Snippet – Day #2

Kids and Books – Free Media Library

In an exchange in yesterday’s blog post, I wrote the following:

Juliette…I wanted to plan for something more holistic. This was my first attempt at having everyone reading the same text. I usually just work off whatever students are reading independently. I’m thinking of doing several different kinds of assessments in the fall so that I have a better picture of my students as readers and so that I am better prepared when I’m told I need to do the same assessment for each student. I want to collect my own data as well.

So, what I’m thinking.

I will start off the year with get-to-know-you interviews. Some questions I might ask are: (1) Tell me about the last book you finished. (2) What are you reading now? (3) What will you read next? (4) What are some of your favorite genres? Authors? Series? (5) What would you like to get better at as a reader?

Next, I plan to conduct brief one-on-one conferences as often as possible where I will ask: (1) How’s it going? (2) What are you reading? (3) Do you need any help? Or Have you tried (whatever the strategy or mini lesson that I taught that day or week)?

Then, I want to do slightly more formal reading interviews like the ones I wrote about here.

Finally, I will need to do reading assessments mandated by my school board. I will reserve judgement on those until I find out what they entail. Let’s just say that the fact that they’re mandated makes me a little nervous.

For now, that is a quick sketch of my reading assessment plan for the year.

What are your thoughts on this? I look forward to reading your comments and, especially, your pushback!

Cross posted to The Two Writing Teachers Tuesday Slice of Life Story Challenge.

9 thoughts on “Snippet – Day #2”

  1. One of my most favorite things to do is talk to kids about their books and their reading! I love how you are planning to gather all sorts of things … and then the mandated assessments. 🙂 You are going to really really know your students as readers!

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  2. This post gets me thinking about how I can help teachers get started with reading conferences right away. With the changes from COVID last year, there wasn’t as much conferencing. I think teachers will need some ideas to jump start their thinking. Thanks for sharing your process!

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  3. I think I would also include asking them, “May I listen to you read?” That will give you a quick check on whether or not they can decode the books they are choosing. I found that often students will tell you a title that they WISH they could read instead of what they can actually read. Initial interviews aren’t a time to evaluate book choice necessarily, but asking them to read a little bit aloud will help you quickly identify students needing some extra attention.

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    • Yes. I’m also thinking of creating situations or mini lessons that will allow students to somehow understand what it means to be a reader. How being able to read the words is not enough and that understanding is the crux of why we read. For kids that talk about books they wish they could read, I need to find ways they can do that while building their reading life. Also, I’m going to have short texts that I can use to assess their reading when it feels like their independent reading isn’t doing it. Make sense?

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  4. It is great having a system of getting to know your readers and having the conversation with them. Through a similar not so structured individual questioning about reading we were able to form some informal series book clubs for our fourth graders depending on the series students had read.

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