I agree that if you have a student having difficulties, you need to try to figure out what's going on. Is the student coming to school unprepared to learn? Is the focus of the family away from education? Does the student have a learning dissability? Was there something they missed in an earlier grade / lesson?
As I read the article, however, I noticed they were mainly speaking about early learning, not upper grades. I think teachers in these grades are much more comfortable with the diagnostic process than middle and high school teachers, and have access to resources the upper teachers do not. That being said, we teachers in the upper grades recognize many of our students have problems, we jsut don't know what to do about it.
Currently, the common practice seems to be to focus on those kids that can be fixed quickly so test scores will rise. It seems the focus is on the test, not the students. I've been told some students are too low to qualify for the "enrichment" classes. In other words, they weren't a "bubble" kid so there wasn't enough time to bring them to "meets the standard".
I guess my questions for the authors would be along the lines of :
1) I have a class of 27 students, 5 of which are around a third grade reading level, 7 are on a fifth grade level, and 6 are on sixth grade level. The rest are around grade level. No one is above grade level. In 60 minutes, with 27 students and no assistance, how do you effectively test and diagnose problems? Did I mention I have some of the top discipline problems int he school in there as well? Oh, and 4 are SST kids.
2) What assessments do I use? After that, what materials? I have a basal reader and my own paperbacks.
3) I know some sorts of testing were done at the elementary level, but where do we see the results?
4) In a regular education middle school class, how do you remediate and teach the standards at the same time?
The average upper grade teacher needs validation that what they have been seeing is in fact true. This article gives us that: you have to be able to DO something with all that data that's been collected. Now, help us by giving us specifics.
You use your small groups to differentiate, just as I saw you do so expertly on the fall focus walk. Diagnostically, use the QRI-5 and if necessary for some students, a phonics inventory once to determine the degree of intervention needed. Remember, this is not just the responsibility of the English teacher, but of science, social studies, and technology teachers who must, yes must, integrate content literacy in their discipline, as mandated by the Common Core GA Performance Standards. It is exciting to be asking these questions and to be an active part of finding workable solutions!
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