Assessment Driven Instruction

Editor's Notes

• #2: Introductions: My name is Fay Zoccole. I am the Early Learning Specialist for AKRC. It is good to be here today... I would like to thank your community for having me here today. Meegwetch.. At this time, I am going to ask our elder Agnes to start with an opening prayer to ask the Creator’s blessing and guidance during this learning session..
• #3: Today, we will be talking about “Assessment Driven Instruction.” Some of you wondering what that is and some of you are afraid of the word ASSESSMENT. Please do not get stressed over this word. We are in this together and you will receive support in this area. You will also see your student grow academically. Not only that, parents will be pleased with the progress their child is growing to become fluent in reading, writing and speaking. Importantly, you are already doing assessments in your classrooms, this session will give ideas how to track student learning.
• #4: The term, assessment, generates all kinds of stress and emotion. Some teachers feel that it takes creativity out of teaching because we have to prepare our students for those pesty EQUA assessments. Other firmly believe in testing and say, “It’s about time!” One thing for sure, tests are something we are all familiar with. From a simple spelling test to receiving your driver’s license or your boating license. As teachers, we have all crammed for that test or final exams. Tests are a part of our everyday existence. It is our jobs as teachers to help students.
• #5: Assessment-driven instruction is a means of gathering data through 2 ways:Informal Assessments: These range from: observations, interviews to informal tasks and performance measures.Formal Assessments informs the design of a school-wide reading by documenting the children’s immediate instructional needs and measuring the student’s success in meeting those needs. Assessment helps the school distinguish between teaching and learning.
• #7: The Lead Literacy Teacher helps the school develop an assessment plan to measure grade appropriate knowledge and skills in the 5 essential reading components that we previously talked about. These being: Phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension
• #8: Take a look at your Teacher Resources handout...
• #11: So, we all know that a well-designed reading program begins by enhancing teacher’s knowledge of why assessment is important. The best way to help teacher see that assessments are important is to keep them informed.
• #14: Have markers, chart paper and tape for each group...Note: The group is find a way to utilize the LLTs plan intervention for students struggling with reading/writing. Interventions would take about an hour/day. Hopefully, the groups will plan to do some switching classes during gym time or library time or art, so that the LLT’s regular classroom will be tended to but the LLD will be able to have intervention time with students in small groups during this time.... Hopefully, the groups will identify 3-4 days during the week for the LLT to implement interventions with student that struggle. This could be a pilot program for now. This plan is greatly needed because the intervention piece is missing from our schools and many students are dropped into special ed prior to having proper interventions put in place.
• #16: Who administers the assessments?Assessments are best conducted by the classroom teachers who will be using the data to drive their instruction, but assessment takes time. In the beginning, Lead Literacy Teachers will need to administer assessments, gradually releasing the responsibility to the teachers. Because this is a team effort, the guidance councillor will be a tremendous help during this time. And of course, I as the Literacy Specialist will be willing to help LLTs get started in this area.
• #17: Screening assessments are generally brief, individually administered tests given at the beginning of the school year. These assessments identify students who are on track academically and those who many be at risk for reading difficulties. Screening assessments focus on grade-appropriate reading components. By comparing scores from screening measures to benchmark scores, the Lead Literacy Teacher can determine whether a student is probably on tract to learn to read successfully or may need special intervention.It is especially important that schools give screening assessments to beginning readers in Kindergarten and 1st grade. This will identify students who may become struggling readers and early intervention can be provided to prevent their difficulties from becoming increasingly challenging. Students who miss the initial assessment are screened as they enter school throughout the year.As such, AKRC will be running additional training at a later date on how to do the Brigance testing. Teachers in the Kindergarten and grade 1 levels, as well as, Lead Literacy teachers will have the opportunity to participate in professional development using the Brigance screening and assessment tools.
• #18: What do we get from the screening process?There are a number of things we can learn about students. We can learn what they know about names of the letters and the letter sounds.The 2nd thing we can learn is, “How much the student is comprehending in their reading.” Interesting enough, as stated on the screen, “Reading comprehension is based on word recognition and the processing of unknown words.
• #20: What are progress monitoring assessments?Progress monitoring assessments help teacher determine whether students’ s skills are improving at a sufficient rate to achieve a year’s worth of learning by the school year’s end. There are 3 ways that we monitor student growth through assessments:Classroom Assessments - This type of Assessment occurs during and after a lesson. Teachers monitor their students’ proficiency and mastery of instructional objectives and use the information to adjust instruction to better meet student’s needs. More standardized Process – This occurs 3 times a year. Academic groups would be broken into 4 levels. Advance Students: perform consistently above the benchmark goals and perform quite well at grade-level material. *These student may require learning materials that are challenging or enrichment resourcesBenchmark Students: perform consistently on goals and meet standards for their grade level. The can man manage grade-level materials and content well. At times, they may need some re-teaching, but typically, these kinds of interrupts cause only small delays in their overall achievement.Strategic Students: are struggling with some specific content and frequently perform one or 2 grade levels below standards on t their schoolwork. Strategic students need additional support during small-group time to reach benchmarks on progress monitoring assessments. These students require frequent progress monitoring and should be receiving additional intervention from the classroom teacher and Literacy Intervention with Lead Literacy Teacher. (approx. 30 minutes/day) for about 3-4 times a week.Intensive student consistently perform well-below grade-level. These students are usually already in the Special Education program. The teacher and SERT have an IEP that is being followed. (For now, LLTs will not be required to progress monitoring assessments with IEP students. Perhaps in the next year, we could add these students to our workload. But for now, we will concentrate students in the advanced, benchmark and strategic levels.
