1 Classroom Assessment Profile (Module 5) Danielle Bartone EDU 741 Literacy Assessments as Teaching Tools Summer Term B August

5, 2012

Name of the

Template for Classroom Literacy Plan Woodcock Johnson III Tests of Literacy Portfolio

2 assessment Formative or Summative Achievement This is used as a formative assessment at the beginning of the school year and as a summative assessment at the end of the school year. We administer 9 literacy subtests including Letter-Word ID, Reading Fluency, Story Recall, Understanding Directions, Spelling, Writing Fluency, Passage Comprehension, Writing Samples, & Story Recalled Delayed.

Data collected with this assessment

The literacy portfolio is both formative and summative. There are final products ( writing sample, short answers, and multiple choice quizzes) as well as samples of ongoing work as the work is collected throughout the learning process from the beginning of the school year through the end of the school year. The pieces of work give data on their final product performance as well as their progress from month to month. Each literacy subtest provides specific The students each work on information on literacy skills: phonemic awareness, phonics, Letter-Word ID: Student verbally fluency, vocabulary, and identifies graphemes and words from a comprehension as a group and list. individually. The group lessons are Reading Fluency: Rate that student typically teacher led with some time accurately reads sentences and for the students to work on the answers yes or no to each. concepts in small groups. Each Story Recall: Student listens to stories child then does 30 minutes of 1:1 told orally and orally answers questions work each day on specific literacy about the stories. skills that need reinforcement. Understanding Directions: Student Students will work on worksheets indicates parts of a picture as directed with multiple choice and short by oral directions. answers that are used for their Spelling: Student writes words as they portfolios. Students are also audioare orally dictated. recorded to demonstrate their Writing Fluency: Student is given three phonemic awareness and fluency words that they must include in a ability. The audio recordings are sentence to describe a picture taken once per month per student. measuring rate and accuracy. Teachers collect their own data Passage Comprehension: Student through checklists and observations reads short passages and must identify that are not archived in the portfolio a missing key word that makes sense but they are used to determine in the context of the passage. ongoing curriculum changes. Writing Samples: Student writes based on directions given and is evaluated more on expression than spelling or punctuation. Story Recalled Delayed: After a delay between when the student listens to stories that were told orally they then answer questions about the story.

3 Timeline for reviewing and using this data to inform instruction This assessment is given to each student by an evaluator two times per year (once in September and once in May). The September test is used as a diagnostic assessment and the results are used to inform instruction. The May results are more summative to help teachers understand the impact of their instruction on achievement. The assessment takes approximately 2 hours to administer to each child with an additional 30 minutes needed to enter data into the accompanying software to yield an age equivalent and a grade equivalent. The data is immediately used to determine appropriate literacy tasks and activities for the year. Once every two months the teacher selects a piece of work that best reflects the students ability for each of the 5 reading components listed above. Some pieces may demonstrate ability in more than one component. The teacher selects the piece and asks the student to write a paragraph answering why this is a good piece to go in their portfolio. At the end of the first semester and the second semester (December & May) the students select 5 pieces total (making sure that each component is represented once) to go into their showcase portfolio. Each piece in the showcase portfolio (10 pieces for the school year) must have an accompanying paragraph from the student. Once every two months (October, December, & March) the teacher will review the work chosen for the portfolio and make any necessary changes to the students 1:1 tasks to provide further practice based on each students individualized need. The group teaching will follow the curriculum as planned. The assessment review every two months also functions as a progress monitoring tool. The students are very involved in the entire portfolio process and they are very proud of their accomplishments. At the end of the year the parents are invited in for portfolio night. The process is similar to a student-led conference in that the student sits with their parents and goes page by page through the portfolio and explains the work to the parents. They are also able to share with the other

How will this data be reported?

The evaluator shares the data with the teachers working one on one with the students immediately. The results of the September and May assessment are shared with parents in May. The data may possibly be shared with the student in May if it is determined that it will be motivating for them to see where they started the year and how much progress they have made by the end of the school year. There are no letter grades or percentage grades at

4 my school. Progress is reported to the parents through a Progress Update Report once at the end of the school year. How will this data provide you with information to support the learning of your students? The evaluator uses the data to build the literacy portion of the childs educational program. The program is a list of tasks that have a recommended frequency and duration of implementation each day. Each task has a corresponding data log to track introduction and mastery rates. We have an extensive list of activities to help develop skills in each literacy domain tested. The evaluator selects appropriate tasks and writes the literacy portion of their program. parents and students. We do not use letter grade or percentages so the final products within the portfolio nor the completed portfolio are assigned grades. Two types of data are collected through this process: literacy performance data and data on how the student feels about their work. The data is formally looked at every two months and used to amend the individual literacy educational program to ensure that there are appropriate literacy tasks in each of the five components of reading. Each student will have exposure to the planned curriculum through the group instruction. The individualized instruction is tailored to each child using the same list of tasks and accompanying data logs mentioned in this section for the Woodcock Johnson assessment. The information in each students selfreflection is used appropriately to support each students learning by providing the encouragement and confidence building that they need. Portfolios are used in the elementary group placement only. The portfolio data is used to create small groups of 2 or 3 students for mini-lessons during the group instruction block depending on need for remediation and additional practice on a specific literacy concept. The 1:1 programs are differentiated to build on each childs strengths and to remediate their challenge points.

How does this assessment support differentiation?

My school has two educational placements: an elementary and a high school group placement with a 3:1 student to teacher ratio and a 1:1 placement. The students in the 1:1 placement have one teacher 3 days per week and a second teacher for the other 2 days per week. The 1:1 students all take the Woodcock Johnson III Subtests and their individualized programs are designed and differentiated to build on their strengths and to remediate their challenge points.

Reflection

This reflection helped me consider the importance of different types of assessment. It seems that often times summative assessments have a negative reputation due to highstakes summative assessments that can determine critical aspects of education such as classification of schools and funding. Summative assessments, when used appropriately, are very important as they help us reflect back on our instructional practices to make sure they we are accomplishing what we had hoped to accomplish. I do believe that there are man ways to have a portfolio be successful in the classroom. I am not sure that our current set-up is as efficient or organized as it could be. Perhaps some of the reflections by the students could be audiotaped as watching a video of yourself comment on your own work can be powerful to watch. The written reflections are good practice for writing skills but can be time consuming and sometimes fatiguing for the students. I do think a good classroom has a blend of summative and formative assessment that has a direct link to instruction and that instruction can be adapted and made more appropriate as needed.