Transcript Assessment in RW - maisdreadingworkshop

Aug 25, 2011
Referencing Teaching Reading in Small Groups
by Jennifer Serravallo, 2010

Take a moment to reflect on the assessments
you use with your readers.

After a minute or two, please turn and talk
about:
1. What you use….
and
2. What it tells you about your students
 Reading
assessments can be
categorized as:
◦ diagnostic, formative, or summative;
◦ informal or formal;
◦ quantitative or qualitative.
 Engagement
with reading
 Fluency and intonation
 Print work strategies
 Comprehension
 Conversational skills

Engagement Inventories to observe:
◦ Are the child’s eyes on print?
◦ Is the child giggling at the funny parts?
◦ Is the child turning pages at an acceptable
pace?
◦ What types of things distract a child from
reading?
◦ How many minutes can a child stay
engaged with a book?

Book Logs:
◦ What types of books (genres, authors,
levels) does the child tend to choose?
◦ How many pages is the child reading per
minute?
◦ How many books does the child read per
week?
◦ How much time is spent reading at home
versus reading at school?

and Reading Interest Inventories:
◦ What are a child’s attitudes toward
reading?
◦ With whom does a child like to share his
reading?
◦ What types of books (genres, authors)
does the child report liking and disliking?


Fluency affects comprehension,
comprehension affects fluency (Kuhn 2008;
Rasinski 2003)
In analyzing a child’s reading with an eye
toward fluency, it is essential to go beyond
just the speed with which a child can read
and look at the qualities and dimensions
within her fluent reading. (Serravallo, 2010)




Accuracy: The ability of a reader to identify words in
text correctly or with precision
Automaticity: The recognition of words in text
instantaneously without the use of strategy or other
conscious effort.
Expression or Prosody: The aspects of reading such
as stress, emphasis, and appropriate phrasing that,
when taken together, create an expressive rendering
of a text
Parsing or Phrasing: Maintaining appropriate syntax
when reading; breaking a sentence into appropriate
phrase units. Correct parsing aids comprehension.
 Running
 One
Records
– on – one Conferences
 Partnerships
 Observations
during minilessons
and shared reading


Readers use print work strategies to “attend
to the visual information in print” and to
utilize phonological, semantic, and syntactic
information for “word-level problem solving”
(Clay 2001, 145, 126)
As proficient readers, the strategies that we
know are almost always underground.
(Serravallo, 2010)

Running Records:
❏Does that mistake/self-correction make sense
(meaning)?
❏Does that mistake/self-correction sound right
(syntax)?
❏Does that mistake/self-correction look right
(visual)?
(We also assess use of these “sources of
information” during one-on-one conferences)
 Comprehension
is at the heart of
what it means to really read.
Reading is thinking and
understanding and getting at the
meaning behind a text. (Serravallo,
2010)








❏Activating prior knowledge before, during, and
after reading a text
❏Determining the most important ideas and
themes in a text
❏Creating visual and sensory images before,
during, and after reading a text.
❏Asking questions
❏Predicting
❏Drawing inferences
❏Retelling and synthesizing
❏Using fix-up strategies when comprehension
breaks down.




Running Record Comprehension
Conversations
One-on-one conferences
Reading Notebook work and stop-and-jots
(sticky notes)
Partner conversations/Whole class
conversations


Author/educator/social activists Katherine
and Randy Bomer write in their book For a
Better World: Reading and Writing for Social
Action (2001) that “democracy . . . exists only
when people deliberate together,”
It is important to also listen for
conversational skills as children talk. Helping
children to work not only in a group, but also
as a group helps children develop shared
understanding, affiliation, and a “deeper
sense of caring” (Johnston 2004).
 Whole
Class Conversations
 Interactive
Talks
Read Aloud Turn-and-
 Partnership
work (and later) Book
Club Conversations

As you form and plan for reading instruction,
it is helpful to see students as individuals and
keep your purpose in mind. Are you listening
and observing for engagement? Fluency? Print
work strategies? Comprehension?
Conversational skills? Remember that you
have more than one place to assess for each
one of those behaviors and skills. The more
information you have about a student, the
more precise your assessment of each
student will be. (Serravallo, 2010)