Week 9: Assignment 3

QRI5: Qualitative Reading Inventory is an individually administered informal reading assessment for students in grades K through 12. The assessment uses graded word lists and passages to asses oral, silent, and listening skills. The qualitative reading inventory provides information about conditions where students can identify words and comprehend text, and conditions that result in unsuccessful word recognition and comprehension ability. Results used to estimate student’s reading levels, choose appropriate books for literature circles, reading workshops, and independent reading. And to group students for reading instruction and to help identify reading levels of independent, instructional, and frustration level. The QRI5 Provides information for designing instruction and tracking student progress, it is not a standardized assessment which means that information taken from the results are for individual students and not compared to any norm group.

DIBELS: Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills is an individually and group administered assessment that measures specific literacy skills for students in grades K-6. These different methods of assessment focus on the five main areas of literacy which include phonemic awareness, alphabetic principal, accuracy and fluency with text, vocabulary, and comprehension. The purpose of the DIBELS is to determine students who may be at risk for reading difficulties, low performance levels, and problems reaching early literacy benchmark goals. Short fluency assessments administered at least 3 times a year (beginning, middle, end) produce results that are used to identify students who need extra instruction to meet benchmark literacy goals. The dynamic indicators of basic early literacy assessment tools provide information for designing instruction and tracking student progress. DIBELS is a standardized assessment tool allowing for students to be compared to a benchmark or norm group of students at their grade level.

Similarities: With both the QRI5 and DIBELS being assessment for literacy, fluency and comprehension are a focus of both assessment types. Both can be used to inform instructional design based on the needs of the students, and both can be used to monitor and track student progress.

Differences: The biggest difference I noticed between the QRI5 and DIBELS is that they are assessments for different grade levels. Where the QRI5 assesses student literacy for grades K through 12, DIBELS assesses students in the earlier grades, K through 6^th. DIBELS focuses on aspects of literacy that the QRI5 does not. Another difference between the two is that the QRI5 is not a standardized assessment tool. All results are dependent on the individual student, where DIBELS is standardized, and results are compared to a norm group of other students at the same grade level. 

Week 8: Assignment 3

Candidate’s Name: Brandy Blanchard

Grade Level: 2nd

Title of the lesson: Fluency through Phrasing (No Robot Voice!)

Length of the lesson: 2 ELA blocks (45 mins each)

Central focus of the lesson: In this lesson, students will learn fluency strategies by working on phrasing sentences and appropriate pacing while reading.

Knowledge of students to inform teaching: Students will use prior knowledge of basic sight words, strategies for reading unknow words, and writing complete sentences and paragraphs to complete the lesson.

Common Core State Standards: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.2.4 Read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.2.4. A Read grade-level text with purpose and understanding. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.2.4. B Read grade-level text orally with accuracy, appropriate rate, and expression on successive readings.

Support literacy development through academic language: ●     Key learning task to practice using the language function: Students will work on phrasing sentences by creating them out of cue word cards and deciding whether they have phrased the correctly depending on how they sound spoken out loud. ●     Describe language demands: Students will read their created sentences out loud to see if they have broken them up correctly, and to see if they sound fluent as the read them. Vocabulary ●     General academic terms: retelling, phrasing, fluency ●     Content specific vocabulary: expression, pace Sentence Level ●     Sentence structure, complete sentences Discourse ●     Text structure

Learning objectives: Students will read text with proper expression and volume. Students will be able to chunk groups of texts when reading. Students will read at an appropriate pace.

Formal and informal assessment: Participation in group work Fluent reading rubric grade Exit tickets

