1. In general, I can say that I have somewhat eased my stance on the irrelevance of testing. In particular, I feel that the Dibels assessment gave a semi-useful reflections of student capabilities. I would say that my assessment principles and practicies are now unified and support each other following this course. Following the QRI-4 assessment, I felt like too many external variables can factor into a student's score. I didn't get the feeling that the assessment was strictly testing the child's cognitive abilities. The Dibels assessment gave me a different perspective on things. Do I still feel like there are too many assessments being administered? Yes, but I can now see the relevance for some of them.
2. The article in which we had to answer general questions about our reading practices was very interesting to me. Being able to take the assessment myself was extremely beneficial. It allowed me to measure the assessment's validity. I would have to say that practicing the QRI4 and the Dibels assessments gave me a base example for areas that I can improve upon. Again, the hands-on experience in administering the assessments allowed me to generate ideas for how I would improve each assessment, or if I would administer them at all in a given scenario.
3. My main goals are to be able to properly observe my students so that I may know which assessments would best benefit them. With that information I would also be able place them in the best position to succeed.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Sunday, May 2, 2010
DIBELS
I performed the Dibels assessment on a 2nd grader. I used the Nonsense Word Fluency benchmark (beginning of the year). The second assessment that I used is the Oral Reading Fluency benchmark (beginning of the year) exam ("My Handprints").
NWF
--
First, I used the Nonsense Word Fluency benchmark (beginning of the year) exam. The student 51 letter sounds per minute. The observations that were returned to me were:
Stage 1 -
Has isolated letter-sound correspondences but lacks a systematic strategy for attacking unknown words.
Stage 2 -
Produces correct consonant sounds; incorrect vowel sounds.
The benchmark scores was listed as "Established", so reinforcement activities were deemed optional.
Plan of Action:
If I'm understanding this assessment correctly, this 2nd grader is essentially fine with the exception of some minor miscues. That being said, I would work on stringing sounds together with the student. This would satisfy the two observations that were presented.
Reflection:
I can honestly say that I do not agree with the tool, or the idea behind NWF examination. There are too many variables that can come into play. Yes, the test seems simple, but that is to an adult who has fully matured mentally. This is a 2nd grader that we're dealing with in this instance. He's still advancing his knowledge of the language, so his knowledgebase of words isn't all that big to begin with.
I do not see the logic behind using fake words to assess whether, or not, he can produce sounds properly. He has to completely abandon his instincts in certain cases to get these words right. Some of these nonsense words resemble actual words, so that can be confusing. If his instincts are telling him that a word should have a long "e" sound instead of a short "e" sound he will get that word wrong. I just feel like it can be too confusing to the student at times.
Overall, The tool in itself is great. But I do not like the NWF assessment. It's not something that I would administer to a student. If I were to do something similar, I would use real words that a student is likely to come across at some point in the future. At least they will see double the benefit this way.
ORF
--
The student scored a 95% accuracy rating. His Oral Reading Fluency score was 86 words per minute. The RTF score was 22 words per minute. Overall, he scored as Low Risk.
Observations:
1. Frequent errors on irregular/sight words
2. Frequent errors on multisyllabic words
3. Makes no attempt to sound out unfamiliar words
Reflection:
I actually think that the ORF tool can be a bit useful, so long as you make your own observations. The observations listed above were given to me by the Dibels program. I don't agree that He made no attempt to sound out unfamiliar words. In fact, he tried so much that it took up valuable seconds of his time to read the passage. I should've just told him the word(s) so that he could move one, but I wanted to see if he could get it on his own.
However, I do agree that he struggles mightily with multisyllabic words. One word that he got wrong is "beautiful". Personally, I think that this is a word that he should've been exposed to by now. The only thing that could credit his error to is a possible lack of confidence with long words. I noticed that started to read slower as he approached that word. It was almost as if he was hoping that I'd stop him before he reached it.
Overall, I like the ORF tool. I think that I can actually be quite useful. My only reservation is that I wouldn't simply accept the observations that the Dibels provides you with as absolute truth. Everything cannot be accurately quantified by the touch of a stylus. I would use the ORF Dibels assessment, but I would be sure to form my own conclusions in conjunction with the observations provided to me by the program.
NWF
--
First, I used the Nonsense Word Fluency benchmark (beginning of the year) exam. The student 51 letter sounds per minute. The observations that were returned to me were:
Stage 1 -
Has isolated letter-sound correspondences but lacks a systematic strategy for attacking unknown words.
Stage 2 -
Produces correct consonant sounds; incorrect vowel sounds.
The benchmark scores was listed as "Established", so reinforcement activities were deemed optional.
Plan of Action:
If I'm understanding this assessment correctly, this 2nd grader is essentially fine with the exception of some minor miscues. That being said, I would work on stringing sounds together with the student. This would satisfy the two observations that were presented.
