Our first Literacy Support Team Meeting went exceptionally well. Everyone came to the meetings with open hearts and open minds. Dr. Dewitz was quite impressed with your level of expertise in planning meaningful instruction for your students based on data. I think the first hurdle and most difficult to conquer is overcoming our understanding of what paraprofessionals do, who provides the interventions and what are they. The most scripted and structured interventions are best provided by our paraprofessionals. Linda, Vicki, and Vera have very heavy student loads. The interventions they use must be fairly simple to plan and provide. Please be conscientious of this as you begin working with these wonderful ladies. When we have students who are intensive and in great need we really need to put our heads together to plan their intervention. Special education and regular education teachers work together to provide as much meaningful time on task as possible. Remember our intensive students really should not be working independently on tasks where they typically stall. We want them engaged with a facilitator as much as possible. In classrooms where there is only one teacher it is important to involve our Reading Specialist. She may push in and/or pull out. There are no clear cut answers other than we must work this out together with respect and care for one another and especially for our students who are struggling to make benchmark. Let us not be confused by the term strategic. Strategic means not benchmark. These are typically students who need our assistance in order to maintain strategic status and move on to benchmark. Our benchmark students are those for whom if instruction continues as it is will most likely maintain their benchmark status. There are exceptions to every rule. Remember, you as the teacher are our best defense and therefore, if you are wondering about a student it is always your prerogative to progress monitor that student in any of the cycles.
I invite each of you to comment on our first meeting. I will be inviting Dr. Dewitz to view our blog and interact with us as well. This means any of your thoughts that are constructive and professional are most welcome.
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16 comments:
test
Hi everyone! Have you been dibeled?
My co-teacher is not responding to intervention.
Dibels and Dibels and Dibels. Oh My!
Hi there!!!
hartlyteacher does not mean me!
I LOVE to DIBEL!!! DIBELing is my friend... !!! DIBEL DIBEL DIBEL!!! I love to DIBEK!!!
just wanted to see if this thing worked!
Just a test drive!
I hate computers!
testing....
After my first week of working with the palm I found that it was really easy to work with the students, and students really enjoyed it also.
The students are really into speed, so they see this as a speed test, and they constantly want to see themselves improving. It helps that we are doing this with math also now. With the retelling, instead of dragging, i'm tapping and to make sure i'm not tapping for syllables, i'm kinda repeating in my head what the children say as I tap. I then go and show the children the history instead of the running man. In the older grades they understand seeing the numbers increase weekly. I've also begun to dibel even my 'green' kids. They like to see their numbers go up too. It's like a competition for them. If you have the time, is there anything wrong with dibeling your green kids?
Ah, My Dibeling friends..Last week seemed to be hard for some of my yellow kids. Some went down. The passage seemed to be harder. Those that have been dibeling last year, do you notice that some of the passages are harder and easier even though they 'say' they are on the same level?
Do you notice ups and downs, or as time goes on does the line begin to smooth out?
Salmon Coach Bag is in the lead for responding most to the blog. Way to go Salmon Coach Bag!!!
Tomorrow is my DIBELS day! I'm always excited to see how the kids are going to do. Once the kids get in the habit of doing it they are excited also. One child even said to me, are we doing DIBELS tomorrow? I responded by saying 'yup we are'! Do you think the more that they do it though they actually get better or they just learn how to take the test? I feel that some of mine are learning that they need to just read and read and read FAST! Some are also realizing that if they struggle over a word they kinda just say what they think it is and don't bother sounding it out because they realize it takes too much time. Do you think there is a way that they can begin to 'fool' the test and we can begin to get invalid scores especially in the higher grades when the kids start to maybe begin to fool the test? Even my lower kids are starting to realize this, and I'm hearing them talk. Am I supposed to say, 'NO, sound out that word, don't just fly by it because you don't know it!' Is this really valid? Their scores are getting better because they are reading more though! What do you think????? Food for thought...
I definitely think that the kids can try to "beat the test" by: only focusing on speed and not using their decoding skills, and instead letting YOU do the work. I think we need to have a pep talk with them every few weeks. Also, show them if they're re-telling score: is it also improving? Make it just as important as the words correct per minute. Make sure they know that DIBELS is concerned with more than speed. Perhaps even show them that being Benchmark doesn't mean you're always getting an A in reading.
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