Ignite Your Teaching
Ignite Your Teaching
Mastering Diagnostic Assessments in Language Arts
Unlock the secrets to a more effective language arts classroom by mastering the use of diagnostic assessments. This episode promises to transform your approach to teaching by helping you understand your students' current writing and reading abilities without overwhelming yourself. Discover how to make writing enjoyable for students while collecting valuable samples that reveal their storytelling and paragraph writing skills. On the reading front, find out how a simple spelling diagnostic can bridge the gap between writing and reading, using tools like Ignited Literacy or Words Their Way. We also highlight the importance of assessments like the Mays and oral reading fluency tools such as ORF or DRA in evaluating reading capabilities and forming guided reading groups.
Explore strategies for advocating for students who require additional support, particularly those with Individualized Education Programs (IEPs). We underscore the power of diagnostic assessments in the first 20 days of instruction to set a strong foundation for the academic year. Learn about the significance of collaborating with reading support teachers and leveraging school resources to address learning gaps. Additionally, we stress the importance of establishing a community of learners by getting to know students both personally and academically. Implementing consistent classroom routines ensures that every student can access the curriculum and succeed in their literacy journey.
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Now the next goal of this kickoff period is all about it being diagnostic assessment. I mentioned it before, but this diagnostic piece is going to be really important. In this kickoff portion you're going to do a few different things that are going to allow you to gather the necessary information that tells you where your students are and what they need to be working on and how to plug in the rest of your instruction for your language arts block. So there's a few different diagnostic tools that you can and, I would recommend, should use in order to assess where your students are. So the first piece we're going to talk about is the writing piece. For the first month or two. This might actually extend past that first 20-day kickoff period, but I want you to focus on. Writing is just fun. The goal is for writing to be fun and in that period of time you're going to help them and coach them on the beginning stages on how to plan out any kind of story. We're going to be very, very general, no specifics here. We're just going to talk very generally about how to brainstorm for a story and we're just going to talk about how stories need problems and solutions, and we can reference very childlike stories that follow a formula Dora the Explorer, paw Patrol we're just going super basic, super general on getting that information. We're not focusing on the details, we're not worrying about whether or not they know how to do it. Reality is is, if they're hitting our classroom in junior, they should have some experience in writing. So we should be using this opportunity to see where they are so that we can meet them where they are. So we don't want to do a lot of pre-teaching because we want to know where they are and it might take a couple of different samples of writing. It might take some time before we get there. We want to see some evidence of how they write a story and we want to see some evidence of how they would write a paragraph report, whether they're able to structure their research, whether they're able to do research, whether they're able to structure that into paragraphs, sub paragraphs, whether they're able to stay on topic. Those are some information and questions that we're going to be gathering from our students by just letting writing be fun, and we're not going to necessarily get into any assessment during this period because, again, we're just very much diagnostic. We're going to slow it down and really reframe what it is that they're going to do and get them to do this, and then we're going to be gathering data and we're not going to we're going to do and get them to do this, and then we're just gonna be gathering data and we're gonna very much try to not be overwhelmed with the needs, because there's going to be a lot. There's gonna be a lot of things and holes missing. There's gonna be a lot of things that, diagnostically, we're gonna decide whew, there's a lot of things we need to fix. Remember, we can't fix it one at a time. We have to prioritize and triage the issues that we might be having and plan it out. But we have to just collect that data and try to not get overwhelmed that there is so much that we need to teach and feel like we need to teach it all now. We don't. We don't need to teach them everything all at once. We need to systematically plan on how we're going to approach that and teach them this throughout the year.
Speaker 1:So once we have gathered this diagnostic assessment for writing, now it's time to really think about. At the same time as we're gathering this, writing is fun, we're building that mentality of writing is fun. Then we're going to really be gathering some diagnostic reading materials Now. These are going to be more standardized, but we're going to start. The first diagnostic assessment that we're going to do is going to be spelling.
Speaker 1:Two reasons why I want to start with a spelling diagnostic, and that is because spelling is the crossover between writing and reading. So I want to start with a spelling diagnostic. I want to know what language skills, what spelling skills, students are going to be proficient at. I'm going to start specifically using our Ignited Literacy spelling diagnostic. An alternative to this would be a Words their Way spelling diagnostic. But I really want to know where students are. What language forms and structures are they struggling with? Could it be that they don't understand onset and rhyme? Do they know how to identify short and long vowels? Do they understand blends, obscure vowel teams? Do they know the difference between inflected endings and how we add inflected endings? Do they just have an understanding of basic spelling rules that are common across the English language? Do they understand prefixes, suffixes, roots, bases? All of that can be determined by a spelling diagnostic and that's what I'm going to start.
