Assessment Plan

Assessment:

     I am going to focus my assessment plan on reading.  I feel that reading is very important skill to focus assessment on because it is a skill that is the basis for all of the other fundamentals of school.  Reading is something that we have to do on an everyday basis. 

    In order to know where a student stands with his/her reading skills we have to assess the reading skills first.  The first form of assessment I would do is a running record.  A running record is a great way to quickly assess what the student’s skills are.  To complete a running record I would have my student read a passage or a book.  As the student is reading aloud I would have a copy of the passage/book and make notations while the student is reading.  While at my student teaching placement I administered a running record nearly every week.  I did this with the kindergarten student I taught.  I wanted to see if his/her reading accuracy had improved over the weeks that I was student teaching.

     Another way to assess a student’s reading abilities is comprehension questions.  Comprehension questions allow the instructor to see how well the student is comprehending what he/she is reading.  For younger students the instructor can ask the questions directly after reading the book.  This could be done verbally or with sign, depending on the student’s communication mode.  For older students they could be given a quiz after reading the book or a chapter.  I think that it is important to start implementing comprehension questions in the classroom at an early age because as a student progress in the schooling process comprehension questions will show up all the time and not just in the student’s reading class. 

     Another informal assessment that I would complete in my classroom is the Basic Reading Inventory.  This assessment determines three reading levels; independent, instructional, and frustration. It also helps identify the student’s strengths and weakness in word recognition, comprehension, and listening. This assessment is criterion based.

     A formal reading assessment that could be completed in the classroom is the Metropolitan Achievement Test.  This test assesses word recognition, reading vocabulary, and reading comprehension. 

     I think that it is very difficult to choose which reading assessment to use in your classroom, there are so many to choose from.  On the DESE website you can find a very large list of both informal and formal reading assessments that you can use in your classroom.  The assessments that I listed are just a few.  I think that it is important to complete reading assessment so that you can gain a better knowledge of how your student functioning in the classroom with his/her reading skills.

Last week in APRIL!!!

Well we have almost made it to the finish line!!! This week I have been frantically working on completing all of my artifacts and finishing my online website.  I am finding both of these to be a very difficult task because I do not have the Internet at my house any more.  Therefore, I have been spending far too much time sitting in the school computer lab.  Good luck to everyone finishing up all of the school stuff!!! Hang in there!

MY LAST WEEK

Well, tomorrow is my last day here at my placement.  Let me catch you up on last week and this one.  TESTING!!! That is really all that we have been doing.  I think that both the students and teachers will be happy when Friday gets here and they are finished testing.  I think it is going to be so weird not to coming to my placement everyday.  Hopefully, this will give me some time to finish up my artifacts!  I have really enjoyed my time here! 

3rd to last week

Last week has already come and gone.  The weeks seem to be just flying by.  Last week was my cooperating teacher's birthday...we had a big celebration!  All of the classes here are really getting prepared for benchmark testing.  Testing starts 4/4 for the younger grades and 4/11 for the older grades.  You can really feel the stress of the test creeping up on both the students and the teachers.  Hopefully, all will go well!  This Saturday I was able to see most of the EDHH girls when we presented our graduate projects!  It was sooooooo NICE to get to sit down and have lunch with the girls and get caught up on all the student teaching gossip!  I suppose I will see some of you on the Praxis test day.  Good luck to those of you who have their final evaluations this week!

Week before SPRING BREAK & SPRING BREAK

Last week was all kind of a blur.  It seemed as though it just flew by and before I knew it it was Monday and our university supervisor was at my school giving me my final grade.  All went well!  We are currently on Spring BREAK and it has been wonderful!  It has been a much needed break! 

