This is week 2 of our Guided Reading book study. We are using the book The Next Step in Guided Reading by Jan Richardson. This chapter is all about assessment and grouping.

I do my assessments on the first couple of weeks of school. On the first weeks of school, we focus on activities that will help our students become familiar with and practice rules and procedures. I also like to incorporate thematic units that will make learning a little more interesting. The literature that I use in the beginning of the school year lends itself to activities that lead up to an assessment.

As a follow-up activity, our students create a coconut tree craft. They simply cut a pre-made template for a trunk and tree top then add little brown coconuts. Students will assemble and glue the tree on colorful construction paper. I love to use yellow, orange or blue as the background to make the tree stand out. This craft is done with a purpose in mind. But for now, it will be set aside to dry.

During the week, I call on students to my table. I work with one student at a time during independent work activities. The student will be presented with a Letter Identification sheet and I will have one behind a book where I can mark on letters that are identified correctly. In the beginning of the school year, I do like to use an alphabet chart where the letters are printed in correct sequence.  I do not want to trick the student with random letters and have them stress out during their first assessment. I want this to be a pleasant experience. Even though the letters are printed in alphabetical order, I do point to random letters. I do not mind if they begin to point to each letter as they recite the alphabet. I want to see that they are able to recite the alphabet correctly, have one to one correspondence and are good problem solvers. The letters marked correctly on my sheet are the ones that he/she was able to read easily without much thought.

Here is a free copy of these letter identification assessment sheets.

Next, I will give each student pre-made alphabet stickers. These stickers are created with simple bright dots that I buy at Wal-Mart. I simply use a sharpie to write the letters on them. Now, students will decorate their trees with the alphabet stickers. This will be a good visual for them and for myself so that we can see how many letters are mastered and how many more we need to work on. The students will take their coconut trees home when they master all the letters and acquire all the alphabet stickers.

A copy of my marked student sheet will be placed in the student’s daily folder. This will be a good visual for students and parents to see which letters they need to work on every day. I will assess the students once a week and mark the mastered letters in their folders. Students and parents have a great  sense of accomplishment as they see this weekly progress.

I use the data collected from this assessment to create my guided reading groups. This data information also comes in very handy when start creating table groups. I want to make sure that each table group has a mixture of abilities so that these students may learn from each other.