"Diagnosis" The Missing Ingredient in RTI Assessment"

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.

Note taking lesson - II

Starting Monday, the students are going to take the notes they have written and plug the note numbers into a 4-square.  After that, they're going to construct an outline, edit it, and finally write a short paper on wolves. 

Keep your fingers crossed.  I'm hoping modeling the process for them and then having them work with me will give them a leg up on research writing.

Judy

note-taking lesson

Some of the standards for ELA cover researching and writing papers.  I did a lesson today on notetaking that seemed to help get them started in the right direction. 

First - I found some general directions on notetaking - skim first, look at headings, captions, structure of passage (bold print words, etc.) before starting to take notes and put it on a Word document so I could project it.

Next - I cut / pasted three short passages on wolves into word document - with web addresses

I put the first page of directions on the screen and just briefly read over them with the kids.  Then I put up the passages.  As per the directions, they could tell me what they needed to do first.  I modeled skimming and thinking aloud about the structure / headings.

Next they got out a sheet of paper and we practiced taking down just facts from what we read.  (Somewhere I saw to explain to them it's like texting: you don't text whole sentences, just facts / key words.) 

We only did the first passage today, so I'm going to move on to the 2nd and 3rd tomorrow.  I think notetaking was becoming a bit clearer.  I hope so; they have a major research paper they will be starting for science in a few weeks!

Judy

"Strategies that Work"

I have this book in the first edition from when I took Literacy Coach training several summers ago.  It has very workable things to do with the students in a regular class, not just for when you have the staff to pull out small groups for individualized attention.  Not only do they describe the strategy, they also explain how it works in a real class, and show you examples of student-generated work.  According to the website, the newer edition has more strategies and even has a free PDF study guide to go along with it.  Doc, the strategies will work with higher grades as well - they aren't just elementary.

Judy

http://www.stenhouse.com/shop/pc/viewPrd.asp?idcategory=0&idproduct=310


 

Strategies That Work

Teaching Comprehension for Understanding and Engagement, Second Edition

Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis
Since its publication in 2000, Strategies That Work has become an indispensable resource for teachers who want to explicitly teach thinking strategies so that students become engaged, thoughtful, independent readers. In this revised and expanded edition, Stephanie and Anne have added twenty completely new comprehension lessons, extending the scope of the book and exploring the central role that activating background knowledge plays in understanding. Another major addition is the inclusion of a section on content literacy which describes how to apply comprehension strategies flexibly across the curriculum.
View the study guide that accompanies Strategies That Work. The guide is in PDF format so you will need the free Acrobat Reader on your computer.

• Related Titles

Common Core website

When I was going to the CC website, I typed in the address wrong...and ended up at a site run by teachers sharing ideas on the CC.  Go to http://www.commoncore.org/ instead of the http://www.corestandards.org/ we've been using.

QRI-5

I've just finished the introductory pages.  I found "look-backs effective grade 3 and higher" very interesting.  Especially since I've been very frustrated with the inability many of my social studies students to NOT be able to do jsut that. 

We only have "Coach" style books to use for textbooks, and whatever we are able to glean from the internet.  The book has the standard in a grey box with a short (1-6 paragraph) minilesson underneath.  That is followed by a few multiple choice questions.  I find that even when we go over the mini-lesson, and I give them background to help them understand, many are unable to find the answers in the short passage above.  None of my group exceeded the standard last year, and 7 did not meet.  I'm using all sorts of tricks - charts, graphs, etc.  Very frustrating.

I have this group for reading as well, and this 9 weeks is a non-fiction focus.  Maybe getting it in 2 classes will help!

Proust and the Squid

I went to the library here in Rome and got their copy of Proust and the Squid.  I didn't think I'd have time over hte break to read it, but with grades being "captured" Wednesday instead of Sunday, it looks like I'll have the break to read it!  I started chapter 1 ont he way home - yes, I read at redlights - and it sounds pretty interesting.  I'll keep you updated.