1. Student- and Teacher-Friendly Assessment That Turns Kids into Readers Presented at the 7 th Annual Western Canadian First Nations Administrators Education Symposium Enoch Cree Nation, March 9, 10, 11, 2011 Douglas B. Rogers, Ed.D. Student Learning Assessment and Performance Measures Lead, First Nation Student Success Program, Kwayaciiwin Education Resource Centre After March 31, 2011: Education Director, Baby Steps to Reading [email_address]

2. “ The elementary school must assume as its sublime and most solemn responsibility the task of teaching every child in it to read. Any school that does not accomplish this has failed.” --William John Bennett

4. Skillists vs Eruditionists The Philosophical Baby: What Children's Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love and the Meaning of Life. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2009. Look at these observations from Debra Black’s review, “What's Going on in the Brain of a Baby?” in the Toronto Star (Black, August 16, 2009) .

5. Skillists vs Eruditionists "We've discovered very young children – even babies – have powerful learning mechanisms such as the ability to do statistics, do experiments and use logic. They help them determine what the world is like. One of the basic questions is how do we get truth about the world. Well, we have brains that even as young children are designed to let us find out the truth.”

6. Skillists vs Eruditionists “ Before I was a teacher, I used to work on a farm giving field trips to classes. I would take classes through the farm, teaching about the animals, the role of the farm, the farm community, etc., and then we would pick pumpkins out in the field and go on a nature hike in the back forest. Since we were just in the greenbelt outside of Toronto, we did get many groups from the city.

7. Skillists vs Eruditionists “ One day, I had a kindergarten class from downtown take the bus up. I knew right away that the kids didn't have much experience on a farm when they stepped off of the bus, so I tried to make everything really accessible for them. When we got to the cow, I began to talk about it giving them facts about the animal as clues as to its identity, and as I did I noticed one kid's eyes getting big. When I asked if anyone knew what the animal was, he started waving his hand frantically.

8. Skillists vs Eruditionists “ Now you have to picture the day -- it was October, so a bit chilly and the cow's breath was fogging up. This kid, too, was standing right up near the fence, starring directly up at the cow that towered over him. No one else had any clue, so I chose him. "I know I know! It's a dragon!" he shouted completely wide eyed.”

9. The Simple View of Reading Reading comprehension is a product of a person’s word recognition or reading of single words and listening comprehension .

10. Learning to read is just learning to understand language we see rather than hear.

12. Coltheart’s Dual Route Theory

16. Determine each student’s current reading ability

17. Begin a reading diagnosis of a JK student with the Environmental Print Reading Test

18. If the student seems to know few or no words, administer the Knowledge of Text Conventions Subtest

19. Knowledge of Text Conventions Subtest word s Here is a sentence. ____________________________________________ Once upon a time, three pigs went out into the world. The first pig decided to build himself a house of straw. The second pig decided to build herself a house of sticks. The third pig decided to build herself a house of bricks.

22. Continue with the Alphabet Knowledge Subtest.

23. If the student seems to read some words already, administer the San Diego Quick Assessment: Graded Word List.

24. San Diego Quick Assessment: Graded Word List, grade 6 list bridge commercial abolish trucker apparatus elementary comment necessity gallery relativity

25. Teachers can use the results of the graded word list to identify, tentatively, material students can read easily.

26. Continue by determining current independent and instructional reading levels by having the student read graduated text, using an informal reading inventory or leveled books.

39. If the student is independently reading below the fourth grade level, look at progress in learning to read single words.

40. The teacher may want to assess the student’s progress in learning to recognize automatically the most common words in English (e.g., the words on Dolch’s (1942) Basic Sight Word Test).

43. Word Wall

44. The teacher may want to the student’s phonics skills.

45. Coltheart’s Dual Route Theory

46. Administer the Pretest of Decoding Mastery if you wonder Can the student read words automatically?

48. If the student is unable to read the polysyllabic words, proceed to the Fundamental Code Phonics Subtest.

53. If students show weak phonic analysis skills or limited sight vocabulary, the teacher should assess the student’s phonemic awareness and knowledge of concepts about print, using, for example, the Phonemic Awareness Subtest from the RPT

57. Determine the Student’s Listening Comprehension Level

58. The Simple View of Reading Reading comprehension is a product of a person’s word recognition or reading of single words and listening comprehension .

59. Learning to read is just learning to understand language we see rather than hear.

62. If the student can recognize words automatically, assess how well the student can read to learn: Determine how to help the student read to learn

70. More about study-reading: Rogers, Douglas B. (1984). “Assessing study skills.” Journal of Reading, 27, pp. 346-354.

71. After assessing current literacy performance, consider related factors that you may have to consider to differentiate instruction

75. If we’ve assessed and taught word recognition well and helped children develop an understanding of more of the world including the topics in the curriculum, they will earn high scores on any literacy test we give them.