Reflection:
I can honestly say that I do not agree with the tool, or the idea behind NWF examination. There are too many variables that can come into play. Yes, the test seems simple, but that is to an adult who has fully matured mentally. This is a 2nd grader that we're dealing with in this instance. He's still advancing his knowledge of the language, so his knowledgebase of words isn't all that big to begin with.
I do not see the logic behind using fake words to assess whether, or not, he can produce sounds properly. He has to completely abandon his instincts in certain cases to get these words right. Some of these nonsense words resemble actual words, so that can be confusing. If his instincts are telling him that a word should have a long "e" sound instead of a short "e" sound he will get that word wrong. I just feel like it can be too confusing to the student at times.
Overall, The tool in itself is great. But I do not like the NWF assessment. It's not something that I would administer to a student. If I were to do something similar, I would use real words that a student is likely to come across at some point in the future. At least they will see double the benefit this way.
ORF
--
The student scored a 95% accuracy rating. His Oral Reading Fluency score was 86 words per minute. The RTF score was 22 words per minute. Overall, he scored as Low Risk.
Observations:
1. Frequent errors on irregular/sight words
2. Frequent errors on multisyllabic words
3. Makes no attempt to sound out unfamiliar words
Reflection:
I actually think that the ORF tool can be a bit useful, so long as you make your own observations. The observations listed above were given to me by the Dibels program. I don't agree that He made no attempt to sound out unfamiliar words. In fact, he tried so much that it took up valuable seconds of his time to read the passage. I should've just told him the word(s) so that he could move one, but I wanted to see if he could get it on his own.
However, I do agree that he struggles mightily with multisyllabic words. One word that he got wrong is "beautiful". Personally, I think that this is a word that he should've been exposed to by now. The only thing that could credit his error to is a possible lack of confidence with long words. I noticed that started to read slower as he approached that word. It was almost as if he was hoping that I'd stop him before he reached it.
Overall, I like the ORF tool. I think that I can actually be quite useful. My only reservation is that I wouldn't simply accept the observations that the Dibels provides you with as absolute truth. Everything cannot be accurately quantified by the touch of a stylus. I would use the ORF Dibels assessment, but I would be sure to form my own conclusions in conjunction with the observations provided to me by the program.
Observation Day 6
I used this day of observation to have my student try to write his introduction. He's already completed the body of this story, so now he knows everything that needs to be addressed, or set up, in his introduction. My estimation that writing his introduction will be easier today should prove correct. After addressing various grammatical issues in the previous session, I'm anticipating minimal errors with the writing assignment today.
I knew that I wouldn't have as much time with my student today, so I gave him about 20 minutes to write his introduction. I wanted to leave time to address whatever errors present themselves in this session. I noticed strong improvement in my student's writing today. There weren't as many errors in tense usage, but there were still some run-on sentences present.
After going through our correction process, I made it a point to talk to the student about some of the strong words that he was using in his writing. In particular, it was his use of the word "kill" on 2 occasions that raised my eyebrows. I asked him what he meant when he used that word, and he told me that it meant to beat and/or defeat the enemy in the game. We removed both instances of the word, but I needed to know if he really understood what that word meant. He didn't exactly know what it meant, but it's something that he's heard someone say before in the context of winning the game, so that's the word that he uses at times.
The student still hasn't perfected writing words in the past tense. He also showed a small penchant for writing words in the singular form when they should be in the plural form. This prompted me to put together a small list of words and have him convert them to the past tense. I put together a second set of words that he had to convert to the plural form after explaining to him how to do so.
In all, I feel that this has been one of our most productive sessions to date. My student has shown real progress when compared to where we started.
I knew that I wouldn't have as much time with my student today, so I gave him about 20 minutes to write his introduction. I wanted to leave time to address whatever errors present themselves in this session. I noticed strong improvement in my student's writing today. There weren't as many errors in tense usage, but there were still some run-on sentences present.
After going through our correction process, I made it a point to talk to the student about some of the strong words that he was using in his writing. In particular, it was his use of the word "kill" on 2 occasions that raised my eyebrows. I asked him what he meant when he used that word, and he told me that it meant to beat and/or defeat the enemy in the game. We removed both instances of the word, but I needed to know if he really understood what that word meant. He didn't exactly know what it meant, but it's something that he's heard someone say before in the context of winning the game, so that's the word that he uses at times.
The student still hasn't perfected writing words in the past tense. He also showed a small penchant for writing words in the singular form when they should be in the plural form. This prompted me to put together a small list of words and have him convert them to the past tense. I put together a second set of words that he had to convert to the plural form after explaining to him how to do so.
In all, I feel that this has been one of our most productive sessions to date. My student has shown real progress when compared to where we started.
