Week 5 - Administering QR15

Mary is an ELL students whose first language is Spanish.  She was in the 4th quarter of 3rd grade 
She receives "pullout" intervention in the resource room. 

Assignment #1: 
Level 1 Word List Result:
Correct Automatic: 16/20 = 80%
Correct Identified: 2/20 = 10%
Number Correct: 90%

Decision examiner made: Since Mary was reading at independent level in Level 1 Word List (with 18 words correct, out of 18, 2 identified), she was given Level 2 Word List

Assignment #2: 
Level 2 Word List Result: 
Correct Automatic: 15/20 =75%
Correct Identified: 2/20 = 10%
Number correct: 85%

Decision examiner made: Since Mary was reading at instructional level in Level 2 Word List (with 17 words correct, on the borderline of instructional and frustration), so she was given Level 3 Word List to read further to make sure Level 2 is the right passage to begin the assessment

Assignment #3: 
Level 3 Word List Result: 
Mary was only able to read 5 words including 3 automatic and 2 identified. Mary had struggled significantly on this level and therefore teacher decided to stop this test.

Totals for level 3:
Correct Automatic: 3/20 = 15%
Correct Identified: 2/20 = 10%
Number Correct: 25%

Decision examiner made: Since examiner sensed that Mary started to struggle and was reading at frustration level in Level 3 Word List, the examiner immediately stopped and decided to begin comprehensive assessment with Level 2 (2^nd grade) passage.

Assignment #4: 
The examiner used a level 2 expository passage, Whales and Fish, to calculate scores and determine Mary's strengths and needs. Normally students do better with text with story structure.

• Assessment of Prior Knowledge: Mary couldn't answer most of the questions as she didn't know much about whale and fishes before reading.
• Oral Reading Miscue Analysis: 
• Miscues: 10 --> 198-10= 188, 188/198= 95% 
• Meaning-change miscue: 5 --> 198-5=193, 193/198=97%. 
• Words per Minute (WPM): 198/257 x 60 sec = 46 
• Correct WPM: (198-11)/257 x 60 sec = 44 
• Mary is at Instructional Reading Level.  Overall I think she did well based on the reading accuracy, self correction and story retelling. She will be better if she can be improve on phonic skill and practice more sight words so she can be more confidence in reading out unfamiliar words.

Week 4 The structure of Intervention Sessions

Assignment#1

RTI helps identify and sort students into programs by going through the following process:   
Tier 1:  Differentiated literacy instruction for all students which is delivered by general teacher
Tier 2:  For those students who doesn't response (usually about 15% of students whose needs don't meet yet) from Tier 1 instruction, evidence-based intervention are implemented to a small group to build upon Tier 1 instruction, which is delivered by general teacher with support by classroom teacher.
Tier 3:  Intensive and more focus evidence-based intervention for each individual students who identified to continue struggle in Tier 2 (which is usually about 5% of students).  Direct, extended instruction will be delivered by an intervention specialist or a special education teacher.  This will be a supplement Tier 1 and Tier 2 instruction.   And  a decision making process to determine if the student with learning disabilities is eligible for special education (usually only a portion of this group of students may require special education).

Questions that I still have about RTI:
How long should we give for students in order to decide if the students need to move to next tier?
And how do students and teachers arrange extra time for these supplement Tier 2 and Tier 3 instruction?


Assignment # 2: Please see below link for my presentation on Structure of Reading Intervention
http://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cFnYjYo8Hd

Week 3 - The Structure of Intervention

Assignment#2 - P21 Common Core Tool Kit

Discuss what assessments are needed to measure students' learning outcomes and how teachers can address these common core learning standards if you have students of various reading levels.

