moving from assessment to instruction

Over the past few weeks I've learned a bit about my buddy's needs, abilities, and interests. My buddy, whom I'll continue to call Katie, seems to genuinely enjoy reading. She particularly enjoys her reading textbook. During one of our informal reading conferences she neatly summarized what had been happening in one of the stories, highlighting both explicit and implicit details. For instance, she inferred why the main character, Maria Isabel Salazar Lopez, disliked being called Mary Lopez, a conclusion supported, but not directly stated, by the story. Katie's comprehension of the two assessment readings, Amelia Earhart and Early Railroads, was fairly good. She did miss some explicit supporting details, such as the sentence that told the reader who Tom Thumb was in the Early Railroads piece. This affected her comprehension of the analogy being made between the engine and Tom Thumb, and she stumbled on the comprehension questions that dealt with that analogy.

Additionally, Katie's reading of the assessment pieces was slower than average. She read Early Railroads at 93 words per minute - nearly 20 words per minute slower than an "average" 4th grade peer. In all her reading aloud for me, however, I noted a particular difficulty with names that really slows her down. Katie had a bit of trouble with the name Tom Thumb in Early Railroads and it almost felt like the name was a bit of a tongue twister for her. It took her a while to move on with the reading. At other times, though, Katie will elide an unknown word. That said, Katie generally reads in larger, meaningful chunks, until she gets to a section that trips her up. Occasionally she missed punctuation, too. Katie had 12 miscues during her reading of Early Railroads, which indicates that the text is at instructional level for her.

Given the results of the reading assessments and my findings during our informal reading conferences, I would say that Katie is at level 3 on the NAEP Oral Reading Fluency Scale. Katie sometimes read with meaning, but at other times read inexpressively and missed punctuation and phrasing. Although she sometimes read larger phrase groups with correct expression for long stretches, these stretches were punctuated by shorter word groupings and groupings that missed words and/or punctuation. She might be just a bit higher than a 3 with an instructional text.

Overall, I think Katie needs work on fluency. While fairly good, her comprehension would improve if she had better fluency. This week, I plan to have Katie read the level 3 texts.

current thoughts: differentiating instruction with an ipod touch

I'll confess to finding some uses for an Ipod touch in the classroom over the past few weeks. I particularly like its usefulness for recording student interviews and assessments. I've also run across some apps I really like which might have value in the classroom. One app, Logic Box, could augment mathematics instruction by fostering spatial and geometric thinking. Another app, NASA looks like an excellent supplement to an astronomy unit. I like the Whiteboard Lite app, too, for its potential to eliminate noxious dry erase fumes from the classroom - although the iPod screen is a bit small for any detail.

As far as differentiating instruction with an iPod goes, though, my opinion hasn't changed much. In fact, a few things that have happened in my classroom recently have further convinced me that our efforts are better spent - at least in my school - ensuring that all of our kids have equal access to a quality education before springing for dozens of iPods. If we were reasonably close to that goal, I'd be open to exploring iPod touches for instructional use. One certainty is that kids would love being able to use an iPod touch in school!