Spotlight on the Essentials
Assessment That Will Help Guide You into the new year!
The Literacy Essential Instructional Practice #9 in the Prekindergarten, K-3 Essentials, and 4-5 Essentials calls for educators to use ongoing observations and assessments to inform instruction. The information gained will guide decision-making in whole group instruction, small group instruction, and individual instruction. Enroll in the Essential Instructional Practices in Early Literacy: Grades K to 3 Online Module 9 here to deepen your understanding.
January marks a key time of year when educators pause for benchmark assessment requirements which may lead to more diagnostic assessments. This month, we will share some assessments that provide valuable data to guide instruction as well as some “grab and go’s” for remote assessment delivery.
Click here for an interactive FlowChart to guide the assessment process for individual students.
EVERy Child, every day writing
Assessing Writing to Guide instruction
Students need the opportunity to grow over time. To truly prepare students for the future require a schoolwide, cross-grade commitment to teaching and assessing writing.
— Lucy Caulkins
Benchmark assessments in writing help teachers and students understand where they are, identify strengths and gaps in learning and create plans for continued growth in writing. Writing benchmarks are often more formal, on-demand writing assessments (likely completed in a class period) that are evaluated using a common grade level rubric. Listed below are writing resources to help support your school’s mid year benchmark assessments in writing:
For writing prompts, see:
For rubrics and writing resources, checkout MAISA ELA units (rubrics embedded in lessons) or the WriteWell Curriculum Links below:
Student editing checklists
For writing prompts, see:
For rubrics and writing resources, checkout MAISA ELA units (rubrics embedded in lessons) or the WriteWell Curriculum Links below:
Student editing checklists
There is nothing better than walking into a favorite bookstore or perhaps entering a new one while away from home.
For the Love of Reading
What is a Book Talk?
Good readers share what they read. Book talks are one way students can share their literacy lives with each other and foster a community of readers in our classrooms. A student book talk is a short 1-3 minute persuasive sharing of a book that a student has read with the goal of convincing other students they should read the book too!
WHY USE THIS STRATEGY:
#1. Book talks are something readers do in the real world, book reports and reading logs are not.
#2. Book talks introduce students to a wide variety of texts.
#3. Book talks are mentioned in the Literacy Essentials as an effective practice to generate student excitement about reading and writing.
Book talks can be a part of your class community of readers whether face-to-face or remote. To get started, see the Google Slide presentation that includes ready to go student directions and links to example book talk videos. Scholastic’s Six Student Book Talk Tips and Ten Tips for Coaching Booktalks are also great resources.
WHEN REMOTE:
Synchronous Book Talks
Use breakout rooms for student book talk sharing.
Asynchronous Book Talks
Have students record and share their book talks using Flipgrid.
MARESA FLIPGRID What are teachers in Marquette-Alger RESA reading? Find out on the MARESA Literacy Network Book Talk Flipgrid and please consider sharing a book, article or blog post (professional or personal) that you would recommend to your colleagues in the MARESA K-5 Teacher Literacy Network! There is nothing better than walking into a favorite bookstore or perhaps entering a new one while away from home.
gO! Go! Gaby!
gO! Go! Gaby!
Tech Tool To Help Assess Remote Reading
Did you know you probably already have a reading fluency tool? If you already have Read and Write for google you also have a Reading fluency tool that allows the students to record themselves and send the recordings to you.
Microsoft also has a great tool to help students struggling with reading.
Click here to take a look.
Some of you have asked about using the camera feature on the Chromebooks so your students can record themselves and submit the images or videos as assessments, here is a little video that shows how to use this app.
Managing it all
Data and Decision Making...What Do I Teach Next?
As January data rolls in, educators begin to reflect on what has occurred and what is to come. The Literacy Essential 9, Bullet 4 module tells us to center ourselves on this question: What do we need to teach? Information gained through assessment will guide us to answering it.
Data tells us what our students know and we decide on what comes next based on our knowledge of standards and literacy development. This data-based decision making is key to helping students continue to make academic progress throughout the year.
There are many ways to dig into data! Listed below are a couple of resources to help you reflect and set goals in the new year!
Snapshot Tables: These Google Sheets can be modified to meet your needs. Simply enter student names as row headers and skills being assessed as the column headers. This will provide a space for you to organize your data, instructional targets, and the data-decision making process. The Google Sheets also serve a great tool to keep track of student progress with targeted skills during whole class or small group work.
Data Worksheet: Use this simple worksheet to help think through your data. Maybe your data will lead to more data collection or maybe you can begin to think next steps for instruction.
As always, if you or your grade level team would like a “thinking partner” in your data analysis, please email Holly Muscoe at hmuscoe@maresa.org to set up a time to meet at your convenience.
Engaging Families
Resources to Connect Home and School
We know parent engagement is essential for remote learning. Check out this simple checklist that communicates to families how they can support remote learning at home.
*Teachers can copy the file and edit to individualize for their students or grade level.
Parent Engagement Calendar 
To support literacy in the home, St. Clair RESA’s Student Success Calendar is an amazing resource for teachers and families. Each month includes a calendar of activities for each day and a page explaining the literacy focus of the month in family friendly language and graphics.
The focus for January is, “When something in a book makes you connect to something in your mind, we understand what we are reading better.” For additional tools and resources to support making connections when reading (e.g. bookmarks, journal prompts, sample videos, etc.), check out the Family Engagement Resources.
We know parent engagement is essential for remote learning. Check out this simple checklist that communicates to families how they can support remote learning at home.
*Teachers can copy the file and edit to individualize for their students or grade level.
Parent Engagement Calendar
To support literacy in the home, St. Clair RESA’s Student Success Calendar is an amazing resource for teachers and families. Each month includes a calendar of activities for each day and a page explaining the literacy focus of the month in family friendly language and graphics.
The focus for January is, “When something in a book makes you connect to something in your mind, we understand what we are reading better.” For additional tools and resources to support making connections when reading (e.g. bookmarks, journal prompts, sample videos, etc.), check out the Family Engagement Resources.
Comments
Post a Comment