Which kit you choose depends on the purpose for the assessment. If you are looking for information to guide teachers in instruction, then the DRA2 would be a good choice. If you are just looking to find out what level kids are, the Rigby would be faster and easier to administer. The original DRA does have a lot of gray areas, but the newer version has cleared up a lot of those. The DRA2 is heavy on written response, so kids need to be taught hot to take the assessment, but it does give lots of great information and the rubric makes it easy to score. I think the F&P kit is very similar, but I also recall that it was substantially more expensive. The DRA2 kit for K-3 also includes a Word Analysis assessment to use with kids who are struggling. It gives a lot of good info, but is somewhat time consuming to give. You only give it (and only portions of it) to kids below certain levels on the DRA2 (and the manual has a chart to follow for that). In my district, the reading specialists put together a DRA2 handbook setting some specific guidelines for administering and scoring. This has helped to eliminate the "gray" areas. We also do fidelity checks and every teacher has to be observed giving a DRA2 at least once a year. There are still questions from year to year about the validity of the levels given by the previous year's teacher, but I just re-emphasize tha the purpose of the DRA is to drive instruction, not to report a reading level and the levels are not concrete. There is a form included in the masters that allows teachers to list students, then, using the rubric, indicate weaknesses. Teachers then use that (and not just reading levels) to group students for guided reading. This lets them be very specific and targeted in their instruction of skills. We don't tell parents the level, we have developed our own reporting system for parents to report either above grade level, on grade level, or below grade level. The above grade level criteria is very tough to meet and only a few students will be in that area. We do the DRA2 twice a year and use the Rigby or A-Z benchmark assessment for middle of the year (2nd and 3rd quarter). You might want to look at the A-Z assessment. It is available online through the reading a-z website. It would be the least expensive option. A single membership is only about $75 and one person in the school can download all the books, the assessments, and lots of other materials.
Hope that helps. Debbie ----- Original Message ----- From: "Kathy Garzon" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [email protected] Sent: Monday, October 20, 2008 6:36:37 AM (GMT-0600) America/Chicago Subject: [MOSAIC] reading assessment I live in the middle east and teach in Kuwait at an american school. We have a reading resource teacher for each grade 2-5 and two resource teachers for grade 1. We have been looking to get one reading assessment for all of the resource teachers. We are focusing on the Riby benchmark or the DRA primary and intermediate kits. Does anyone have any input to help us make a decision. Thanks Kahty _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive. _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive.
