reading" Vocanulary Development: http://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/infoBriefs_local/cld/cld_vocabulary
As a teacher, you need to encourage all attempts at reading, writing, speaking, and allowing children to experience the different functions and use of literacy activity (The Access Center, n.d.). Moreover, it is crucial for educators to understand phonological awareness and phonics; know what constitutes good children’s literature and how to use it; know children who need additional assistance with beginning reading and writing (Cunningham et al, 2004 as cited in McLachlan et al, 2013, p. 112). Educators also need to plan effective activities to assist children experience reading aloud, listening to other children read aloud, listening to tape recordings, and videotapes so children have opportunities to integrate and extend their literacy knowledge (The Access Center, n.d.). Morrow (1990 as cited in The Access Center, n.d.) notes that classroom with greater teacher facilitation promote literacy behaviours, so it is educators’ role to provide literacy rich
Every child deserves a positive, safe, nurturing, and stimulating learning environment where they will grow academically, socially, emotionally, and physically. My role as an educator is to provide my students with this type of environment as well as an education that will help them succeed academically and become life long learners. It is the responsibility of a literacy educator to provide students with this type of environment, but also to provide instruction that will help students become successful readers and writers. There are numerous programs and philosophies about literacy and reading. Through years of experience and research, one begins to develop their own creative approach on teaching these skills. After looking at different programs and seeing the positive and negatives of each, an integrated and balanced approach of literacy seems to be the best way to teach the differing needs of each student.
In the content area in Language Arts, students will develop the reading skills necessary for word recognition, comprehension, interpretation, analysis, and evaluation of print and non-print text activating prior knowledge, processing and acquiring new vocabulary, organizing information, understanding visual representations, self-monitoring, and reflecting. This can be accomplished by implementing pre-reading, during-reading, and post-reading strategies into the lesson plan. Fifth grade students will read and write a variety of texts with greater scope and depth. In addition, they will analyze and evaluate information and ideas by revisiting and refining concepts about the language arts benchmark and will become more refined and independent learners.
Reading and writing is a key part of everyone’s life. There has been some encouraging levels of reading development in primary school assessments. According to the National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy report (2015), 95.5% of students achieve at or above the national minimum standard of reading. It is important to know effective ways to teach reading so children can become active problem solvers to enable them to read for meaning or for fun. Over the years, there has been a big amount of research into the most effective ways to teach reading skills to students. There are some systematically taught key skills and strategies that help achieve these levels of reading. Some of these skills include phonological awareness, phonemic awareness,
A student at Instructional Level will require the teacher’s assistance. A student’s Word Recognition at this level is 92%-96% and Comprehension is 70%-85%. For a student to make continuous progress direct and systematic work is needed.
It is a “reading world” we live in and students should be guaranteed every opportunity to succeed in this information driven society. Children today are overwhelmed with more reading material than ever before on billboard, television, the Internet and at school, causing reading to become a relevant and essential need in the life of every child (Lumpkin 1972). Being able to read has become the core of our information driven society. Yet, reading difficulties continue to plague the foundation of our education system creating a problem that only seems to be escalating. Hasselbring affirms that reading difficulties are a serious concern to our nation’s students claiming that, “as many as 20 percent of 17 year olds... [are] functionally illiterate and 44 percent of all high school students…[are] described as semi-illiterate”(2004). This is a harsh reality to face – a reality that stems from difficulties developed at the elementary level where reading complications arise and usually go unchecked. These reading difficulties are carri...
The authenticity of Interactive Reading is clear and therefore leads us to explore HOW we, as teachers, incorporate this strategy in our teaching most effectively. Fisher, Flood, Lapp, and Frey's study on "read-aloud practices" provides an excellent, research based framework for the implementation of Interactive Reading based on their observations of teachers in classrooms. Their 7 "essential components of an interactive read-aloud" is a practical guide of using this strategy and can be implimented with all children. These components provide a structure that allows us to teach ALL children (inherently allowing differentiation) while attending to common core state standards. Use of this strategy attends to the understanding of language and literacy development while providing for specific skill instruction in reading and writing.