Instructional procedure: Day 1 To start the lesson, I will read a passage to the students in a robot voice (word for word instead of fluently) and ask the students if it sounds right to them. I will explain to students that when people don’t read fluently, it can sound silly like my robot voice. I will discuss with the students that when reading, we take breaks between certain parts of the sentence so that everything flows together. Next, I will write a sample sentence on the board (The large dog is barking too much) and read again in the robot voice. I will call on a student to re-read the sentence in a way that they think it sounds better. I will then underline ‘The large dog’ in one color, and ‘is barking too much’ in another color. I will use the different colors to show the students the phrasing we should use when reading the sentences in a fluid manner. I will drag my finger under the first phrase while reading out loud, and do the same with the second half of the sentence. I will explain to the students that this is called phrasing, and that when we read in groups of words that flow together, the sentence makes more sense than reading word by word. I will model another swooping motion for a different sentence to show the students how I would break the sentence into chunks or two separate phrases. Next, for guided practice, I will call students from the class to come up and practice breaking apart and “swooping” while reading the sentence. Lastly, I will have the students break up into their reading buddies and work through a paragraph phrasing and swoop reading as I move through the room to aid and take notes on what the students are doing well with and struggling with. Instructional procedure: Day 2 To start the second part of the lesson, we will do a quick refresher of the previous day and have students come up to the board to break up sentences into phrases and swoop reading them to the class. Next, students will break up into pairs and be given strips of different phrases on them. The students will work together to group phrases together to write sentences that make sense. Once they have decided whether a sentence makes sense, each student will take a turn reading the phrase with expression and at a good pace using the swooping method. Each pair will be responsible for creating 4 different sentences, and reading them out loud to the class (using swoop method) after writing them on the dry erase board. To make the presentation of their sentences fun and engaging, the students will first read a sentence incorrectly (out of order and in the robot voice) and show the others how they corrected the sentence to sound fluent and to make sense. To end the lesson, students will have independent free time on one of our fluency game websites. Accommodations and modifications: Higher level or gifted students will be paired together and given more difficult strips to work with. Lower level or ELL will be given modified sentences and have extra assistance from an aide or classroom teacher as needed.

Instructional resources and materials: Dry erase board Different colored markers Printed sentence phrases Internet ready computers List of fluency websites

Reflection: Questions to ask following the lesson ●     Did I provide modifications for those who needed extra support? ●     Did my lesson meet the standards I wanted to focus on? (fluency standards) ●     Were the students engaged throughout the lesson?

Week 7: Assignment 5

Student info: 1^st grade male, reading at a 1^st grade level.

*all assessments used were from the module on readingrockets

Print awareness: For the print awareness assessment, I followed the guidelines from the online module on readingrockets.org. I had the student locate the front, back, and title of the book. The student was able to identify all. I then asked the student to identify where you should start reading, a letter, a word, the first word of a sentence, the last word of a sentence, punctuation marks, a capital letter and a lowercase letter. Again, the student was able to identify all that I asked for. I asked the student what different words mean (example, what does a wet floor sign mean or is used for) and the student was able to tell me that different types of writing are used for different things (serve different purposes). From this assessment, I have gathered that the child has a very good idea of print awareness.

Phonological awareness: For this assessment, I worked on counting words in a sentence and counting and segmenting syllables with the same student. With the use of a pointer, the student counted the words in show sentences. We started with sentences 2-5 words in length and worked up to 8 word sentences. He was able to do this without much difficulty at all. Counting syllables was the next step, and this was about the level where he wasn’t able to do this independently, so I did not move onto segmenting syllables. I found activities on pbs kids that work on phonemic awareness via interactive games. I thought this would be a good site for the student to visit to help with blending, etc. http://pbskids.org/island/preview/games-phonemicawareness.html

Phonics: For this section, I first worked with the student on identifying letters on the page, and matching them with the sound they make. He was able to do this without a problem. Next, I gave him a list of beginning sounds like sh, ch, th, wh, and ck. He was able to read the words matching the correct sound. Next, I worked on helping him with blending the beginning sounds he already knew to read unknown words (ex; shark). At this stage, he needed assistance. I found a site to help with phonics overall. https://www.kizphonics.com/materials/phonics-games/

Fluency: For fluency assessment, I used the reading rockets finding a fluency score. Out of 100 words in one minute, the student read 55 words. There were 7 errors which put him at 55 wpm and 48 wcpm. I’m not sure that I chose the best passage for him, and I think by the end of all the assessments he was beginning to get tired and lose interest in what we were doing, so that could have played a part in his assessment results. I searched online for a website that would provide interactive games to help with fluency and came up with a class website that not only provides links to activities for fluency, but other aspects of phonological awareness as well. This site led me to starfall.com where I found a section on games to help with fluency. http://www.starfall.com/n/level-b/index/play.htm?f

Week 6: Assignment 1

Happy week 6 everyone! You can find the links to my prezi presentation as well as a googledoc of my mini lesson below.

Thank you :]

http://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cbe1rZ6UYt

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p-AnDp5hnKK_iweefdESd2IDK2HdiSlS4m7tMpoWTcU/edit?usp=sharing