EP260 - Transform Your Literacy Program with Effective Assessment Strategies

Send us a text

What if you had the toolkit to boost your students' literacy levels? What if you could tailor your teaching styles to meet the individual needs of your learners? Welcome to a powerful episode that unravels the intricacies of incorporating assessments into your literacy program. We strip down the importance of diagnostic, formative, and summative assessments, helping you understand your students' starting point, observe their progress, and gain a comprehensive view of their proficiency levels. 

You'll discover how tools like Exocard's, guided reading, and spelling assessments can help you identify strengths and weaknesses in your students' learning process. We go further to discuss the value of literacy trackers and formative assessments, and how informal writing assessments can offer valuable insights into your students' writing skills. Discover how summative assessments can showcase overall proficiency and growth, and how encouraging students to select their work for assessment can fuel reflection and learning. So, join us for a deep dive into the world of assessments, and gain practical insights on how to use these tools to enhance your students' literacy skills.

Remember to Subscribe for more insights on how to navigate the complexities of teaching with efficiency and impact. Share your experiences and strategies in the comments to join the conversation with fellow educators.

To find our highly effective, time-saving resources

Check out the Ignited Teaching Membership that gives you access to hundreds of downloadable lessons on demand! https://madlylearning.com/sp/ignitedteaching/
Checkout our Madly Learning Store at www.madlylearning.com/store
Checkout our Teachers Pay Teachers store

Join our FREE Facebook community for teachers here: https://bit.ly/IYT-FB

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:26):
Assessments are a crucial piece of understanding
your students' progress andtailoring your teaching to their
needs, so let's jump right intoit.
So there's three differenttypes of assessments that we
should be using inside ourliteracy program.
These are diagnostic assessment, formative assessment and
summative assessment.
Now, diagnostic assessment isthe information you collect at
the beginning of learning.
Think of it as the informationyou are gathering at the start

(00:49):
of each term.
It's going to help youunderstand where your students
are starting from and what theirstrengths and weaknesses are.
Next, we have formativeassessment.
Now this is the informationthat you collect each week as
you cover different skills.
It's about observing andrecording students as they work
in groups, collecting andmarking work samples and using
various tools like Exocard's,guided reading, conversations

(01:11):
with the student and the teacherconferences to gather
information about their learningprogress.
And finally, we have summativeassessments, which you typically
collect one-two times per term.
Summative assessments give youan overall picture of how
students are applying the skillsyou've covered throughout the
term.
Some of these could be projectsthat you do at the end of a
unit of study or even tests.

(01:31):
Now let's dive deeper intodiagnostic assessments.
In recent years, if we'vetransitioned from balanced
literacies to a structuredliteracy.
The types of diagnosticassessments that we have used
have evolved.
While standardized readingassessment tools like DRA or
CASI are still valuable,especially for junior grade
teachers, we do need to expandour diagnostic toolkit.

(01:53):
For instance, when we'reassessing oral language fluency,
reading fluency and decodingskills, standardized assessments
like DIBELs can be helpful.
Dibels offers a quickassessment for oral language
fluency and comprehension usingthings like a maze assessment,
where students are choosing thecorrect missing word from a
sentence.
Another effective way to assessstudent fluency and decoding

(02:16):
skills is by using a nonsenseword list.
These lists contain made-upwords that test the student's
ability to apply phonicsknowledge and their ability to
decode words.
Hi, there are great screeningtools to identify any issues
with word memorization orwhole-world reading, which is

(02:36):
going to be a problem for someof our junior students if that
is the way they figured out howto decode.
It's a great way to highlightthis as a red flag for students.
Spelling diagnostics are alsoimportant.
Spelling assessments, likewords their way, can be valuable
even if you're not using theentire program.
The diagnostic assessmentwithin the programs like ignited

(02:57):
spelling, can help identifystudents' word patterns and
spelling skills.
When it comes to assessingwriting, it doesn't have to be
overly formal.
You can simply ask students towrite a recount, a story or even
a paragraph Throughout the term, assess the student's word
choice, vocabulary, spelling,sentence structure, grammar,
punctuation skills andconventions in their writing.

