Juli Kendall's Weekly
Reading Workshop Journal
A MiddleWeb Listserv Project
Self-selected members of the MiddleWeb Discussion List are joining
together to explore the Reading Workshop and other ideas about supporting
young adolescent readers. Juli Kendall, a reading teacher/coach in Long
Beach, California, is helping moderate the discussion. Juli is also keeping
a weekly journal of her own Reading Workshop initiative. Find out more about
our project at our Reading Workshop homepage.
You'll find Juli's background article here.
Links to many of the tools created by Juli and her colleagues are embedded
in these journals. Most often, when you click on them, a PDF file will begin
to download. You'll find a list of the downloads here.
Week #24
Integrating Test Preparation
into Reading Instruction
NOTE: Juli Kendall has been updating readers on the progress of her student
"Leti" for several months. This journal entry takes a closer look
at Leti's progress.
You'd think you'd be able to figure out how to integrate test preparation
into instruction just by listening to all the conversations about improving
test scores. But in this "Age of High Stakes Accountability,"
what's the best way to do this?
According to the National Research
Center on English Learning and Achievement (CELA), here's what works:
Teachers integrate test preparation into instruction. Here's how we're
trying to use it with our students.
Using district and state standards and goals, teachers and administrators
work together to:
Analyze the demands of a test -- So we dissected
the benchmark reading assessments and listed what students need to know
and be able to do to be successful.
Identify the connections to the standards and goals --
We used the standards to identify how and when we taught what was expected
on the assessments.
Design and align curriculum to meet the demands of the test
-- We're looking at our Read Aloud book selections and Mini-lessons to make
sure that everything kids need to know is accounted for in our instruction.
Develop instructional strategies that enable students to build necessary
skills -- Reading strategies from Strategies That Work and
vocabulary ideas from Words, Words, Words fit in nicely and give
us background for using instructional strategies. We've created Probable
Indicators that kids can take to build and use the skills necessary to pass
the benchmarks.
Ensure that skills are learned across the year and across grades
-- Rethinking our curriculum maps and collaborating with other grade levels
makes sure that, across grade levels, we teach strategies at continually
higher levels using Bloom's taxonomy. Using Understanding by Design
to plan might help.
Make overt connections between and among instructional strategies,
tests and current learning -- Using "explicit teaching,"
we're getting better at making the connections for ourselves while we're
teaching and listening to the connections our students make. This way we
build on their ideas.
Develop and implement model lessons that integrate test preparation
into the curriculum -- That's what we're doing right now. Trying
out lessons and seeing if they teach what we want kids to learn. Then keeping,
modifying or eliminating them based on the results for our students.
(From "Guidelines for Teaching Middle and High School Students to Read
and Write Well: Six Features of Effective Instruction," CELA, p. 7)
All this analysis could come across as gimmicky, but the kids don't exhibit
any trace of hesitation. They genuinely appreciate knowing why they take
the benchmarks and what they can do to improve.
Here's some food for thought -- "Students often do not understand the
purpose of the test, nor what they can do to improve their performance."
(CELA, p. 7)
Leti certainly worked at it. She was confused by not knowing the purpose
for the reading benchmark assessments. Even after taking them for five years,
they didn't make sense to her until we explained how they work and showed
her what she needed to do to improve.
What happened? She took the first probable indicator and scored 3 out of
6 questions correct. When we analyzed her work (using LASW strategies),
we found plenty of information to use to plan our instruction.
Asked to explain the title of the piece, Leti talked around the title using
it as her answer.
"...because Amber Brown she doesn't like Chicken pox. Thas why it named
you cant Eat your chicken pox". (The title of the book is You Can't
Eat Your Chicken Pox, Amber Brown!)
She did not know the meaning of the vocabulary questions. "Amber's
mother motions for her to stand up" was the context for one
of the questions. Leti indicated that motions means "yells"
not "signals," the correct response. Contradictory statements
like "It's a real trip, not a pretend one" gave her difficulty.
She indicated that this meant "a make-believe trip."
Her strength was that when she wrote answers to questions, Leti used evidence
from the text. In response to "How does Amber feel about her teacher?"
Leti answered, "She said that Mr. Cohen is the best teacher in world
I've had." The main character actually says this in the story.
After our analysis and three more weeks of instruction, she scored 5 out
of 6 on her most recent probable indicator. Leti needs to score at least
4 out of 6 to pass her benchmark test. She's making progress!
Even so, I'll never forget the look on my friend's face when he realized
that successfully completing an end of third grade benchmark assessment
was the "reading standard" for going to middle school. "And
you think you are holding up a high standard for all students?" he
asked. "Think again!"
Of course, he's right.
See Juli's March curriculum map
Read Juli's next journal entry
Read Juli's previous journal entry
Read Juli's backgrounder about her work
Back to Juli's journal index
Back to the Reader Workshop Index Page