Observation Day 5
I started observation day 5 by going over the writing that my student turned in from our previous session (day 4). I pointed out to him the misspellings and errors in tense application. In particular, he had trouble writing words in the past tense. I explained to him how to recognize words in the past tense and how to convert words to the past tense.
We went through his writing word by word strictly correcting words that were written in the wrong tense. As we read through I drew a box around each word that was written in the wrong tense. These will serve as vocabulary words later on. After I corrected the first couple of words, the student was able to make most of the corrections on his own from there.
After making the initial corrections to the tense of the words, we began to look for general misspellings. We also wrote these words down and added them to our growing wordlist. I didn't correct these words on the paper, because I plan on presenting the exact page that he wrote them on to him at a later date to see if he can recognize the same errors that we've pointed out today. It will help me gauge how well he is retaining the different grammatical rules that I have given to him thus far.
Lastly, we read through his writing one more time looking for run-on sentences. Again, I showed him how to recognize, and correct, the first 2 instances. The student was doing a good job of recognizing them, but from time to time I had to prompt him with a question like, "what is another way that you can say this?" or "If you put the period here(pointing to a particular spot) to end the sentence, how will you begin the new sentence that follows it?". These prompts would help him work through different hesitations that he was having when trying to correct his own work without my help.
After pointing out all of the corrections that needed to be made, I had the student re-write the portion of the story that we edited with all of the corrections that we made in place. I noticed a remarkable improvement this time, as he only omitted 1-2 of the corrections that we made to his work. We didn't have enough time to address some of the strong words that he was using in his writing, so I plan on addressing that in the next session.
We went through his writing word by word strictly correcting words that were written in the wrong tense. As we read through I drew a box around each word that was written in the wrong tense. These will serve as vocabulary words later on. After I corrected the first couple of words, the student was able to make most of the corrections on his own from there.
After making the initial corrections to the tense of the words, we began to look for general misspellings. We also wrote these words down and added them to our growing wordlist. I didn't correct these words on the paper, because I plan on presenting the exact page that he wrote them on to him at a later date to see if he can recognize the same errors that we've pointed out today. It will help me gauge how well he is retaining the different grammatical rules that I have given to him thus far.
Lastly, we read through his writing one more time looking for run-on sentences. Again, I showed him how to recognize, and correct, the first 2 instances. The student was doing a good job of recognizing them, but from time to time I had to prompt him with a question like, "what is another way that you can say this?" or "If you put the period here(pointing to a particular spot) to end the sentence, how will you begin the new sentence that follows it?". These prompts would help him work through different hesitations that he was having when trying to correct his own work without my help.
After pointing out all of the corrections that needed to be made, I had the student re-write the portion of the story that we edited with all of the corrections that we made in place. I noticed a remarkable improvement this time, as he only omitted 1-2 of the corrections that we made to his work. We didn't have enough time to address some of the strong words that he was using in his writing, so I plan on addressing that in the next session.
Observation Day 4
I spent day 4 of my observation getting my student to continue with the writing process. In our previous session we established some basic themes and nuances that he'd like to include in his story. This session I wanted him to actually put part of the story on paper. We started by trying to write an introduction paragraph. He was having difficulty with this, because he knows that an introduction has to encompass the vast majority of the material that you're going to cover within a few lines.
Personally, I've never liked writing introduction paragraphs, so I gave him a tactic that I faithfully employ to this day. Instead of starting with the introduction, I had my student go right into the body of his story to start writing. I find this approach easier, because it removes the restraints that an introduction paragraph, line, scene, etc can place on a writer. Starting with the body and working your way out to the introduction and conclusion works with any type of writing assignment.
My student agreed with me after he started writing. It went against some of what he was taught, be he told me how easy this was since he didn't have to spend time thinking about what he was going to write. I believe that creative minds are at their best when they can just react. Too much thinking can be a bad thing in the creative process. There can be a tendency to over think. Sometimes you're better off putting pen to paper, letting your thoughts flow, and editing the resulting work later.
I gave my student the entire period to put down as much as he wanted to in his body. After our last session he was anxious to get started with the writing, so I knew that he would have a lot to say once he was allowed to begin. My student finished a few minutes early, so I was able to read over what he turned in. One aspect of his writing that jumped out to me was particularly strong language for a child of his age. I also noticed many small grammatical errors. There wasn't enough time left for me to address these different issues, so I decided to make a note of them and leave them for the next session.
Personally, I've never liked writing introduction paragraphs, so I gave him a tactic that I faithfully employ to this day. Instead of starting with the introduction, I had my student go right into the body of his story to start writing. I find this approach easier, because it removes the restraints that an introduction paragraph, line, scene, etc can place on a writer. Starting with the body and working your way out to the introduction and conclusion works with any type of writing assignment.
