Running+Record+Assessment

Kelly Nolan Dr. McKool Running Record March 29th, 2011 **  Introduction to Student    ** Jim is a Kindergartner who falls in about the middle rage for writing, reading and math. He is in the middle reading group and seems to be keeping up with this group quite well. When I asked my teacher which students I could perform this running record on she gave me one student from each of the three reading group and asked them all to read the same book. For the first one this book was independent level, for the second this book was borderline frustration but for Jim this book was just between instructional and independent. I have seen him read several other similar texts with nearly the same results. I also observed him during guided reading and I have seen him use many strategies that will help him improve his reading. I for all of these reasons I chose to use him as my subject for this assessment. **  Purpose of Assessment   ** Learning to read is a critical and crucial part of the primary grades. If a student does not progress in reading in these grades they will be at a consistent disadvantage throughout the rest of their schooling and more than likely the rest of their life. In these early grades we should be constantly assessing to students to see how their reading is progress and what strategies they are using to help themselves become better readers. We also do a lot of guided reading with these students and we need to asses them to be able to place them in homogenous reading groups. It is critical that these groups be homogenous so that the book the group is reading is instructional level for all students. These running records also inform us of students decoding development (R&C pg42). The MSV analysis we used for this assessment “enables you to determine whether the student uses three primary cueing strategies when she encounters new words and a miscue occurs (R&C pg43). When we know what cueing strategies students are using we are able to better instruct them of other strategies or help them develop the ones they are using to increase fluency. **  Methodology   ** According to Linda Chen and Mira Flores a running record consists of a teacher watching and making notes about children's reading behavior while they both have the same texts in front of them (pg147). For this assessment I took the students into the hallway individually and had them read me a book called // Blackberries // from the Rigby PM Story Books series. My teacher provided me with a copy of the book that was already set up to do a running record with MSV Analysis. I listened carefully to the children read and I marked their miscues in the way we were instructed in // The Essentials of Teaching Children to Read // by Reutzel and Cooter. During this time I also audio recorded the students so I could easily listen to it again and check my work. The marking included checking when the child read the word correctly and marking miscues such as pausing, repeating, omitting and inserting words, and noting when children read a word incorrectly or appealed for help. **  Findings   ** Through this assessment it became apparent to me that Jim relies very heavily on visual cues. A visual miscue means that the word that was miscued looks similar to the actual written words. It may have the same first letter or a similar word structure (R&C 43). These kinds of miscues are “an important factor to consider when trying to better understand the decoding skills employed by developing readers” (R&C 43). Although there relies heavily on these kinds of clues he does use semantic and structure sometimes. Most of his other miscues made sense in the sentence and grammatically as well as looked correct. He is using very good strategies’ when reading a he did not appeal for my help at all during the book. This tells me he feel confident in what he is reading and in my opinion confidence in reading is very important for young children. If they feel that they can do it they are going to be more willing to try and take risks that will help them to become better, more fluent readers. **  Forming Instruction   ** Knowing that Jim relies heavily on visual cues for reading I would first help him to develop this strategy further. I would make sure he had a box of sight words that he would recognize just by seeing and I would teach him different letter combination sounds that he could recognize by sight. I would do many lessons on sight words and also make sure I had an extensive word wall in addition to his sight word box. I would also make sure to instruct him to make sure he is looking at every letter in the word so he does not continue to just look at the first few letters. I would then give him some instruction in the other strategies. I would tell him to make sure that the words he is reading make sense both grammatically and otherwise. If the word does not seem to fit in the sentence he should use his visual cues and look at the letters in the word and try and think of words with those letters that make sense. Finally I would make sure to pick books with easily recognizable words for him to read during independent reading and words I want him to learn during instructional reading. Overall Jims reading seemed to be on grade level and the text I used was just right for him. As far as I can tell he will continue to make gains and stay on grade level with the strategies he is using.