Week 3

Assignment #2

Providing opportunities for creative writing, reading lengthy and complex texts and encourage research in order to develop productivity skills, implementing cross-disciplinary topics are all ways to appropriately develop the skills required by the standards.  Assessing these skills comes in when we observe student performance during group tasks, review the presentations and proposals they create, and their writing skills.

The 4th grade example of students recording their conversation to identify points of view was pretty impressive.  I had not observed or experienced this type of learning.  It seems to require a higher level of self-awareness and listening to and making sense of what others say.  It is like a new level of listening.  The use of persuasive proposals is also something very interesting and I would think beyond grade level!  As a middle school teacher I am often out of touch with the elementary classroom, especially with the emergence of Common Core.  The skills students are developing and practicing in the classrooms contribute to fostering an awareness of others and the ability to be successful members of society.

Assignment #3

• What is QRI5?  QRI5 is an informal reading inventory that includes word lists and passages that assess the reading and listening abilities of students.  

• What is the purpose of using QRI5? The purpose of the informal reading inventory is to gather information used to gauge students' reading levels, group students, and choose appropriate reading assignments for students.

• Have you seen similar assessment activities like QRI5? What are they? Running records have a similar purpose; assessing students' reading ability and words that students struggle with and even to decide the appropriate reading level for individual students.

• What is your impression of QRI5? I think this type of assessment really covers all of the bases as far as assessing students' reading ability.  Having students retell, answer questions, look-backs, and think aloud while reading are all useful strategies that help assess students' comprehension of a given text.  I also think assessing students' abilities with different type of texts is important in order to fully gauge students strengths and weaknesses.