What is the formative assessment tool and what differentiated responses might a teacher make to students showing different

degrees of progress on the formative assessment? The formative assessment tool that will be used to gauge where my students are at in the beginning of the year is the STEP (Strategic Teaching and Evaluation of Progress) developed by the University of Chicago. This assessment not only measures simple concepts about print skills but other basic emerging literacy skills as well. The first few step levels assess whether students can: Identify where to start reading on the page Where to start reading after the words end at the end of the line Text directionality 1:1 correspondence Letters vs Words Identify first and last letter in particular words

After my students have taken the STEP at the beginning of the year I will not only use that data to plan whole group instruction but to pull small groups based off their individual needs. Some students may even be pulled in a one on one setting if whole group and small group instruction is not meeting their particular set of needs. I believe that the STEP test provides a very good starting picture of where students are at the beginning but is not the best formative assessment to use on a day to day or week to week basis. Due to the nature of STEP, most teachers only have the opportunity to test their students 2-3 times a year. In between those testing times I have witnessed my current students make great growth in the basic concepts of print, but the

test really only focuses on the novice and practitioner stages of my learning progression therefore other formative assessments will need to take place. Currently I use this data when I plan my guided reading instruction with my students. I am able to look at their STEP data to see what their base knowledge is and then in a small group setting I am really able to target my instruction to meet their needs. Since the STEP assessment is really more for me as a teacher to gauge what they know rather than to really involve the students, my guided reading groups is really where I am able to involve my students in a manner than encourages their self regulating and metacognitive skills. Each time I meet with the students I am taking anecdotal notes and recording not only the learning focus of the day but the reading behaviors that I see them exhibit. At the end of each guided reading session I like to have the students tell me something they did well and something they need to continue working on and they need to provide a reason as well. I think that this really helps my students become more reflective and aware of their skills. Currently some of my lowest students are still in the novice and practitioner stage because they are unable to really understand the purpose of the text. Some of the students read without even looking at the text on the page or others will add extra words and they dont realize what they are doing. One strategy and skill that I really try to hone in on with these students is 1:1 correspondence. When students are reading and pointing they can only say as many words as they pointed to. I believe this really goes back to metacognition with this particular group of students because from their writing samples they are able to write sentences with proper spacing etc, but when they read their sentence to you they continue to add extra words on. I know that these students are seeing all of the letters and seeing the difference between words and letters because they are able

to do that in their writing without a struggle. I believe I need to continue pushing my students to stop and think, Did that make sense? How was I able to read the text without EVEN looking at the text? I think that once students understand that their thinking is not necessarily following a logical path they will begin to move through the learning progression quicker. On the other spectrum I have my higher students who are reading at a level where they are being introduced to different text features. As new text features arise I make sure to be explicit about the terminology and the purpose of each feature. Many of my high students seem to really enjoy the extra text features and are quick to tell me Miss Wheaton, I learned that fact from the caption here! I love the fact that they are so excited to tell me what they learned and how they learned it! But, even my high students are challenged as well. One strategy that my co-resident has recently introduced is post it notes and students can jot down some reactions while reading. One of our students was independently reading a book with a table of contents in it and put a big question mark on a sticky note on that page because she didnt understand what she was supposed to do with all those words that she just read. This was also great to see because it really showed that this student was being metacognitive and understood that she needed to do something about this break in her understanding.