I agree that assessments should be integrated daily throughout our instructional plans so as we can constantly learn about our students’ weakness/strengths and adjust our teaching accordingly. Assessments give me a chance to reflect on my students’ progress throughout the school year. Students can be moved up or down levels according to their levels of knowledge. I record their progress in my data notebook and frequently conference with my students during reading and writing workshop to update them on their growth. Slide eight reminded me that at the beginning of every school year, teachers receive colored-coded (green – exceeds standards, yellow – meet standards, and red – did not meet standards) “spotlight reports” which are based on the students’ previous CRCT scores. I found it interesting that validity and reliability came up during this slideshow because I just studied these two concepts for ECE 7531 and how they relate to my action research. I believe all assessments should demonstrate validity and reliability because they should fair and encourage further learning. I did not know that “According to No Child Left Behind, ELLs who have been in the U.S. school for at least 10 months are required to be assessed in English reading” (slide 15). I have three ELL students this year and two of them have been in U.S. schools longer than 10 months which means they will take the CRCT with the rest of my students. I think this is unfair because they still do not fully comprehend the English language and have difficulty with lengthy directions. Nevertheless, I will work with all my students so they can perform their personal best on the criterion-referenced test in April.
I have to be honest and state that I did not know what slide three said or what it meant. It looked like a foreign language which I guess is what students who do not understand the English language see when they try to read an English book. I agree that phonics is important because one must understand how to decode words since there are numerous different integrations of sounds for each alphabetic letter in the English language. I agree that readers decipher words by using decoding, spelling patterns, analogizing, sight words, and context clues. However, I still have students in fourth grade who struggle with decoding because they do not understand basic phonics instruction. I see several of my students struggling with the itemized difficulties that are listed on slide ten. Every Friday, we have a pre-test for our next week’s spelling words and I am always amazed at some of the ways students spell basic words because they are unaware of phonics. In fact, I still see students write “thay” instead of “they” in their writing pieces. We work on the spelling pattern in whole group every week since most of the students do understand the pattern. Common spelling patterns focus on the six syllable types that were featured on slide 25. In fourth grade, we also focus on prefixes and suffixes with basic root words since that is part of our standards. It is also helps the students break apart more difficult words if they understand and know how to pronounce the affixes correctly. I will continue to work on spelling patterns throughout the week by using our Words Their Way sorts along with reviewing affixes whole group.
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