You've Given the Reading Test...Now What?

So, have you given your DRA test yet or some other type of reading test for middle of the year scores?  Now what do you do?  Do you use these scores to drive your reading instruction?  

The results from the reading assessments can be very valuable to you and should help you plan for your next steps with the students.

As I give my DRAs, I like to make notes on how the student did, what they need to work on next.  This girl struggles daily with her fluency and decoding. When she did the DRA, her lack of progress in these 2 areas showed up in the assessment too.  So I just made a notation of that up in the corner of her test.  

It's a bit difficult to see this, but the student appeared to be attending to initial sounds in words, but not looking fully through the word and checking to see if the word she is reading matches up with the printed word.  She also added or changed endings.  

Activities to deal with this student's struggles could involve Guess the Covered Word to help her match the sounds in the word she guesses to what is printed.  Also pulling a card across the word as her eye travels across it can help too.  To address her lack of fluency, I would use repeated readings of familiar books and modeled and repeated readings as described by Timothy Rasinski.  

This student does not struggle with decoding or fluency, but really had difficulty with comprehension after reading the story.  We usually know in our heads who struggles with what.  But by coding it at the top, you can then put those tests together into a group to help you come up with a strategy to help that particular group of students.

This is where that student struggled.  There was a lack of details in his retell and two of the events were out of order.  After having given the tests, I saw a pattern with several of the first graders- they were struggling with retelling the story, the comprehension of the story.  So that lets me know, we have work to do.

We will work on retelling and comprehension in several ways.  The Somebody... Wanted...But...So...Then.... activity would be a great way to start with this.  B...M...E (beginning, middle, end) is another activity we could use.

So after giving your reading assessments, take it another step...Note what the students were lacking, group them together, then come up with a plan to address the skills.  

Don't forget our Educents Organization, Class Management, and Classroom Decor bundle is on sale RIGHT NOW!  And only for a limited time...76% off!

Click the picture to see what it's all about!