Four years ago, each classroom teacher was expected to administer the DRA. It took too long and severely disrupted instruction. Then three years ago, our school did something I consider revolutionary. Our principal and curriculum coordinator suspended student services the first 10 days of school, recruited our learning support, ESOL and other specials teachers, trained them and assigned certain classes or grades to each person. By the second week of school, all students in the elementary school were tested by this team using the Fountas and Pinnel testing system. They met daily to discuss their results and to make sure their testing methods were consistent among the team. The team mostly used the running record to judge fluency and the questions to gauge comprehension. While classroom teachers continued their instruction they had to deal with students getting pulled out for 15 - 20 minutes at a time but I thought it was better than what we had before. This is the third year they've done this. The data the classroom teacher gets is valuable consistent and is the starting point for reading instruction and groupings. The whole process is repeated in May to judge the child's progress over the year. While some kids may not be reading on reach grade level, it was great to see that they have made some progress, sometimes at much as three levels!
On Sun, Aug 28, 2011 at 2:55 AM, Saundra McDonald <[email protected]>wrote: > > Our school is struggling with deciding what kind of reading assessment to > use for grades 3-5. In the past we have used DIBELS (mandated by the > administration) and DRA2. Our principal has expressed her concern that the > DRAs take up too much instructional time to administer and some of the > teachers feel there is not consistency from grade to grade in how they are > given and so the results are not that helpful. > > My question is what assessments do you use at your school? Has anyone used > the Fontas and Pinnell system? If so, is it any less time consuming than > the DRAs? What else is out there? > > Thank you, > Saundra > _______________________________________________ > 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
