In my classroom, in a typical day, there is a lot of literacy. We have read alouds, word study, reader’s workshop and writer’s workshop. The past few weeks I have observed and participated in formal assessments. A week ago, 4th grade had our “DRA Day” where we completed all of our DRA testing on each student and analyzed the data. We had to create SIPP plans and talk about whether additional assessment was necessary with particular students. I only administered 2 DRA’s but I learned a lot from this about student’s fluency and comprehension. This week, more specifically tomorrow we are beginning our “DWA” tests and 4th grade has their “DWA Day” November 2nd.
This has taught me a lot about assessing students both in reading and writing. However, when it comes to actually seeing them participate in guided reading groups, we have not yet started that. The MEAP preparation has put the reading groups on hold for the next couple days. We placed students into groups based on their levels of achievement. Like the examples in the book, the reading groups in my class are sort of seen as those exceeding the expectations, those meeting the expectations, and those below the expectations. They are also in groups that have a focus or a goal that is different from everyone else. Some examples of groups are fluency 1, fluency 2, comprehension, interpretation, and summary.
Each book club group has 5 to 6 members, and all of them are pretty diverse. My CT and one of the other 4th grade teachers do a lot of co-teaching so we are constantly working together. This is extremely beneficial for the students because the students are not always working with the same group and there are 4 teachers available to work with the kids, since there is another Michigan State student in her class until December (Special Education major).
Each Monday we have "block recess" in the afternoon, which is our time to work as a 4th grade team on literacy goals/objectives, MEAP preparations, ways to assess students, etc. Today we actually started talking about how to fill out these sheets when assessing students. My CT was explaining to me that I want to write notes in a positive way that what I am observing is clear and it is material I feel comfortable sharing with my CT, principal, and parents. That came to mind when doing the reading because it mentions the "I Can" statements that records progress in a way of achieving goals.
I can not wait for all the formal assessing to be complete and the MEAP to be over so that more informal, ongoing assessing can be recorded and I am assigned a group of students to work with and monitor their progress. It will give me a lot more responsibility in the classroom.
It was interesting to read your post this week. You seem to have been doing a lot of formal assessment within your classroom. We have yet to do any formal assessments for literacy. We are starting our after the MEAP ends. I am excited to learn how to do some formal assessments because I am kind of at a loss on how to set up my groups for my literacy unit where I will be doing an author study. My CT is constantly informally assessing students so I have some ideas based on our informal assessments. I think it would be very valuable for me to learn to do some formal assessing and compare them to what I know from our informal. I am also very excited for MEAP to end so that we can get on to other curriculum where I too will have more responsibility within the classroom! I saw in your response to my blog post that you asked a question about our co-teaching. In response to that, we work VERY close with our teammate and in fact share a room we have no walls between them. It's all an open area and the students have all three of us for teachers. They are rarely separated. We view our classroom as one with 50 students so all of our book clubs and groups intermix the students. It is a really amazing school and it is a great learning to experience to see how well everything works together all to benefit the students learning!
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