ABSTRACT

“Impact on Student Learning” by Brendan Baber documents an initiative to improve learning for three students at different levels of academic preparedness throughout the teaching process by the use of assessment to inform needed literacy instruction adaptations in order to engage all students. The initiative began with a Fountas and Pinnell Running Record before a Fountas and Pinnell Leveled Literacy Intervention (LLI) unit focusing on fluency, prosody, and automaticity, with an emphasis on intonation, phrasing, word stress, and self-monitoring/self-correcting, among other skills. The pre-assessments were analyzed and the data was used to begin instruction and determine what knowledge the students were coming into the intervention with and where there were gaps. Various forms of assessment, both formative and summative, were consistently used throughout the intervention to continue to adjust and/or adapt instruction to meet the needs of all learners. After the intervention, a post-assessment was given and the effect of Brendan Baber’s instruction was analyzed based on the data collected. The comparison of the results of the pre-assessment to post-assessment data indicated that his instruction ultimately had a positive impact for all students.