My student agreed with me after he started writing. It went against some of what he was taught, be he told me how easy this was since he didn't have to spend time thinking about what he was going to write. I believe that creative minds are at their best when they can just react. Too much thinking can be a bad thing in the creative process. There can be a tendency to over think. Sometimes you're better off putting pen to paper, letting your thoughts flow, and editing the resulting work later.
I gave my student the entire period to put down as much as he wanted to in his body. After our last session he was anxious to get started with the writing, so I knew that he would have a lot to say once he was allowed to begin. My student finished a few minutes early, so I was able to read over what he turned in. One aspect of his writing that jumped out to me was particularly strong language for a child of his age. I also noticed many small grammatical errors. There wasn't enough time left for me to address these different issues, so I decided to make a note of them and leave them for the next session.
Observation Day 3
Today we began the process of writing the story. I helped my student brainstorm for topics that he would like to write about. We were having some difficulty coming across something that peaked his interest, so I asked him to tell me about the 1 thing that he would love to talk to his classmates about. His choice was "Halo 3". This a video game that is popular amongst kids his age and is based upon space travel and adventures.
Once we decided on a topic, my student became a waterfall of information. I asked him to tell me the plot of the game and to include all important characters and events. I had him write a lot of this information down. It amazed me how much of this storyline he could recall off of the top of his head without hesitation, but how much he would struggle with reading passages at times. This clearly speaks to his motivation being a decisive factor in his success, or lack thereof, in the classroom.
To start off, I had my student create a list of "likes" and "dislikes" about the game/plot. With this information in hand I was able find my starting point. I asked my student to put himself in the main character's shoes. He had to write down what special powers he would like, his hero name, and any other information that he would like to add. We finished by creating a Venn Diagram of his hero character and the original main character in the story.
I got a lot more done than I expected to on this day. We were able to find a topic and establish a baseline for the next session. From the looks of things, my student is extremely interested in the assignment. In fact, there were other students who were asking if they could participate and have me help them put a story of their own together.
Once we decided on a topic, my student became a waterfall of information. I asked him to tell me the plot of the game and to include all important characters and events. I had him write a lot of this information down. It amazed me how much of this storyline he could recall off of the top of his head without hesitation, but how much he would struggle with reading passages at times. This clearly speaks to his motivation being a decisive factor in his success, or lack thereof, in the classroom.
To start off, I had my student create a list of "likes" and "dislikes" about the game/plot. With this information in hand I was able find my starting point. I asked my student to put himself in the main character's shoes. He had to write down what special powers he would like, his hero name, and any other information that he would like to add. We finished by creating a Venn Diagram of his hero character and the original main character in the story.
I got a lot more done than I expected to on this day. We were able to find a topic and establish a baseline for the next session. From the looks of things, my student is extremely interested in the assignment. In fact, there were other students who were asking if they could participate and have me help them put a story of their own together.
Observation Day 2
On day 2 of my observation I was allotted more time with my student. I worked with him on his writing skills to help prepare him for the approaching state examination. We haven't gotten into writing the story yet, as the teacher requested that I help him improve in certain areas of weakness. Ultimately this will help the student on the test and it will help him when we get to writing the story.
A major area of weakness for my student was recalling facts and reading comprehension. The class read a passage aloud and then each of the students had to answer the corresponding questions. The activity was somewhat of a continuation of activities that took place during day 1 of my observation.
When I was working with the student on his comprehension skills I advised him to read the questions before reading the passages. This is a basic technique that I have always found helpful. Some teachers advise against it, but I feel think that it makes the story an easier read once you know exactly what you're looking for. I noticed a slight improvement in the student's scores when he started employing this technique. Developing these comprehension skills are important it's a major part of the state test, but it will also be a part of the story that he will write. I plan on having him put together a set of questions upon concluding his story. If my student has a better grasp of the goal of comprehension questions and how to answer them, it will allow him to put together a set than can properly gauge reader retention.
As for the assignment, the teacher has told me that I will be able to focus strictly on my assignment once the class has completed the state exam.
A major area of weakness for my student was recalling facts and reading comprehension. The class read a passage aloud and then each of the students had to answer the corresponding questions. The activity was somewhat of a continuation of activities that took place during day 1 of my observation.
When I was working with the student on his comprehension skills I advised him to read the questions before reading the passages. This is a basic technique that I have always found helpful. Some teachers advise against it, but I feel think that it makes the story an easier read once you know exactly what you're looking for. I noticed a slight improvement in the student's scores when he started employing this technique. Developing these comprehension skills are important it's a major part of the state test, but it will also be a part of the story that he will write. I plan on having him put together a set of questions upon concluding his story. If my student has a better grasp of the goal of comprehension questions and how to answer them, it will allow him to put together a set than can properly gauge reader retention.
As for the assignment, the teacher has told me that I will be able to focus strictly on my assignment once the class has completed the state exam.
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