| Contexts for teaching reading at Key Stage 2
Assessing reading: attitudes, experiences, strategies and skills
| Teaching and learning are more successful when assessment is an integral part of the process; when teachers observe, listen, analyse and respond to what children do and say. |
Student teachers need to learn from the beginning that assessment is not an add-on, but a practice that needs to be at the heart of their teaching, shaping the way it develops (Hall, 2007). Often they are so busy devising activities that they forget this.
You will need to help student teachers recognise, and make use of, the assessment opportunities provided by each context for teaching reading. Referring to What children need to learn/possess to become readers will remind them that they need to assess children’s attitudes and experiences as well as skills and strategies.
For example, Literature Circles enable student teachers to assess children’s reading stamina and willingness to read new genres and authors as well as their ability to:
- read well aloud;
- use the cueing systems effectively;
- articulate their use of the cue systems;
- talk about what they have read to make more sense of it;
- listen, respond and learn from each other.
Reading journals enable teachers to evaluate children’s reading attitudes and to become more aware of their abilities ‘to use inference, deduction and previous reading experience to find and appreciate meanings beyond the literal’, as required by the English in the National Curriculum, Attainment Target 2: Reading, level 3. They do, however, need careful modelling and much support if they are to be used successfully (King & Briggs, 2005).
English and Children with Special Educational Needs at Key Stages 1 and 2 - Reading Difficulties: assessment provides detailed explanations of a variety of assessment/recording procedures, including miscue analysis, to use with individual children.
In school, student teachers can often make perceptive assessments about reading ability, recording these in note form or using the Primary Language Record (Barrs et al, 1988), but they often find it difficult to use their findings effectively.
Asking them to conduct a miscue analysis with a child, with whom they have read in a number of contexts, can provide the basis for a written assignment, or for a class session. In either case the emphasis needs to be on ways of using the findings to extend the child as a reader. This can be a very valuable assignment as it enables student teachers to bring together their knowledge and understanding about the reading process itself, and What children need to learn/possess to become readers. You will need to model this whole process in one of your sessions.
National Curriculum Tests
You will need to ensure that student teachers are critically familiar with current testing arrangements, their results (Research with a Primary Focus - Literacy in General and Changing Literacy Scores) and what this data is used for. Examining the nature of reading comprehension for the tests (Hilton, 2001 & 2006; Kispal, 2005) should enable them to recognise the limitations of this kind of testing.
|
