The students made excellent progress with shifts of between 1 and 4 years.
I think that one of the reasons that the students did consistently better with the Probe testing rather than the PAT of STAR testing is the focus on oral language. The students started the year very reluctant to talk about what they were reading but by the end of the year they were able to answer questions much more readily.
I made quite a few tweaks and changes to what I was doing with the students over the year. I modified the group, the recording sheet twice and finally changed the mode of the text.
Looking back I think I would start at the end, and begin the year with discussions around an image. I don't know if it was all the practise through the year but the discussions around an image seemed to flow the best. I think there are a number of factors that made this easier for the students: they had the image in front of them, there were no wrong answers just what they could see, they didn't need to flip pages to find information to justify what they could see. When we expanded on the discussion to what might have happened before the photo and after the photo, they were all able to come up with ideas that were plausible from the image in front of them.
1 comment:
I have absolutely loved following your inquiry on a daily basis Kiri. You have introduced some fantastic scaffolds that really helped your groups make strong connections to the learning - will definitely be stealing these ideas :) There have been a number of significant shifts in the reading ages and skill levels of your students and I know from sharing the class with you that this has flowed over into other learning areas. Awesome job Ms K!
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