Assessment

Mrs. Coronado and Ms. Hunter use daily, informal observation and monitoring as part of their decoding and fluency instruction. This monitoring provides them with information about their students' strengths, weaknesses, needs, and progress. Such continuous informal assessment allows the teachers to adjust lessons to provide additional practice as needed and plan for Workshop.

Individual progress with decoding and fluency activities is likely to vary among students. Therefore, Mrs. Coronado and Ms. Hunter observe the students closely as they conduct activities, noting differences among the students. Eventually, they will use this information to develop instructional plans for individuals and small groups.

To make informal observation of decoding and fluency an easy and regular part of your classroom routine, you might want to do the following:

• Before beginning an activity or lesson, decide which students you want to observe.
• Decide which aspects of the students' learning you want to observe.
• Keep a notebook nearby, and record notes as appropriate. For example, you might answer the following questions:
  • - Are all students catching on to the activities?
  • - Are some activities more difficult than others? (For example: Are the sound-by-sound blending activities easier for the students than whole-word blending activities? Which words are problems: words with long-vowel spellings, multisyllable words, or others? Are some of the students having trouble with whole-word dictation?)
• Over several days, observe each student in the class. (It is not necessary to collect information about every student every day.)
• How are students using their knowledge from dictation when they are writing throughout the day? Go through student writing, find examples of regular words that are common problems, and dictate them during Workshop. Then have students go back in their own work, proofread, and make corrections.
• How are students using their knowledge of blending when they are reading both during the language arts period and throughout the day? Some students will need to be encouraged to use their blending skills when they read outside the language arts block of time. Observe students throughout the day for their application of blending and fluency while reading.

A chart, such as the following, can help you keep track of your students' progress with blending.

• Click here to view the Observation Log: Blending.
  
  
  

Monitoring fluency

You can monitor each student's growth in reading fluency simply by listening to him or her read a timed passage. These passages, which are part of every End-of-Unit Assessment and can be found in each of the Open Court Reading Unit Assessment books, help Mrs. Coronado know that her students are becoming fluent readers. If you are using SRA Imagine It! fluency passages can be found in each of the SRA Imagine It! Lesson Assessment books.

The chart below shows the rate in words per minute at which students should be reading with accuracy and inflection at different times of the school year.

Grade	Beginning of School Year	Middle of School Year	End of School Year	Percentiles
Grade 2	79	100	117	75th percentile
	51	72	89	50th percentile
Grade 3	99	120	137	75th percentile
	71	92	107	50th percentile
Grade 4	119	139	152	75th percentile
	94	112	123	50th percentile
Grade 5	139	156	168	75th percentile
	110	127	139	50th percentile
Grade 6	153	167	177	75th percentile
	127	140	150	50th percentile

Source: Adapted from Hasbrouck, J., & Tindal, G.(2005).Oral Reading Fluency: 90 Years of Measurement (Tech. Ref. No. 33). Eugene, Oregon: University of Oregon College of Education, Behavioral Research and Teaching.

Open Court Reading and SRA Imagine It! also include formal assessments that you may use to determine your students' progress in decoding and fluency.