Kindergarten Literacy Assessment Tools

Delta just rolled out a suite of tools for Kindergarten teachers for Literacy Assessment and Evaluation. The suite was designed by a team of K, Grade 1 and Learning support teachers. We aimed to provide useful tools to teachers to enable us to share common language and expectations for K that both reflect the new curriculum and dovetail into our Grade 1 literacy benchmarks.

Underlying this work is a Print Acquisition Continua that the team created to capture the developmental stages of children discovering how print works and using it for their purposes.  One of the main reasons we decided to create a new continua was to be able to describe where kids are at on the journey based on what they CAN do.

We know how important it is for us as early learning teachers to help kids crack the literacy code. We also know that this is one small piece of the broader literacy competencies that we want for out kids. Teachers asked for and we gave them a set of term by term benchmarks that includes both the Print Acquisition skills and the broader literacy understandings, competencies and knowledge captured in the new curriculum.

To go along with these common standards and continua, we've provided 6 optional assessment tools for teachers to use or adapt for their purposes. The 6 optional assessment tools are focussed on the Print Acquisition continua. We think this is information teachers need to have about all their students. How teachers are able to get that information can change from class to class and from student to student.

For each area of Oral Language, Reading and Writing, teachers have access to an Observation Frame, a Class Profile, and an Interview Protocol. Each interview protocol includes both metacognition/self-concept questions, feedback and goal setting.

The entire collection of tools and resources can be found in the google folder below:

Delta Kindergarten Literacy Assessment Google Folder

We view all these documents as works in progress and are actively inviting feedback from our teachers as they implement this year. Other thoughts and feedback are also welcome :)

Richmond Report

May 23, 2014
Changing Results for Young Readers
Richmond School District has continued to support Changing Results for Young Readers.  The four schools involved recently completed their case studies and submitted them.  The last meeting confirmed that positive relationships with students and responsive practice has made a difference for our students.
The team attended the April Conference and enjoyed hearing Pat Johnson, author of Catching Readers Before They Fall.

Finding Joy in Teaching Reading

This post is inspired by Jen Barker and her blog post about her one little word for 2014, JOY.  Her post connected me to a post about finding joy in school and learning by Chris Kennedy.  Today, with my colleague Marie, I spoke to parents about reading with children and the focus of our session was making reading joyful.

I think sometimes the pressure we feel to get all students reading at level xyz by a certain date, darkens our vision and makes the joy of reading harder to find.

 Find Joy in Teaching Reading:

1. Joy is contagious.  Share your own love of reading with your students.

2.  Read out loud to your students, daily, no matter what age.

3. Build a community of readers who share books, make recommendations and talk about books.

4.  Put phonics and phonemic awareness in their place.  There is a place for both of these pieces of the puzzle, but they are just that, pieces of the puzzle.

5.  Focus on meaning.  Reading is making meaning and interacting with text.  When we teach for meaning and teach students to think while their reading, this allows them to interact more freely with text and come to a better understanding of what they are reading.

6.  Let there be choice.  Time to read just right books (fluency level) and time to read just right books (passion level).

"Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him." -Maya Angelou

This post first appeared on Literacy in the Elementary Classroom by Lisa Schwartz, Teacher Consultant SD38 Richmond