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.