A running record is a great reading assessment to use when a quick assessment is needed. A running record provides valuable data about the child's decoding strategies and there is specific miscue analysis along with the running record about the types of miscues. I administered this assessment via a Leveled Reading Passage (LRP). An LRP is an assessment widely used in Lincoln Public Schools and it is extremely valuable to have had exposure and practice using this test.
This type of assessment is simple to give. The students are extremely familiar with this type of assessment, which makes the ease of administering this assessment much easier. The students also do not seem to get as nervous or anxious about this test because they are used to it. It is given to all students at the beginning and end of each school year and students identified in the area of reading quarterly. This assessment is also simple to give because there are not a lot of papers or books to shuffle during the assessment. There is just the student's book and the teacher's recording sheet. The teacher's recording sheet is laid out in a way that is simple to record all the necessary date. There are also spaces to write the data right on the teacher's recording sheet which reminded me to write down some of the information; like the start time and stop time for each passage.
Bruce is a fifth grade student at Campbell Elementary. Bruce read to me in the resource classroom during his reading class. There were no other students in the room while he was reading but at the end, when he was answering questions about the story, another student came into the room and sat on the other side of the room and worked. I informed the student prior to testing that this was similar to the assessments given during the previous quarters, but also that he was helping me with one of my school assignments. He seemed extremely excited to read for me when he found out that he was helping me with one of my assignments.
Bruce is given a DRA or LRP reading assessment each quarter, as required by his IEP, for progress reports. The level tested was based on his scores from the previous quarter. His scores showed he was borderline instructional and frustration. As a result of these scores, I also tested Bruce on the LRP level lower than the original level tested, which he passed easily, indicating his independent level. Based on the comparisons of the scores, this analysis is done on the original LRP level tested, in which the student was at instructional level. One benefit of using the LRP books is that there are illustrations along with the text, which significantly benefit students that are impacted by language.
The pattern of this student's miscues indicates that when the student comes to an unknown word they are using graphic similarity to decode the word. Seventy four percent of the miscues and self-corrections had graphic similarity. Thirty two percent of the miscues and self-corrections made sense in the sentence.
The student showed strong skills in decoding and understanding different chunking patterns and blending skills. This miscue pattern indicates to me, as the administrator and the teacher that the student needs instruction in how to create meaning when reading and to establish an understanding of what is being read. There are numerous strategies that could be tried to create meaning so that when the student is reading they understand and make sense of the text.
I would begin the instruction for this student with strategies for decoding unknown words and still make sense within the story. I would continue to support this student and provide instruction on blending sounds and chunking sounds when reading, but emphasizing the need for making sense of what is being read.
This student is an extremely visual learner. I think it would be beneficial to teacher the student how to use a graphic organizer to sort information that is being read. When something is written down, it is more likely to be retained. This will also give the student a tool to use if they cannot remember what they read previously. Another strategy that would be extremely beneficial for this student is to teach the student questioning while he is reading. This is a skill that student has been working on in his reading class and he has been successful at. Questioning is a great skill to have when reading for understanding and meaning, it allows the reader to say to themselves," does that make sense? or what is going on in the story right now?" An activity to do with this student to practice this skill is to read with the student and stop periodically during the story and practice questioning. Another way to practice this would be to read to the student and read something incorrectly and model for the student how to self-monitor and self check what they are reading.