Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Free Character Unit Assessments

Hello darlings!  It has been FOREVER since I have posted. (Amy here)  Poor Shelley has had to keep the blog alive for the past few weeks as I was getting ready for my sister's wedding!  Thanks Shell!   Melanie's wedding was on Saturday and it was beautiful!  She was breathtaking!  Now, I had to swear I wouldn't put any wedding pics out into cyberspace until she did, so I am waiting for her to get back from her honeymoon. =)

I wanted to share some resources about reading workshop with you lovies.  My school is doing two book studies at the moment. The first is Teaching Reading in Small Groups by Jennifer Serravallo. The second is the Units of Study for Reading by Lucy Calkins.  I would HIGHLY recommend your school purchase these!

                                                       

We started off the units with a resource that our Literature Coach gave us.  I found a copy on a website when I was searching for resources.  Click on the pic to download.



Here is an overview of the Units.



So....we just finished the first Unit: Building a Reading Life, which sets up the workshop and sets up reading partnerships.  We are now moving on to Unit 2: Following Characters into Meaning.  I am not going to summarize all that we will be doing since it is described in detail in the download you can find above.  I will give you a few FREE resources that we will be using to assess our kiddos.



To use: (Distribute the pretest before the start of the unit.) Choose a read aloud text to share with the whole class. I used Poppy by Avi and gave the test in the middle of the novel. After students complete the pretest, sort them into 1's (not getting it) to 5's (outstanding). Use this info to guide your minilessons, conferences, and small groups. 

Use the tally list during conferences to keep track of deficient skills.

At the end of the unit, complete the Post assessment the same way you did the pre assessment. You can use a different book.

I hope this can help someone out there in this big place called cyberspace!


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