Reading Assessment Drives Instruction

Hey friends! Reading intervention has ALWAYS been a large part of our day, but I feel like in the last 3-4 years, it's become so much more. General education teachers are now as skilled as reading specialists in some areas! We have so much thrown on us that we pick up and learn different strategies and ways to teach students. Our country has become so "data driven"...but is this a good thing or not??Thoughts? I'd love to hear how you feel about data!  Sound in on my Facebook page. 

I'm working on a series of blog posts regarding Reading Intervention. For today, I want to discuss assessments.

Reading Assessment

The purpose for assessment is to develop a base line for your students. When I first started teaching, I would only test on sight words or rhyming words. I would test in chunks. Now, I do the entire reading assessment at the beginning of the year. This gives me the entire picture of where the student is at and a great place to start with my instruction.

I teamed up with my literacy coach, Karen Mallard, to come up with different ways to help the struggling kiddos. One thing that has helped my students so much was focusing on what words they needed to know in order to advance to a certain levels. We have to assess the students word knowledge before beginning instruction, so these tools are very helpful because everything is right there for you.

After I've analyzed the data, we focus on the words in this list as their "priority" sight words. These are words we feel like the students have to know in order to advance to to next reading level. Students need to learn a TON of sight words, but this is my starting point. The activities in the binder reinforce learning the skills. Shown above and below are the sight word assessments. The binders include assessments for all of the components of reading: Formative Beginning Sound Assessment, Rhyming Assessment, Sight Word Assessments (Reading Levels A-F), Word Awareness, Syllables, Fluency and Comprehension. Once you have assessed students, the binders include activities to instruct students.

The binders include a variety of activities to help students recognize these words.

My students LOVE Three in a Row!!

Stay tuned for more posts about reading intervention! In the meantime, check out the feedback from our intervention binders for grades K-4!! You can check them out here!