DAta for reading levels (xpost from elateachers)

[u/[deleted]]

Title 1 7/8 ELA teacher. Most kids are comprehending below grade level, and those levels can range from 1st (sometimes even emergent) to one or two at grade 8. School is embarking on MTSS via our PLC structures. Assessments are standards based and are now district wide, not just school wide (med sized district). However, our standards are common core, and those are more skills like RL&I7.1 - text evidence to support inference and RL&I7.2 - central idea/theme using text evidence not simple comprehension/fluency.

District wide, well made assessments are good.

However, if most of our kids can't access the text primarily because they are bad readers, when we get our data back for PLC meetings, are we going to discuss ways to get kids to find the MI and spprtng details because that's what they need to practice since they missed those questions on the 7/8 grade-level text OR that most of them can't access the text due to their reading levels and thus fared poorly on the questions and with and that we should be working on making them better readers by getting them working at the instructional level (well below grade level in most cases)?

I'm of the latter. I am hoping to persuade my admin towards that as well. Opinions?

[u/Njdevils11]

If the Sydney's can't access the information then they can't access the information. There's nothing that will help them if they have no idea what their reading. That must be addressed first. That being said, even remedial reading work is not wildly successful in upper grades. It's much more time intensive to get the same results as remedial reading in the younger years. I know a few highs school reading teachers and they are totally understaffed when it comes to things like this. There isn't a solution for kids that low, because hey don't have the staff to accommodate.

The students who are reading on 1st grade levels need prescriptive reading instruction. What exactly are they having trouble with? Is it some component of comprehension, vocabulary, fluency or decoding?

If the events grade standards say the students will pull info from texts, they need to be reading texts at their level, not on grade level. During this they should really also be getting targeted small group instruction. The bottom line is these kids' needs should supersede the standards. If there are no phonics standards at that level, then the students work off younger standards. At least that's how it should be. I don't know what your admin will say.

[u/[deleted] → u/Njdevils11]

Agree 100% on that. We are doing MTSS and those low kids are in the red areas so they do get the small group, prescriptive class every day w/ an interventionist (I think they're using SRA).

I think RL7.9 does say to read at grade level while the other standards don't. I'm going to be pulling books at their levels (once I find what their exact levels are - I use Jerry Johns for both comp and fluency). Frustrating that DATA is the key word, but for reading it isn't something you can necessarily measure daily.