The Literacy Teacher's Playbook Book Study

I'm so excited to link up with A Teacher Mom and participate in a book study on The Literacy Teacher's Playbook.  Data can be overwhelming and it is my hope that on this journey together through this book we find authentic ways to handle data.

Chapter 1:  

Collecting Data Assessment Lenses and Tools

Jennifer Serravallo suggests that we use five lenses when assessing readers.

1. Assessing Reading Engagement:  Engagement is defined as a reader's motivation and desire to read and her/his ability to read for sustained amounts of time. Something that stands out in this section is that research has proven that for students to improve they must read for long stretches of time with the right material that they enjoy. That's powerful we have to give students the time to read on their own and allow them to choose what interests them.  She suggests using book logs to track engagement, but you want to be careful. The logs should not interfere with their reading.  Giving your students a reading interest inventories would give insight into their attitudes toward reading and their interest in general.  You can easily find examples with a quick internet search. Love the Engagement Inventory!  You spend time watching and recording what your kiddos do as they are reading.
2. Assessing Reading Fluency:  Reading rate is just one part of the puzzle. You also need to focus on accuracy, automaticity, expression, and phrasing.  In order for students to be successful with automaticity they must have a bank of sight words. So important to teach those sight words!!
3. Assessing Print Work/Decoding:  Keeping running records will help with this assessment.  Love that she gives us a list of when it's time to start running records on students.  Some enter Kindergarten ready for running records and others are not ready until later.
4. Assessing Reading Comprehension:  Students should be aware of these areas of comprehension: activating prior knowledge, theme, visual & sensory images, asking questions, inferences, retelling & synthesizing,  & using fix-up strategies.  We need to assess in a variety of ways...stop & jot, confer, drop in on conversations, turn & talk, etc.  
5. Assessing Conversation:  It's essential we provide time for conversations in our classrooms. 

Assessing Writers

1. Assessing Writing Engagement: Serravallo states, "A Child's attitudes toward, beliefs about, and desire to write are the stepping stones to producing good writing.  She suggests completing an engagement inventory just like you would with reading. 
2. Assessing Qualities of Good Writing:  Look at meaning, structure/organization, elaboration/detail, & conventions.  Understanding the student as a writer can help you to understand the student as a reader.

Wow!!! Lots to think about in this chapter and how it would look in a classroom.  We have lots of computerized data in our district.  Could we use some of this data in our running records?  Possibly...just not sure how yet!  

Don't forget to enter for a chance to win some fantastic products!  Use the Rafflecopter below.  This week I'm giving away a copy of my Ruby Bridges Lapbook. 

An InLinkz Link-up

a Rafflecopter giveaway