Embedded Files
Summative Assessment
Introduction
Introduction
Guided reading acts as a crucial time in our daily schedule where I am able to work with students in small group to assess phonics and comprehension skill progress. Students are aware of their progress in guided reading because I state our goals for each lesson at the beginning of the lesson, and we review our progress towards these goals as a group at the end of the lesson. These goals can range from letter sound identification, to sight word recognition, to reading leveled books independently.
Each lesson begins with a warm up that focuses on phonemic skill building. Below are two examples of our warm up games.
On the left, a student is using letters to begin to decode and spell their first and last name. Once students have mastered name spelling, their warm up activity moves on to something like magnetic tile sight word or CVC word building, or rainbow writing sight words. After a warm up game, we review known sight words and discuss the pattern in the book if it is an A or B level book on the Fountas and Pinnell scale as seen in the picture on the right. This gives me an opportunity to see how students are progressing on their name spelling, sight word recognition, or CVC word creation.
These students are reading level A and level B books while practicing one to one correspondence. When students read in class we focus on one or two concrete reading goals and I track their progress with these goals throughout the lesson, as seen in the guided reading notes below.
In this example, four students all read the same B level book with me. In my introduction, I explained how they could cross-reference beginning sounds with pictures to figure out unknown words. I also explained what the pattern would look like at the beginning of the book as students reviewed the sight words "we" "got" "some" "at" "the" and learned the word "store". We discussed how recognizing sight words in isolation can help us read more books and recognize breaks in patterns.
As students alternated between choral and individual reading, I took notes about their current progress with the skills we covered in this lesson. This book was a good level for these students as with some assistance, all four were able to remember the pattern and recognize the pattern break on their own by the second reading. Guided reading groups are fluid, and if a student failed to make the expected progress after a week or two and fell behind other students in their group, they might be moved down to a lower reading group for continued review. Likewise, if a student learns a skill at a significantly faster rate, they may move up.
Conclusion
Conclusion
Guided reading notes work particularly well as a summative assessment because they allow me to take notes in the moment and revise my practices in response to student progress immediately. As soon as students master a new skill in their small group, I can move on to books which introduce new skills in such a way that students are consistently engaged in productive struggle. These notes directly inform my instruction on a daily basis.
For example, if multiple students are struggling with a particular reading skill, I may choose to make a W.I.N. Center that targets that skill to act as remediation. Likewise, if students appear to be mastering a skill faster that the curriculum map anticipated, I may teach them an upcoming skill early in guided reading and then continue to build their knowledge through a strategic independent W.I.N. Center. I re-evaluate my whole group, small group, and centers instruction weekly to make sure that students are on track with their growth, and to create remediation and extension opportunities as necessary after reviewing all relevant assessment data. Guided reading notes act as an integral part of this reassessment.
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