As students have different reading level, I suggest teacher to divide class into different group based on different reading level, and provide different short story or articles that are suitable for each group's reading ability.  For students with lower reading level, teacher can read together with them, guide and check their understanding of each paragraph.  For students with better reading level, teacher can help by asking students to elaborate more with supporting details or hints from the text. 
Students can first do self-assessment on their own by checking with rubric chart provided by teacher and revise accordingly.  Teacher can then assess students learning outcomes by checking their revised recorded discussion, presentation or final writing and see if they can apply critical thinking, creativity, collaboration and communication skills to express their understanding of the text with connection of their real life experience.  

Assignment #3 Introduction to QRI5 (Qualitative Reading Inventory 5)

What is QRI5?
What is the purpose of using QRI5?
Have you seen similar assessment activities like QRI5? What are they?
What is your impression of QRI5?

Qualitative Reading Inventory-5 (QRI5), is an assessment tool used to measure students ability to identify words and comprehend text by grade level. This assessment is done one-to-one and gives educators a benchmark for student growth. QRI5 can be used to determine a students reading level, create student groups, create an intervention plan for struggling readers, and throughout the school year, to track student progress. Students are reading passage with vocabulary at either an independent, instructional, or frustration reading level, with independent reading as the goal. The purpose of the QRI5 is to find out where our students are on the spectrum of reading ability. Without this information we as educators are just blindly teaching, not knowing whether students are making progress or not. We need to know where we are starting from to know if they've made any progress. We find out their strengths and weaknesses so we can address them. 

Fountas and Pinnell can also be used to benchmark student reading levels. It uses level books (A-Z) to assess students reading levels. Reading levels are from A-Z and each grade level has a block of letters assigned to them. For example, Kindergarten are A-C, Grade 1 is C-I, Grade 2 I-M, Grade 3 M-P, to Grade 8 and above being a level Z. Students read the leveled books and are assessed on their ability to read text with illustrations while the administrator checks for miscues and fluency. Due to the multiple levels within each grade level students should be tested multiple times throughout the year to make sure they are showing progress. 

Based on my understanding of the QRI5, I think its a good indicator of students reading level. I wonder if the levels match up with Fountas and Pinnell,  so that students are matching the same standard of reading statewid whether the schools are using QRI5 or Fountas and Pinnell. 

Week 2 - Introduction of Reading Assessment

Teaching Reading and Writing 101:

Print Awareness - the understanding that print is listing from left to right and top to bottom, spaces between words, etc.

Sound of Speech (Phonological Awareness) - including syllables within words, rhyming, etc.

Phonemic awareness - the more advanced level of phonological awareness as it's related to knowledge of child's on individual Phoneme sound of each letter.

Phonics - allow children to understand that letters represent the sounds of spoken language, and there is an organized and predictable relationship between written letters and spoken sounds.

Fluency - is the ability to read text accurately, quickly with expression.  It is a key skills to becoming strong reader as it helps build a bridge from word recognition to comprehension.

Vocabulary - is very important to reading comprehension as children need to first understand the meaning of the words they read in order to be able to comprehend their full reading.

Spelling - There is a strong relationship between spelling and word reading because both of them share the same abilities:  phonemic awareness, knowledge of letter patterns, an understanding of morphology and word meanings.  If a child can read the word using phonic skills, then he or she can usually use the reciprocal method to spell a word.

Comprehension - a combination of using vocabulary, background knowledge, prior experiences as readers and listeners to make sense of the text they are reading.

Writing - students must develop a broad set of skills:
 a) Basic writing skills - including spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and sentence structure, etc.
 b) Text generation - includes word choice (vocabulary knowledge), elaboration of detail, and clarity of expression
 c) writing processes - involves planning, revising and editing one's work.
 d) Writing knowledge - includes understanding of discourse and genre, ex: writer's understanding of their purpose of their writing and the need to convey meaning clearly and appropriately to the people who will be reading the writing.

Assessment - conducting informal assessments continuously throughout school year can help teachers determine:
a) whether instruction is being delivered at the right level and at the right pace
b) How to plan future instruction that will meet students' needs
c) How students should be grouped for instruction so that each student receives instruction at the right level of difficulty
d) Which students need individual support