• #22: What do these academic groups look like in a classroom?At the classroom level:ADVANCED LEVEL CLASSROOMS contain consistently large numbers of students who meet or perform about the benchmark. These classrooms provide excellent models for others. The teachers and students in these classrooms can effectively use the challenge materials provided in their reading programs. Typically, they can move at a quick pace, while still addressing the needs of the few students who may be in a different category.IN BENCHMARK LEVEL CLASSROOMS almost all the students meet the benchmarks, Teachers in these rooms can be positive models for others, can mentor colleagues, and most likely need minimal assistance other than recognition and support from their Lead Literacy Teachers and Literacy Specialist.STRATEGIC LEVEL CLASSROOMS are those where 25-35% of the students are not meeting benchmark goals. Teachers in strategic classrooms need more support and specific assistance from their Lead Literacy Teacher and Literacy Specialist to implement an effective classroom literacy program. When a well-constructed program designed to improve outcomes is in place, and students are in a heterogeneously grouped classroom are still not meeting the targets, the teacher may not be implementing the program as designed.INSTENSIVE CLASSROOMS are those in which more than ½ of the students consistently fail to meet benchmark goals. Teachers need substantial support and directed coaching from both the Lead Literacy Teacher and Literacy Specialist. These teachers need to be taught how to use the reading program with effective teaching methods and to be held accountable for effective classroom implementation. They should also choose appropriate intensive interventions if needed. Finally, they most likely need a deeper level of professional development to help them understand the reading process and how to use data to inform instruction.See Handout: Reading Program Status Report
• #23: Completion of the Progress Monitoring Action Steps may prompt evaluation of program effectiveness as well as professional development. Assessment data, can also provide meaningful guidance in the process of continuous development.Please refer to your handout to the TEACHER PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT/COACHING PLAN:Recall the advanced, benchmark, strategic and intensive categories. The assessment data can lead to identifying interventions for students and classrooms and be valuable in targeting professional development. Let’s review the chart for an example of using assessment data this way. Allow discussion....NOTE: If a student does not respond to interventions as measured by frequent progress monitoring, it may be appropriate to use diagnostic assessments to gain additional information for instruction.
• #24: What are diagnostic assessments?This is a list of Diagnostic Measure that you may or may not have heard off. Does anyone have any other Diagnostic Assessment that you use are your school that is not on the list? Diagnostic Assessments are more in-depth measures that provide specific information about students’ reading ability and instructional needs in the five essential reading components. They are generally administered to K-grade 3 students when teachers need additional information to pinpoint effective intervention for students at risk.Diagnostic measures function manly to identify student strengths and weaknesses and then guide instructional decisions. Usually the SERT would complete these diagnostic assessments.
• #25: While screening, progress monitoring, and diagnostic assessments all yield important information, outcome assessments are what the public hears about. Outcome assessments like the dreaded EQAO assessments are used to evaluate the effectiveness of a school’s overall progress in improving achievement in reading, writing and mathematics. EQAO compares the marks of various schools in children from the same grade. Such information can help the school determine areas in which their program is strong or which it may need improvement.
• #26: Assessment-driven instruction goes beyond administering assessments and collecting data. It requires educators to use the results to form student groups, plan targeted instruction based on identified needs, and regular monitor student progress.Teachers compile their data by transferring individual students scores to an assessment class summary chart. These charts are generally included with assessment instructions. Transferring all the individual student’s scores onto a shing sheet helps teachers see similar reading strengths and difficulties among students. Teachers then examine students’ scores for each set of tasks related to the grade-appropriate essential reading components. They can compare students’ scores to grade-level standards and benchmarks that students are expected to achieve by the end of the year. Let’s look in our Handout to page: LLT’s Checklist for Facilitating Data AnalysisThis is an organization tool for the LLT to use when it is time to analyse student data. Let’s read over this... (Allow Time for Discussion)
• #27: Teachers can use a variety of grouping practices during reading instruction. The amount of time scheduled for each group depends on the students’ knowledge and skills. Struggling readers need more instructional time and support then other students. For example, teachers can schedule two different time periods to help struggling readers, such as 15-20 minutes in the morning and 10-15 minutes in the afternoon.While whole-group heterogeneous classrooms engage teachers and students in shared learning experiences, small-group instruction provides more opportunities for students to demonstrate what they know. Feedback form the teacher and other students occurs more readily in small groups. Small groups and consist of same-ability or mixed-ability students. Pairing students is a another grouping method that can be used for reading practise. Students work together and take turns reading text. For example, during fluency practise, a more proficient reader is paired with a less proficient reader to read and reread text.Flexibility is KEY. Groups should be formed and reformed at regular intervals, based on new student achievement data. REGROUPING provides a way to meet the individual needs of children who are first grouped into heterogeneous classroom groups and then regrouped for a specific portion fo time for specific reasons. Ways to group students is listed on this powerpoint:Within-class regrouping;Same-grade regrouping; and Across grade regroupingBy taking the time and effort to group students, teacher can differentiate reading instruction to target each students needs within the same classroom.Lets take a look at a sample of Small-Group, Teacher-Led Instructionlooks like... Turn to your handbooks please......Please get into groups of 5 to complete the following assignment: You will be