The running records, miscue analysis, and comprehension analysis are evidence of my growth as an educator during the Emergent Literacy course. Running records are a crucial part of evaluating reading level, monitoring progress, and determining next steps in instruction for all students.
Before I began this course, I had gone through a very brief training on giving running records using Reading A-Z, but never received formal training on using the Fountas and Pinnell Benchmark Assessment Kit. My prior district used the Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA) instead of the Fountas and Pinnell Benchmark Assessment Kit. I encountered the Fountas and Pinnell running records during my college course experiences but not in my own classroom until I moved to my current district. Many educators (including myself) have given running records to determine reading level based on accuracy and comprehension, but did not give much thought to the miscue analysis. Due to the number of them and the amount of time allotted for completing running records for all of the students in my class, I only did the coding as they read, scored their accuracy, recorded the number of self-corrections, fluency score, and comprehension conversation. Prior to this course, I can admit that the only time I have conducted a miscue analysis was during the brief, previous training. I did not have a very good understanding of what the M, S, V stood for on the running record or how to use it. Following the administration of a running record, I was able to tell students their "good-fit book" level and that is the extent of how I used the running record. I only used the running records to differentiate my reading groups by reading level.
During our Emergent Literacy course, one of our requirements was to administer and analyze running records that we conducted on three individual students. While doing this activity, I learned how much more you can actually learn about a child's reading through the running records. We spent time during one of our face-to-face sessions watching videos of teachers administering running records to students and discussing what we noticed with our peers. We also listened to recordings of students reading books and answering comprehension questions about the books while keeping track of their miscues and comprehension understandings on our own running record sheets. After completing the practice running records, we compared our running records with our peers to see how accurate we were recording miscues and assessing comprehension understanding. This was very important because we were able to see how consistent we were and were able to norm our evaluating. It also allowed us to discuss any differences we had and why we might have had different interpretations. For example, I discussed with a peer why I counted something as a self-correction whereas they counted it as an insertion. It was an in-depth conversation that allowed us to see why each of us marked the miscue the way we did. We came to a conclusion and both counted the miscue as a self-correction rather than an insertion. We discussed that it is incredibly important to show consistency while administering and marking running records so any teacher could look at it and understand the miscues a student made. Assessment systems, such as running records, need to have consistency when being administered so that if a student received a running record from multiple staff members during the same window of time, they would receive the same level every time. Having consistent results ensures that we have strong data for comparisons and analysis.
The miscue analysis portion of the running record artifact was the largest area of growth for me. I did not have a clear understanding of what M, S, V stood for on the running records. Now, I have a better understanding of the difference between meaning (M), syntax (S), and visual (V) miscues. It was a huge shift for me to think of miscues in terms of which of the three cues were students using when they were making mistakes and finding patterns in the repeated mistakes. During this activity, I learned how much you can learn about a child's reading with this aspect of the running records. It was really interesting to see the cue patterns each student's reading consisted of. I noticed it included what they are relying on that contributed to any errors they had and then what they relied on to correct errors. In my case, all of the students shared the same heavily used cue for determining unknown words. If all of these students were in my class, I would put them all in the same strategy/skill group to focus on reading the whole word opposed to relying on the visual cues to determine a word. This activity has made me look deeper at running records and see all of the information I can learn about a student's reading behaviors and abilities.
This course also clarified the differences between phonemes, morphemes, graphemes, phonics, and phonemic awareness. During my undergraduate course study, I had a class that focused on these concepts, but since then it has been hard to keep the definitions straight. After studying our text, Literacy in the Early Grades, I can now recall the differences between the terminology and concepts. A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound within our language. The English language has 44 phonemes. Graphemes are the letters we use to represent those sounds. We also refer to the study of graphemes as phonics. Phonics is studying how letters and sounds work together to create words. It is important to give young children every opportunity to develop strong phonemic awareness so they can become strong readers. The ability to recognize and manipulate the sounds of oral language, as well as the ability to segment and blend the sounds of spoken words is at the basis of our ability to read, spell, and understand our language. The most eye-opening realization I had during this course was phoneme instruction. I have realized that most educators of primary grades are incorrectly making the sounds of consonants. For people to make true consonant sounds, they cannot be shouted. Consonant sounds must be said with a soft voice to come out as their true pure sound. Often teachers speak louder to ensure that all students can hear what is being said; however, this cannot be done during phonics instruction. This is the foundation of a phonics system that should be developed in early elementary, but should be supported and supplemented as needed as a child progresses through the stages of literacy development.
Now I know how powerful a running record analysis can be. They take a lot of time to complete but they provide a wealth of information to the teacher, colleagues, students and families. Prior to completing the running record analysis for this class, I had never before seen the Guide for Observing and Noting Reading Behaviors form, let alone fill one out. After completing one, I realized how much more I learned about each individual student's reading behaviors than I ever had before. This process is powerful and truly allows a teacher to dig deeper into the information the running record and set more personalized goals for each individual student on what they should continue to work on to continue growing as a reader. After completing the running record analysis artifact for this course, I now recognize the importance of completing the full running record analysis for every student I work with. I have a much stronger understanding of who individual students are as readers from this project than I do some of the students in my own class.
In the future, I want to become more efficient at conducting the full running record analysis. Since this was my first experience taking into account the three different types of cues (meaning, structure, and visual), I know I will use the full analysis more on a regular basis and become better at it and more time efficient with practice. One thing I know I can do differently to make the running records more child and family friendly is by using the reading checklists for each level that the instructor of this class shared with us. I can see this information being very useful at meetings and sharing with parents.