Build a playbook of easy-to-use tools for tracking your learners’ progress and guiding them to set reasonable goals in reading and writing.
Take a sneak peek into this playbook that has been put together to guide the informal assessment of your learners’ progress.
This playbook of guides and tools will make your classroom informal assessments so much easier, organized and informative!
Why Put Together a Progress Monitoring Playbook
It’s important to equip your instructional toolkit with tools you can easily use to track your readers’ (and writers’) progress.
The purpose of having a Progress Monitoring Playbook is to have just the right tool at just the right time.
You never know what path your readers (or writers) may take you down. So, it’s important to always be ready. That’s why creating your own Progress Monitoring Playbook is essential.
Take a peek inside my Progress Monitoring Playbook.
- Put together a Literacy Portfolio for each student.
- Build a reader profile for each student
- Help readers understand their reading (and writing) identity using Engagement Inventories & Reading Inventories.
- Guide readers and writers in setting reasonable & attainable goals.
- Revisit those goals every 4 to 6 weeks.
- Guide readers to track their own reading and writing progress.
- Use exit tickets & utilize the Exit Ticket Cheat Sheet to quickly assess the work
- Use the Evaluating Reading Artifacts Cheat Sheet to guide your thinking as you look over reading work samples, observe, assess, and talk with your readers
- Utilize the Conferring Guides and Toolkit for guiding questions and note forms to use when conferring with readers and writers
- Create a Small Group & Conferring Schedule to maximize your time
- Have a clear plan to assess Stop & Jots with an easy-to-use assessment tool
- Conduct quick and easy Informal Oral Reading Records
- Guide learners in understanding how to use Written Response Rubrics
- Encourage and guide readers’ text conversations using Discussion Rubrics
Literacy Portfolios
✅What Are Student Literacy Assessment Portfolios
A Literacy Portfolio is a place to collect reading and writing artifacts (work samples) to review and track the growth of your readers and writers.
You have probably received some type of folder with student work samples from previous grades. These collections have been called by several different but very similar names, such as…
You have probably received some type of folder with student work samples from previous grades. These collections have been called by several different but very similar names, such as…
- Literacy Assessment Portfolios
- Student Literacy Folders
- Literacy Assessment Folders
- Literacy Portfolios
- Student Literacy Portfolios
- Reading and writing folders
- Student portfolios
- OR…any other similar names.
These Literacy Portfolios are easy to assemble because they will include authentic work your readers and writers are doing every day in your classroom.
✅Why You and Your Learners Should Build Literacy Portfolios Together
Student Literacy Assessment Portfolios will guide your learners (and you) in seeing how they are growing as readers and writers.
Many young learners benefit from seeing a visual picture of a new concept or skill. Literacy Assessment Portfolios will help create a visual picture of a student’s growth in reading and writing.
When learners help you keep and review their Literacy Assessment Portfolios, they will be able to compare their progress to their previous progress. That’s better than any data chart on the wall or bulletin board where readers and writers are compared to their classmates.
All students learn differently and grow at different rates.
Literacy Portfolios are a way to track student progress throughout the school year. This is the place to determine the strengths and weaknesses of each learner in reading and writing. This assessment tool will travel from grade to grade to document their progress.
✅What A Literacy Portfolio Looks Like
A Literacy Portfolio is a folder or binder filled with student work samples (artifacts) from previous grades. If you use a pocket folder, have one side for reading and the other side for writing.
The work samples are arranged in sequential order with the most recent on top.
Each reading and writing artifact is labeled with the grade level in which it was completed, the teacher's name and the date on which that sample was completed.
✅What Reading and Writing Artifacts Could Be Included
The reading and writing work samples that are included throughout the school year will help learners SEE how they are progressing as readers and writers. This work will guide them in creating student written goals for reading and writing.
