Documentation of Progress: Teacher monitors student's progress in reading and writing through systematic observation.

• Provides basis for instruction
• Provides information for forming guided reading groups 
• Provides information for appropriate text selection

Formal Assessment Provides a Snapshot View 

• Stanford Nine and other norm referenced tests
• LAPA Scores
• District Assessment based on CORE Curriculum
• Informal Reading Comprehension Placement Test, Middle School Computer Assessment
• Informal Reading Inventory, Elementary Textbook Adoption

Ongoing Assessment Records Evolving Progress

• Talking and listening to students (formal/informal conferences)
• Talking with parents or other teachers (formal/informal conferences, explanation of formal and informal assessment procedures, sharing student word samples) 
• Observational Notes (anecdotal records, checklists) 
• Samples of student work (portfolios, writing samples, journals, cloze tests)
• Listen to student read (informal/formal running records, miscue analysis

Assessing Students for Grouping and Instruction 

The most useful source of information about students' instructional levels is observations teachers make on a daily basis. The following types of informal assessments are appropriate for documenting students' literacy performance and academic growth:

• Observation checklists
• Anecdotal notes
• Running records
• Student portfolios
• Teacher/student conference notes
• Student learning logs

Assessment provides documentation about what students know and can do. The primary purpose of assessment is to gather data to inform literacy instruction. If assessment does not result in improved teaching, its educational student learning value diminishes. Assessment allows teachers to see the results of their instruction and to make judgments about students' literacy development.

Observation by teachers provides the following: 

• Valid information about what students know and can do
• Reliable systematic observations about students' progress and development
• Evaluation of student progress as a basis for flexible grouping
• Validation of progress for parents and students
• Authentic feedback that drives the instructional program and connects with the CORE Curriculum

When teachers review their observations and other informally collected data about students' literacy development, it is important to have an organized system in order to document academic growth. A rubric is one method of organizing informal assessment data.

• Design rubrics that have guidelines for observation, assessment, and evaluation
• Create rubrics that are both process and product based
• Assess and/or evaluate students' literacy performance and progress based on the picture of each student's progress and achievement that emerges 

Guide for Observing Reading Behavior

Student(s):

• Directional movement/return sweep
• One to one matching
• Uses meaning cues
• Uses structure cues
• Uses initial letters/sounds
• Uses final letters/sounds
• Uses chunks of words
• Integrates cues
• Rereads
• Recognizes basic vocabulary
• Self-monitors
• Self-corrects
• Cross checks
• Searches
• Uses fluency, phrasing, expression
• Views self as a reader
• Indicates comprehension
• Participates in discussion
• Looks for main ideas
• Looks for details
• Connects to personal experience
• Thinks about what will happen
• Self- questions
• Summarizes during reading
• Summarizes after reading
• Asks self whether he/she likes the selection
• Asks self whether he/she agrees with ideas or characters
• Compares and contrasts selection with others he/she has read

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