Using Assessment to Drive Instruction Fostering Early Literacy Skills of Kindergarten and First Grade Students

1. Using Assessment to Drive InstructionFostering Early Literacy Skills of Kindergarten and First Grade Students Kim Grundtisch, Reading Specialist Sean Morrisey, School Psychologist Bonnie Welsted, First Grade Teacher

2. “In God we trust. Everyone else shows their data.” - Unknown Excerpt taken from the book – “Annual Growth For All Students, Catch-Up Growth For Those Who Are Behind”

3. “You can either fight assessment or embrace it. However, you cannot be a high-performance school without embracing assessment.” - Dave Montague, Principal Washington Elementary Excerpt taken from the book – “Annual Growth For All Students, Catch-Up Growth For Those Who Are Behind”

4. “If you cannot measure it, you cannot change it.” - Edwards Deming Excerpt taken from the book – “Annual Growth For All Students, Catch-Up Growth For Those Who Are Behind”

5. What Works? • Assessments for all children identifying weak areas – School Based • Increasing instructional time and academic engaged time – Classroom teacher & Reading Specialist • Teaching to the deficit areas – Reading Specialist • Ongoing assessments to make sure students are making satisfactory progress – School Based

6. Why Assess? • You want to predict which children are likely to experience reading difficulty • You want to identify which students need ADDITIONAL reading interventions • You want to form groups based on reading skills and deficit sub-skills • You want to see skills across a grade level

7. What does the data tell you? • It helps to determine if all students are making adequate progress • For those students that are behind grade level, it helps determine if they are catching up • It helps grade levels determine areas of strength and weakness in its reading program • It can identify certain teacher strengths and weaknesses

8. The Big 5 in Reading • Phonemic Awareness • Phonics • Fluency • Vocabulary • Comprehension

9. Simple View of Reading Phonemic Awareness Phonics Vocabulary Fluency Reading Comprehension

10. Phonemic Awareness • DIBELS - Initial Sounds Fluency • DIBELS - Phoneme Segmentation Fluency • DORA - Phonological Awareness • Common grade level PA assessments • Common grade level letter/letter sound assessments DIBELS – Diagnostic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills DORA – Diagnostic Online Reading Assessment

11. Phonics • DIBELS - Nonsense Word Fluency • DORA - High Frequency Words • DORA - Decoding Words • DORA - Phonics • DORA - Spelling

12. Reading Fluency & Comprehension • Running Records – Fountas & Pinnell Assessments • DIBELS • DORA

13. Can we truly predict early on which students will struggle in reading in third grade? Well the answer is a resounding YES!!!!!!

14. DORA Profiles & state assessment results

16. “It’s a pity more school districts don’t assess incoming kindergarten students. It’s the first thing principals and superintendents need to have-data on the new wave of students who enter school each September, many of whom are already two to three years behind.” - Nancy Kerr Excerpt taken from the book – “Annual Growth For All Students, Catch-Up Growth For Those Who Are Behind”

17. So we have identified the students reading skills – what’s next? • Additional reading instruction from reading specialists • Strategic classroom instruction

18. Additional Instruction Providing extra phonemic awareness instruction for at risk students by reading specialist

19. Phonemic Awareness • Concepts of spoken word – sentence segmentation • Rhyme • Syllables • Phoneme Isolation • Phoneme Blending • Phoneme Segmentation

20. Phonemic Awareness Assessments • DIBELS • Common grade level assessments designed by Pinehurst Kindergarten PLC team Common grade level assessments are diagnostic in nature and measures multiple phonemic awareness skills from sentence segmentation to phoneme segmentation

21. Student _______________________ 3rd Marking Period Date ____________ FOUNTAS AND PINNELL LEVEL: _____ For students scoring at or above Level E, just complete “USES LETTER SOUND KNOWLEDGE TO DECODE WORDS” RHYME PRODUCTION - SEE 2ND MP ISOLATES INDIVIDUAL SOUNDS “I’m going to say a word, and I want you to tell me the MIDDLE sound that you hear. For example, if I say NAP you would say /A/ because that is the sound you hear in the middle.” Stimulus: “What sound do you hear in the middle of ___________ ?” 1. web _____ 2. hat _____ 3. man _____ 4. plum _____ S: 10-9 5. bug _____ D: 8-6 6. pit _____ N: 5-0 7. hot _____ 8. kick _____ ____/10 9. rock _____ 10. fed _____

22. USES LETTER SOUND KNOWLEDGE TO DECODE WORDS Teacher places student copy of words in front of student. Stimulus: “Read these words.” 1. shap _____ 2. vix _____ 3. kaj _____ 4. plen _____ 5. wob _____ 6. stug _____ S: 10-7 7. thid _____ D: 6-4 8. tef _____ N: 3-0 9. lus _____ 10. chom _____ ____/10 OVERALL REPORT CARD GRADE 4 - Applying assessment skills to reading - Reading above Level C 3 - Secure in all areas of the assessment - Reading at Level C 2 - More DEVELOPING skills with 1 or 2 NEEDS IMPROVEMENT 1 - Consistently Below

24. Sample Pinehurst Data Spreadsheet Spreadsheet with student scores in multiple phonemic awareness and reading areas

25. Syllables – Get Your Blenders Out • Tell the students you are going to say some words in a strange way. Ask them to figure out what word you are trying to say. Start by segmenting compound words (sun-shine) • Then try using words that are not compound words (river) • Variation – Use a puppet and introduce it as someone who says a word in a strange way

26. Phoneme SegmentationSlowpoke Slide • Place a slide on a flat surface • Give each child a set of cards • Have the child select a card and place it at the top of the slide • Encourage the child to move the card down the slide and slowly say the name of the picture • Ask the student what sounds did you hear in the word (top, middle, bottom/end of slide)

27. So does using this data and providing extra targeted instruction work? The answer to this is a resounding YES!!!!!!

29. So we talked about extra reading support in kindergarten by the reading specialistWhat about strategic classroom instruction from a classroom teacher?

30. Using spelling patterns/word study in a grade 1 classroom • Resources: Words Their Way by Donald Bear, Marcia Invernizzi, Francine Johnston, and Shane Templeton On Solid Ground by Sharon Taberski

31. Goals For Word Study • For children to make associations between spelling patterns in words they know and the new words they encounter

32. Words Their Way Spelling Assessment • Children are placed in different word study groups based on the data • ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL!

33. Spelling Stages • Emergent • Letter Name Alphabetic • Within Word Patterns • Syllables and Affixes

34. Spelling Pattern Word Wall • Uses the 37 most dependable rimes • Provides a base for spelling patterns to be used throughout the year

36. Using poems to learn spelling patterns

37. Through these activities children develop • Phonemic Awareness • Phonics • Fluency • Vocabulary • Comprehension skills

38. Questions?