Some possible artifacts to include are…
- Stop and jots from several times throughout the school year
- Written responses from several times throughout the school year
- Rubric assessments of student work
- Student-created goals for reading and writing
- Student-created goal reflections for reading and writing
- Reading reflections from several times throughout the school year (such as, beginning, middle, and end)
- Anecdotal notes from the teacher
- Engagement inventories (several throughout the year)
- Reading Interest Inventories (several throughout the year such as beginning, middle, and end of the year)
- Formal and informal running records
- Reading level tracking chart
✅The Value of Student Literacy Portfolios
When readers & writers have a collection of their work throughout the school year to review, the teacher can guide conversations to show the growth that has been made from the beginning of the school year to the present.
👉Every learner grows each school year.
👉Every learner grows at a different rate than their peers.
👉Every learner needs the confidence that Literacy Portfolios can bring to their reading and writing work.
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Build Reader (& Writer) Profiles
✅Use engagement inventories to understand your learners’ reading and writing behaviors. Observe how your learners engage in the literacy work, the time they spend in deep thinking & what distracts them from their literacy work.
✅Use Reading Inventories to help your learners find their reading identity. When students uncover the kinds of readers they are, they will be better equipped to discover the kind of readers they want to become.
✅Use classroom snapshot sheets to capture the immediate needs of your unique group of readers and writers.
✅Use Reading Inventories to help your learners find their reading identity. When students uncover the kinds of readers they are, they will be better equipped to discover the kind of readers they want to become.
✅Use classroom snapshot sheets to capture the immediate needs of your unique group of readers and writers.
Guide Readers (&Writers) Through Goal Setting
✅Readers and writers need guidance when setting goals for themselves.
✅When you sit with your readers & writers to guide them through reflecting on their current work, they become more empowered to set reasonable and attainable goals.
✅When you sit with your readers & writers to guide them through reflecting on their current work, they become more empowered to set reasonable and attainable goals.
Exit Tickets
✅An exit ticket is a quick way to test the pulse of the group & assess the day's learning.
✅When students take their learning and synthesize it down into one short response or visual image, they are thinking critically and analytically to evaluate the day's work.
✅When students take their learning and synthesize it down into one short response or visual image, they are thinking critically and analytically to evaluate the day's work.
✅When students must scour through their notebook work from the lesson and decide which part best showcases their personal understanding and learning of the content topic, strategy or skill, they are thinking at a higher level.
✅Students must evaluate and analyze their work before deciding on what piece of the work best showcases their learning.
Conferring With Readers & Writers
✅Conferring is the single most important part of the instructional day...in my opinion! This part of the instructional day is filled with students receiving individualized and differentiated instruction based on their immediate needs.
✅Conferring is a "one-man roadshow"! So, you must be prepared!
Packing your conferring toolkit or 'suitcase" must be thoughtful and intentional.
✅It’s important to be prepared for most instances when conferring with your readers and writers. Your readers and writers need to be prepared as well.
✅Readers & writers should receive the expectations for requesting a conference and participating in a conference within a minilesson. It's important to take this time to discuss the expectations as well as model for young learners what a conference looks and sounds like.
Easy-to-Use Assessment Tools
✅When understanding what your readers need to gain, progress monitoring becomes a daily routine. You need a toolkit of progress monitoring tools at your disposal that are easy to use.
✅Determining a students’ reading progress is about...
- knowing where the student is right now
- setting a reasonable goal for improvement
- engaging in specific instructional actions to work at achieving that goal
✅Your readers are giving you a myriad of data every day during independent reading, small group instruction, and within individual conferences.
- Your readers are utilizing engagement tools such as think sheets, post-it notes and graphic organizers during independent reading on which they write quick responses and reactions to text.
- Your readers have probably written longer responses to reading.
- You have probably observed your readers as they engaged in independent reading work to determine their behaviors and attitudes towards reading.
- You have conducted running records (formal and/or informal) for each of your readers. You listen to your readers read.
- You listen to your readers engage in conversations and discussions about the text.
- You track your readers’ levels in reading. While this is not important for your readers to know, you probably keep a tracking chart to see how their reading level increases over time.
- You are conferring with your readers about strategies and skills and how they are applying those within their independent reading.
- Your readers have probably shared with you their reading interests and reflected on their reading progress and development.
Check out all the Progress Monitoring Tools I keep in my playbook.
