good habits, great readers

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Good Habits, Great Readers Assessment

Introduction

Formative Assessment

Assessment is at the very heart of the Good Habits, Great Readers™ program. It helps teachers determine students’ reading levels and identify the skills and strategies that the students need to master in order to advance as readers. This tutorial guide discusses formative assessment and ongoing assessment in Good Habits, Great Readers’ Shared Reading and Guided Reading. It also reviews the assessment tools used in the program, including the Assessment Card and the Assessment Handbook.

At the beginning of each school year, it is valuable for teachers to use a formative assessment to gather information about students’ strengths and weaknesses, reading attitudes, and interests. The best formative reading assessments provide information on students’ strengths and weaknesses and serve as instructional guides for teachers. Teachers can use the data from a formative assessment to

make instructional decisions, such as reading group formations;•determine which students need intervention or enrichment;•identify students who share specific instructional needs; and•select instructional materials that will meet the needs of •individual students, groups of students, or the entire class.


Formative Assessment in Good Habits, Great Readers

The Developmental Reading Assessment® Second Edition (or DRA®2) is the formative assessment tool that comes with the Connected Comprehensive Literacy Program package of Good Habits, Great Readers. DRA2 is an individually administered reading assessment that provides information about a student’s strengths, needs, and familiarity with the reading process. The Focus for Instruction in DRA2 includes lists of strategies and instructional suggestions. For more information on DRA2, please look for the DRA2 tutorials on this Web site.

Shared Reading Lesson Plans and Guided Reading Teaching Plan Cards in Good Habits, Great Readers correlate to the DRA2 Focus for Instruction items. This correlation allows teachers to directly link instruction to the results of the Developmental Reading Assessment.


Ongoing Assessment

Ongoing Assessment in Shared Reading Lessons

Ongoing Assessment in Guided Reading Lessons

Ongoing assessment is based in the classroom and helps teachers monitor how a student is progressing toward achievement of specific skills. This assessment occurs throughout the school year and can take the form of observations, running records, portfolios, inventories, conferences, surveys, and self-assessments.

The Shared Reading lessons provide many opportunities for monitoring students’ growth as they acquire specific skills.

Talk Together (Focus Lessons, Grades K–5):• Working in pairs, students verbalize and apply the modeled strategy. Critical-thinking prompts and discussion questions are given in a bulleted format. Students develop a greater understanding of the lesson content through interaction. Teachers can also monitor their students’ thinking and reasoning skills by listening to them express their points of view. Informal Assessment (Guided/Independent Reading Link, •Grades K–3): Teachers give these daily behavior-based prompts and questions to the students during conferences. Through these questions and prompts, teachers assess students’ understanding and ability to apply the focus strategy. The final question is always metacognitive, which requires the student to demonstrate an understanding of the importance of the strategy. Apply the Strategy (Professional Development, Grades •4–5): Once students have learned and practiced a day’s focus strategy, they are given the opportunity to apply it using a different piece of text. As in Talk Together, critical-thinking prompts and discussion questions help teachers direct and focus students’ thinking and understanding.Behaviors to Notice (Wrap Up, Grades 4–5): • These questions assess reading behaviors that show mastery of the week’s major strategy.Check for Understanding (Wrap Up, Grades 4–5):• These questions require students to verbalize the use of the strategy covered in the week’s lessons. They can also make connections between the strategy and the text or themselves.

Ongoing assessment is also a feature of Good Habits, Great Readers’ Guided Reading lessons. Opportunities for assessment are included in the During Reading portion of the lesson as well as in the Discuss the Text, Assessment Checkpoint, and Writing sections of each lesson.

During Reading (Grades K–5):• Teachers use the students’ responses to prompts to monitor their general reading ability and growth as well as their understanding of the featured skill.Discuss the Text (Grades K–5): • Teachers have the opportunity to assess their students’ ability to apply major reading strategies when students respond to questions that require the application of these skills. These responses can also be used to determine which students need additional instruction in each area.Reread and Assess (Grades K–2):• These questions help teachers note specific behaviors that indicate whether the student is reading competently.


Assessment Card

Assessment Checkpoint (Grades 3–5): • Informal assessment occurs at the end of each day. Prompts help teachers note specific behaviors that show whether the student is reading competently or having difficulty with the text.Revisiting the Text (Kindergarten): • In Guided Reading lessons in kindergarten, teachers have the opportunity to assess students as they review elements of the text. Review activities include rereading parts of the text, choral readings or repeated readings, using illustrations to retell the story, and using sentence stems to review important information in the text.Writing (Grades 1–5):• Guided Reading lessons include a short writing assignment that requires students to apply one of the lesson skills. By evaluating the students’ ability to complete this task, teachers can monitor the students’ progress in understanding the targeted skill or strategy and their ability to express themselves in writing.

The four-page, grade-specific Assessment Card gives a framework for ongoing observational and informal assessment. Each card has two parts: a checklist of When Are My Readers Ready to Move Up to the Next Guided Reading Group? and an If…then… chart that is organized by the components of reading.

The front of the Assessment Card allows teachers to assess a •student’s competence in each subskill of a major skill area. A student who demonstrates general competence in each category is ready to advance to the next level. When a student needs additional instruction, this card helps teachers pinpoint specific areas that need to be addressed.


With the If…then… chart, the teacher can quickly identify common •student problems and provide immediate support through activities and prompts.

Each card addresses developmentally appropriate issues of •fluency, phonics and vocabulary, comprehension, and retelling ability.After the students’ abilities are assessed in the various skill areas, •the Assessment Card provides prompts and teaching suggestions that are designed to be easily implemented in a classroom situation.


Assessment Handbook

Review

The Assessment Handbook provides a summary of the assessment support found in Good Habits, Great Readers. This handbook contains many ready-to-use assessment tools that can help teachers monitor student progress on a regular basis throughout the year. These tools—including running records, rubrics, checklists, and recording forms—are designed to support the instructional philosophy and approach in Good Habits, Great Readers Shared and Guided Reading.

This guide looked at formative assessment and ongoing assessment in Good Habits, Great Readers Shared Reading and Guided Reading. It also discussed the assessment tools in the program, including the Assessment Card and the Assessment Handbook.

For more information on Good Habits, Great Readers, please look for the other tutorials on myPearsonTraining.com.

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