Speaker 1:First, it's the first diagnostic I'm going to be giving formalized diagnostic I'll be giving to my students and then I'm going to determine from that where I'm going to need to start on a whole for my groups. It'll tell me, sort of give me information on who I need to group together for my guided reading groups, because it's going to be focused on word knowledge and on vocabulary and on reading and decoding, so that spelling diagnostic will give me an idea of where students might be and which students might struggle specifically with decoding. The next assessment I'm going to give them is going to be the Mays assessment from Acadians or Dibbles or Dibbles I'm never sure how to pronounce that, but I'm going to be using that as my second assessment, using the Acadians Mays assessment that assesses comprehension. I'm going to use that test to screen my students for comprehension. Who is struggling with comprehension when they are reading. This is gonna be a good screener. I'm gonna use the Mays benchmark tools to identify which students are at benchmark and which students are below benchmark.
Speaker 1:Then I'm going to administer an ORF, an oral reading fluency. Now you can use either the ORF. You can also use a DRA if you're familiar. Really, the goal of the ORF is to listen to students reading and determine their accuracy as well as their comprehension and understanding. I think the most important piece here is their fluency and their ability to code words as they encounter them and the speed in which they're reading them. So you can do either one. If you are not allowed to use DRA, then don't use the ORF. It is faster. The ORF is faster. However, I do know that for many teachers, using a DRA or a CASI or PM Benchmarks is going to feel more familiar for them and it will give you an idea of instructional level for your students because you know how to interpret those results. So use either or. But really we're going to be focusing on a fluency score here, where we want to get to know that Once we have collected all of that reading data and spelling data, then I'm going to be able to make my groups of students for guided reading.
Speaker 1:I'm going to have some students that I might need to reach down into some primary lessons and help build and fill some gaps, and I'm going to have some students that are going to be stronger at reading and perhaps reading at grade level and having no concerns in excelling. For those students, it's okay that I don't necessarily need to read with them all of the time. I really want to focus on my bridge kids. These are going to be the students that are approaching grade level, the students who are really with some minor instruction. We want to bridge those kids up to provincial standard. We want to really push them and get them to that point. I'm really going to focus on supporting the students who need lots of gap filling, but also the bulk of my time and focus is going to be on those students in the middle, the bridge kids that I can bridge them up and move them off, of sort of if you think of it like a caseload move them off of the caseload and get them to the point where they don't need you as much anymore. I'm going to focus a lot of my time at the beginning of the year on those students and see about the progress that we can get, while also supporting those students that I can move forward and fill some gaps with within this 20 day kickoff period.
Speaker 1:This is where it is really important to gather the diagnostic assessments so that you know where they are. You have a good, firm understanding of where your students are in your classroom. You can start advocating for your students who are on ieps. It's great for you to advocate for those and write those ieps based on the diagnostic assessment materials that you're getting, gives you a wealth of information about where your students are. It also allows you to advocate for which students might need extra support.
Speaker 1:Perhaps you have an Empower program running in your classroom and your diagnostic assessment material is letting you know that there's some huge gaps with some of your students. You may need to assess and advocate for some support for those students to make sure that you're not alone in trying to bridge and put all of those gaps together. Perhaps you have a reading support teacher that can help you or come in and conduct guided reading lessons. Perhaps there's other services that you can utilize and access to help you support the students that are in your classroom, whether you have ells or students who have learning and identified needs. Asking for help and accepting the help of other professionals that are in your building will certainly be helpful at making sure that you can get the support that you need.
Speaker 1:So it's not responsible for doing it all on your own. So use this opportunity in the first 20 days to really get to know your students. Get to know them as people also get to know them academically. Gather all this information and make sure that you're building that community of learners for your students. Making sure that that kickoff portion of this time you have specific goals of establishing routines, making things efficient in how you run your classroom, building a community so you get to know all of your students, and gathering diagnostic assessment material to ensure that students are able to access the things that you're about to teach them, is all going to be the goals of this kickoff period in your first 20 days of literacy instruction.
