End-of-Year Screeners Collected

I gathered most of the end-of-year maze fluency screeners from the teachers today.  It will be interesting to see how well these screeners align with their end-of-year MAP tests and teacher recommendations for interventions.  Some of the teachers diligently gave the assessments while others did not.  It seems that those who believed in the value of the data were the ones who made it part of their weekly routine.  Those who do not feel this type of data is helpful in making instructional decisions were the ones who did not seem to find a way to fit it into the weekly routine.  The ones who fit it in well were the ones who did it as part of their guided reading group as they currently group by reading level.  All the lowest readers are in one reading group, so they gave the maze fluency to the entire group one of the times they met with them that week.

New Schedule Working

The third grade teachers were now able to give the progress monitoring measure this week to all three boys.  I have suggested that they give two measures next week to catch up and have enough data on the slope of their improvement so that we can make some decisions. This aligns with the research I conducted as part of my review of literature.

Difficulty Following Progress Monitoring Regimen

We are seeming to have trouble with the progress monitoring regimen in the regular classrooms.  Two teachers are consistently giving the measures and we now have enough data to make some instructional decisions.  Three other classrooms are either not even started or only have one or two measures given.  It is a bit frustrating as they had agreed to do the pilot of the progress monitoring regimen and now are not following through.  I am going to meet with the teachers to determine what the struggles are with the regimen and help them to problem solve to figure out how to make it work.

Scheduling Difficulties Resolved

I found out that the third grade classrooms were struggling as they were trying to give the measure to all three boys at one time.  The time when two of the boys are available, the other one is not.  Together, we figured out that they could give the measure at the beginning of the school day while the other teacher was doing the opening.  As the measure only takes about 3 minutes in all to administer, they thought this would work.  We will see if our plan now works.

Students Want to Take Maze Fluency Probes

I am finding it quite surprising that some students, who are not low readers, are asking if they can take the probes along with the students who do need to take them.  The teachers are allowing them to take the probes as they feel it will destigmatize the students who do need to take them.  The students are stating that they think they are fun! Who would have known?

Coenen Data Meeting

Jackie, Linda and I met today to discuss the data for Jackie's students who are being progress monitored.  She prefers to score the passages herself and share the results with the students.  She feels this helps the students to see their progress in a more timely manner.  As our final goal is to have the teachers scoring and charting the progress monitoring data themselves, this is a very welcome idea!

Maze Fluency Assessment Procedures

I gave all the copies of the maze fluency screeners along with the teacher directions to the teachers.  I met individually with each one to explain the procedure and how important it is to stick with the fidelity of the assessment.  The directions I wrote out were written in script format so that the teacher could just read what I wrote.  The most important parts are that the students keep the passages face down until they are told to begin as well as to put their pencils down as soon as they are done.  Of course, as with any selected response assessment, the teachers needed to also make sure that the students could not copy from one another.  I explained that the time to give the assessment is only worthwhile if the results are valid.  They seemed to understand that.