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 readingFluency and intonationPrint work strategiesComprehensionConversational 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 Records

One – 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 Read Aloud Turn-and-Talks

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)