Measuring Growth in Reading

As you prepare for upcoming conferences and SLO work, you'll find the information below 

to be a good reminder!  

When we are discussing literacy growth, we are challenged by Fountas and Pinnell, to Look Beyond the Numbers. When talking about student growth, we not only need to share the increase of levels students should be completing, but we also need to be sharing the reading behaviors associated with these levels. As professionals, we must emphasize these behaviors in order to increase parent understanding of the great complexity involved in learning to read and write. The levels are often viewed as simply letters rather than standing for behaviors that need to be executed with proficiency and efficiency at each level in order to advance to the next gradient. We need to help parents develop an understanding that much work is required to move from one level of behaviors to another. 

Fountas and Pinnell don’t advocate talking to parents about levels, as parents may see reading levels as a competition and their child needs the highest “score” possible - which is not their purpose of the levels.  The levels are categories of expected behaviors. When talking to parents, include the language of the behaviors.  As students proress, your instruction should focus on expanding the understanding in the level,  as well as one grade level higher, using the goals and expectations and the characteristics of texts to guide your planning.  

We continue to use the monthly and quarterly progress monitoring tools that Fountas and Pinnell have created as a guidelinee. As we set goals for our students, we need to consider the number of levels each student will increase, but we also need to focus on identifying learning objectives for each student. If our focus is on increasing levels only, even for data gathering, we may push children without teaching the foundational strategies needed at each level (which is often why children may drop three to five levels in a fall assessment). The teacher's focus has to be on individual students and the appropriate reading behaviors needed at each level for each child to be successful at climbing the text gradient ladder.

Good luck with your upcoming work!
Sue