From what I have seen thus far in my classroom it is really difficult to determine how similar the assessment structure will be in my classroom in comparisons with Book Club Plus. Even though we have done some preparation for MEAP- it has not taken up all of the time, however I still have not seen any reading assessments done aside from DIEBELS-, Which I facilitated, on a one to one basis with every student on our team. The reading assessment consists of having the students read aloud for one minute, and I time and record how many errors they make in that minute. The Book Club plus talks about the use of self- evaluation. This is the only form that I have seen so far in my classroom aside from the DIEBELS reading assessment that I touched on briefly previously. Every day my students have 30 minutes of individual reading time. “IRG time” IRG stands for Independent Reading Goals, and each trimester the student gets a recording sheet to record to number of ‘Accelerated Reader’ books they complete. Every time they complete an ‘AR’ book they are supposed to take the ‘AR’ test from the Novi Meadows media center, or the link from the website. Also part of this independent reading for each trimester is a reading journal and a goal. The goal is the number of books the student wants to finish by the end of the trimester, and the journal includes 2 to 4 sentences written every day after the student reads their book during silent reading.
I find it really interesting in my class to see that the books in the library are not labeled or in any specific order to show what level they are. And there has not been any evidence of reading based on the different levels of readers we have in the classroom which I find interesting. In past classrooms, I always experienced a teacher having to meet with literature circles because there were various levels. The students do work on writing, and I tested them in reading- however nothing really has been done with the data since which makes it really difficult to relate to the different literacy benchmarks and standards that the chapters in Book Club Plus discuss. I am curious to see when and how this data will be incorporated into the classroom and curriculum framework, however I am also nervous because it seems that since our school has relatively good test scores and MEAP scores that these differing levels of students writing and reading may become abandoned- so I am curious to see what will happen once MEAP is over with.
I share your same concern about MEAP: I feel like I have no idea what our classroom is going to look like (in terms of reading and writing) after MEAP! We have done some writing (PAWs or paragraph a week) which is mini-lesson focused (descriptive details, etc.) and we have done DRAs (however the writing portion hasn't been scored yet) but I have NO idea what our reading or writing curricula look like! My CT wants to try Making Meaning and Writer's Express this year, but they are as new to her as they are to me. I'm very interested to see how this works out, and how our lesson planning (which seems to be so structured) is going to fit into this post-MEAP chaos. I feel like our kids are going to be in culture shock.
ReplyDeleteI have to same issue in my classroom of not really seeing instruction due to the MEAP coming up. I think its interesting that you use the DIEBLES, since the only reading assessment we have used are DRA's. I'm not familiar with the DIEBLES or how those work, so it was interesting to see the similarities of the two assessments. I thought your observations on your classroom library were interesting, since mine is very similar with nothing labeled and no organization. I would think that it would be important for students to choose appropriate books, but that it would be difficult with this lack of organization.
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