(03:18):
These informal assessments canprovide valuable insights into
your student's writing skills.
Me personally, I love using awriting feedback form that
allows students to analyze theirskills, as well as having a
goal board posted for mystudents to begin to start
evaluating their own skillset aswriters.
Now let's talk about formativeassessments in language arts.

(03:39):
This is all about assessingstudents' progress as they learn
.
This is all about assessingstudents' progress as they learn
.
It happens regularly, often ona weekly basis, and involves

(04:02):
various strategies that allow usto observe and record the
learning of our students.
Some of the ways to conductformative assessment we can
observe and record students asthey work in groups.
We can collect and mark worksamples to help understand their
skills and progress.
We can use exit cards toquickly gauge their
understanding of a lesson.
We can ask them to engage inguided reading, conversations

(04:24):
and observations and then recordwhat we notice.
We can conduct student-teacherconferences to have meaningful
discussions about their learning, which is one of my favorites
when it comes to working withstudents and their writing
skills, we can also keep an eyeon their work and other subjects
, such as literacy.
Skills often transfer intothings like science and social
studies.
It's essential to remember thatformative assessment is not

(04:47):
about assigning numerical gradesthat are going to end up on a
report card.
Instead, it's about reallyunderstanding whether students
understand, apply and canexplain the concepts that you've
taught.
By focusing on the minutedetails and evidence that
they're learning, you can answerthese crucial questions Can
they do it, can they apply itand can they explain it?
To help you track yourstudents' progress effectively,

(05:08):
consider using a literacytracker.
This tool simplifies theprocess of collecting and
organizing evidence of skills.
Now here's how it works.
We're going to create a trackerfor each week of the term.
Then we're going to identifyspecific skills or areas for
focus that we're going to useeach week.
We're going to use ourobservations, work samples and
checklists to record theevidence of these skills

(05:29):
throughout our class each week.
Then we're going to assessstudents on the evidence we
collect.
So, essentially, when ourformative assessment indicates
that students are starting tounderstand a skill that we are
teaching, then it is time toformally assess it.
So, after we've gone throughand modeled the skill.
We've done it with students.
We've asked them to do it withpartners.

(05:50):
We've asked them to try it ontheir own and then take it up
and provide them feedback Alongthe way.
We are noticing that theirskill is growing.
Once we are sure that studentsare ready to start doing it
independently, then we can givestudents a chance, give them
some feedback, as well as markthose and collect them and then
reteach, reinforce and againassess again.

(06:12):
By using this approach, you'llhave a clear record of how your
students are progressing overthe term.
It's a way to practicallymonitor their growth and
identify areas where they mayneed additional support.
Finally, let's explore whatsummative assessment is.
In literacy, summativeassessment is a place to provide
an overall view of students'proficiency levels, to determine
whether they're ready to moveon.

(06:33):
They should be conducted one ortwo times per term.
One approach is to take some ofthe formative assessments that
you've conducted during the termand use them to inform your
summative assessment.
For example, you might select areading response or writing
task that represents theculmination of students' skills
that they have been learning.
This task can be more weightedheavily than others and can be a

(06:54):
valuable summative assessmenttool.
Additionally, you canperiodically ask students to
select a piece of their writingor their work from other
subjects that they'reparticularly proud of.
You can have them revise andrefine it and then submit it for
a final mark.
This process not only providesa summative assessment, but also
encourages students to reflecton their progress and learning.

(07:15):
Incorporating exit cards orsnapshots of student works from
various weeks can also be partof their summative assessment
strategy.
The key here is to selectassessments that showcase their
overall proficiency,understanding and growth.
And there you have it Acomprehensive approach to
assessing students in yourliteracy program.
Remember, assessment is adynamic process.

(07:36):
It involves diagnostic,formative and summative
assessment components.
By utilizing variety of thesetools and strategies, you can
gain some really valuableinsights into your students'
progress and tailor yourteaching to meet their
individual needs.