One of the things I am most passionate about is independence in my learners.
In the beginning of first grade, I think that some level of support is appropriate, but…the overall goal is independence. If a student is given the task to read independently it should always be with on grade level text. Period. I am not sure where the idea of rigor went off the rails with publishing companies, but it did. I made these assessments and leveled each one.
They have firstie friendly sight words and lots of short vowel words that an on grade level student can decode easily. At this time of the year. When I’m starting to teach them how to test, I sometimes will read part of the test to them, and let them read the rest. I try to keep in mind that the overarching goal here is to see that students can read on grade level text independently…so, if I am giving some level of support on tests and my grades are high, I scale back on the support for the next assessment. It takes time to learn your class and what they are able to do. Use your best judgment when you’re giving assessments to your learners.
Each assessment has three paragraphs and an image to go with each paragraph to support comprehension. There are five questions on each assessment in the first unit. Four of the questions are multiple choice and the last one is short answer. I created an additional sheet with key words from the texts that I’ve provided, so that ELL’s and ESE students can get additional support in a small group setting before the assessment.
I’ve gotten some great questions from teachers about this particular resource and I tried to answer them in this post I did a few months ago. For more information on how I put together these assessments, click HERE to read a post on them.
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