State of the Team 2017: Reading

February 2017

March 2017

Prior to this year my reading instruction was focused on getting students to write good summaries and answer very basic questions about their reading.  This was something that created functional improvement as readers.  My students were growing in their ability to respond to their reading on the assessments we were giving them.  I was able to show my growth with their assessment data and was pleased with what I was doing.

One of the major changes this year is that we decreased emphasis on the prior assessments and began to focus on a new kind of test in the STAR reading assessment.  This assessment is not perfect, but it has shone a light on a weakness in my teaching and out current emphasis in reading.  In some ways our previous testing was restricting our understanding of where are kid's reading skills were due to writing skills being something that develop later and need to be taught more step by step.

In the two graphs above your will notice that every reader in our classroom is above the proficiency line for second graders at the end of the year.  I didn't post these graphs to show how some kids were higher in proficiency than others because each test up there is something to be proud about.

My battle this year has been how to help students who scored very high on the test, but they aren't moving their growth score numbers as much as I would expect from reading with them and talking to them.  After the test that led to the top graph in February, I changed some of my approaches because the class numbers had fallen below my expectations for myself as a teacher.

When we are looking at these graphs, I want you to focus on the number of dots in each section based on the horizontal scale of the graph.  The vertical scale changes between the graphs so it is hard to see the growth on that aspect, but the horizontal growth percentile scores have not changed.  These new approaches have led to more students above the 80th percentile and 90th percentile.  I am much happier with the bottom graph from March, but when you see our math data which I will post this week you will see that I aspire more.

I have taken a step back and really dug into teaching vocabulary and context skills.  I am finding that my students are exceptional at understanding grade level content.  They are struggling sometimes to evaluate new words and use skills to determine the meaning.  We have focused on making inferences of meaning from clues that we read and today even worked on making inferences with just pictures.  It is important to have new tools to help learn new words.

We have also spend some time each day writing two vocabulary words that challenge kids to think in new ways and while they know many of the words it helps them to write out the part of speech and look for ways to use it.  If you want to support this ask them about their word of the day and see if they can use it properly.  I have enjoyed these discussions.  We have also been focused on parts of speech and grammar as ways to break down sentences and look for word meaning.

Ultimately we have to make a transition from learning to read to helping our kids read to learn.  We need their brains to dig in deeper to what they read and be present in that moment making sure they are making meaning as they go.  It is tough because each of them reads wonderfully and they are good at answering the "school" questions that we have taught them to answer.  The next step will be challenging each other to think off the page and search for new meanings.

I shared this data as a "high five" to my team and as a way to show you the approaches that I am taking to addressing the need to challenge even the best readers to continue to improve each day.  Ultimately we want to develop children who make reading one of the most important investment times in their lives and not just something you do to log minutes.

I will have some more thoughts on reading following the rest of the State of the Class reports.  I look forward to sharing some more observations that I have been making about the students who are making the most growth on the STAR and not just the kids who have the "best" scores.