I think what bothers me most about this, from the sound of it, is that we are testing for a level only. What is most worthwhile about listening to oral reading is to get a sense of what strategies the children are using. Are they effectively using beginning, middle and ending sounds? Are they using context effectively to confirm decoding attempts? Are they phrasing accurately and using punctuation effectively? Do they reread when they realize that they don't understand? It makes sense to know what a child's instructional level is...but to mandate a place to start testing to find that level? I don't get it. Jennifer In a message dated 9/7/2009 1:48:58 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [email protected] writes:
I feel your pain. We too have to test each student in the fall, winter and spring and report score on the report card! Although we are asking teachers to look at the last DRA given and determine whether the student should be tested up or not. I get concerned that we are jeopardizing professional judgment of talented teachers when given directives such as yours. I agree that when we are asked to test children then the information should be used to guide instruction but there's a huge waste of teaching time, and we've been told "don't shut down reading instruction during DRA's." _______________________________________________ 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.
