Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Design 2

Last week our school started using the Fountas & Pinnell Reading Assessment. It has been very frustrating for all of the teachers in my building. It wants us to do three different running records on each students and along with those running records the student will have to have a writing piece to accompany each running record. the assessment is very thorough and does give you an accurate guided reading level for the student. The problem that I think I am having with it is the design of the test. This test is design for you to work on the assessment with a student one on one without any distractions; to complete the assessment it takes about a hour and a half. I don't care how good someones class is there is no way that you can work one on one with a student with out any distractions. I have tried a few different things to keep the kidsquiet; first i had them do their centers, that wasn't a good idea because even though the students were working quietly in their centers they still whisper to each other so it was distracting to the child that I was assessing. Then I tried to assess a child while we were in the computer lab but there were a few interruptions from students that were having computer problems.Today I gave my kids busy work and I HATE BUSY WORK. I think the test needs to be designed differently in order to work in a normal classroom not one where are no disruptions and/or distractions for the teacher and the student that is being assessed.

2 comments:

Kristina said...

i hear you!! the design of the test needs some work. kind of like the design of the ballots in florida that year(don't remember the year) screwed people up. bad design created invalid ballots. i also think design of textbooks can be overwhelming when to much it in there!!

EETEAMJeffhand said...

have you ever heard of the DIBELS. It is a quick reading assessment that is done over the school year in order to assess where the child is with regard to their reading level. It is done simply with a 60 second assessment and has shown to be an accurate indicator of where the children are. Who has the time to do all of that other stuff!!!