Bresciani+Journal+5

This week I was able to witness the teacher’s use of anecdotal records. Recently one of her students had been struggling with reading comprehension. He had been visiting the reading specialist twice a week for the past month. Recently, the reading specialist thought that his reading comprehension had been improving, and she decided to dismiss him from her class. However, when my cooperating teacher discovered this, she was upset and disagreed with the reading specialist’s choice. She explained that although he was improving, she did not agree that he improved enough to be released from the program. While explaining the situation to me, she pulled out a pile of notes from her desk. She explained that each week, while the children were reading individually, in pairs, or in small group, she kept a pile of anecdotal records for her students. Therefore, each week when working in small groups with the “low level readers”, my cooperating teacher would write down a few notes describing how each child was reading and observed their strengths and weaknesses. My teacher explained that she used these notes for her own records, for parents, and for instances like this.

Although I was not around to witness my cooperating teacher explaining her records to the reading specialist, the next week when I arrived, the struggling child was placed back into her program. I assumed that my cooperating teacher used her anecdotal records to explain instances of where the student had still not improved on.

I believe that this type of assessment is very useful and successful. Not only did it provide my cooperating teacher with her own records for each student, but it helped provide a form of backup/proof when a student’s performance was questioned. Perhaps if the teacher did not provide herself with the anecdotal records, she would not have been able to refer back to specific instances where the student struggled, and further failed to convince the reading specialist to provide the student with the help he needed. Thus, I believe that my cooperating teacher use of anecdotal records for reading was extremely useful and helpful.