Shusterman_journal+5

My cooperating teacher had me asses the students on their oral reading and fluency. The assessment is done monthly, so that the teacher can see how each student is improving. While the students were playing math games, I would pull one of them at a time and take them into the library. Then, I would give the students a small book and ask them to read it aloud to me. Each student read from the same book, and I watched and listened to them as they read.

A rubric was used in order to assess the specific skills. The skills that the students were being assess on were, whether they self corrected as they read, their ability to read or pronounce unfamiliar words, and whether they read in meaningful phrases and chunks. They were also assessed on their ability to read smoothly without pausing frequently, and their ability to read with appropraite expression. As the students read through the book, I would place a check mark by each skill, which would show whether the student did the skill usually, sometimes, or seldomly.

I like that this assessment is done monthly because it shows how much a student is improving. I also like the fact the the assessment is done individually. This way the student will not become self conscience about reading aloud in front of his/her classmates. In addition, the teacher is able to see the areas that each individual needs to work on, and the skills that each student already has. The problem; however, with listening to each student read individually is that it is very time consuming. As a teacher I could not imagine being able to find time to do an assessment like this with every student individually. There are also pros and cons to having the students all read the same book. The same book will allow the teacher to compare results for all of the students; however, it does not take into account students' reading levels. A student who is more advanced might breeze through the skills being assessed and not need to sound out words; where as, a struggling reading might have difficulty reading the book. In addition, I think that the rubric is pretty specific except for one thing. What does reading with appropriate expression mean? As an outsider doing this assessment I had no idea what the teacher wanted me to look for when it came to looking for appropriate expression. I feel that if I was confused by that one point, then it is very possible that the students could be confused on the same exact point. I think that if a teacher was to assess appropriate reading expression, there would need to be some guidelines as to what is considered appropriate expression.

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