Unit 5: Chapter 6

Unit 5(Chap 6): Based on Cummins’ (1989, 1991) theory of linguistic interdependence, the BiBi programs in deaf education focus on development of a natural sign language, and later, acquisition of a second language through the medium of print. However, empirical evidence supporting or opposing the practice is rare. CAEBER (Center for ASL/English Bilingual Education and Research) is one of the best-known BiBi program in the US. Conduct a mini research on the program and provide your rationale for the reported data showing that the reading comprehension scores on the SAT (9^th) for 8- to 18-year-olds in their BiBi program were no higher than those reported by Traxler (2000) for all deaf and hard of hearing children in the SAT (9^th) normative sample, although 33% of the students in the CAEBER sample had deaf parents.

I think that this is a very difficult question to answer.  I think that there could be many different variables that could affect the test scores for the students.

One question to ask is what is the parents’ mode of communication?  Students can only spend so much time at school.  If their parents are using ASL at home and the student is only using written English at school this could create a problem.  I believe that we need to see if the parents know any written English or if they strictly use ASL all the time.  Another thing I believe needs to be looked is there any other languages being used in the home besides ASL and English?  What if the student uses ASL at school with his/her friends, English when reading and writing, and then they go home and their parents are speaking Spanish?  This seems like it could be very confusing for a child. 

Another question to ask is what is the parents’ reading comprehension level?  If students are given reading work to take home who are they getting them to help them with it?  Their parents.  I have noticed at my student teaching placement that a lot of the times students are required to take simple books home and read them aloud with a parent.  If the parent only uses ASL to communicate the chances are the student will in turn use ASL to sign the story to his/her parent.  Also, if the parent is not reading past a third grade reading level how are they supposed to help the student once the student has made the transition from learning to read to reading to learn?

We also need to look at the teachers who are teaching these students English as a second language.  Just because you know English and you can speak it does not mean that you are capable of teaching it. I think to properly teach English as a second language you need training to do so.  I know that I would not feel comfortable teaching English as a second language.  I would feel the need to go through a lot of training to ensure that I was doing justice for the student.

Ultimately, I understand that the focus of this program is for the student to have acquired a natural sign language first and then acquire English as a secondary language.  I just think that there are too many factors to say the program is unsuccessful or successful.  I think that you cannot judge the program on a whole basis because each individual student’s life and language is going to be very different. 

Chapter 9-11

*The authors suggest: “The model in which itinerant or visiting teachers consult with the regular classroom teacher and provide individual or small group tutoring or pre-learning activities is becoming prevalent, but frequently there is no time for consultation among the itinerant teachers, general education teachers, and other providers of student services, creating potential impediments to student progress” (p. 169). What is your opinion on the increasingly popular practice of itinerant services for students who are DHH?

Right now at my placement my teacher is an itinerant teacher.  She directly sees eight students.  She indirectly and consults with about 60 students.  This means that she may go and check their equipment if there is a problem.  She checks their grades to make sure they are succeeding in their classes.  She may go to their IEP meeting.  Within the eight students she sees directly there are ages from kindergarten to 7th grade.  Her instruction has to vary greatly within this age range.  She also pulls some of these students out, but with most of them she pushes in and she goes into the classroom to help teach them.  Last semester my practicum teacher was also itinerant.  I can see how this method can be well liked by the school district.  This one teacher is serving many different students, at different levels, and at different schools.  Like the book says it does require a lot of coordination between the teachers and the staff.  After being at my placement I can see how this can be very difficult to do.  I know most of the teachers have some kind of meeting, club, extracurricular, or something to do after school.  My school starts at 7:15, so it would be difficult for the teachers to meet before hand.  Then, teachers have to do their staffing meeting and so much more. I think it is a great idea to get the regular education teacher to be involved with students who are deaf or hard of hearing.  However, I think that it can be difficult to find the time to help regular education teachers with teaching strategies for students who are deaf or hard of hearing.  I do think that if there is open communication between the teachers via email or phone that it can help with this consultation time.  I think that being an itinerant would be a really fun job to have because you would be getting to see so many different students within the day.  I can also see the benefit to have a full inclusion classroom or a classroom where pulled out of their regular classes.  Again, I think that as the deaf educator we have to do what is going to be best for the student and that student's learning needs.