Running Record Pt. 5

In The Learning Academy today, I gave Jackson another fluency and running record test. Tia and I also gave every student a fluency check and it was nice to be able to talk to more than one student. All of the students in this classroom read at different levels and it is always interesting to see how and what each student had trouble with and where they excelled compared to how Jackson approaches things. Sometimes I will see Jackson and the other students struggle on the same word or on two completely different words. The higher level reading students used the DIBELS level 3 stories. The particular story that we read had the word immunizations and there was about 4 students that I tested at this level all struggled with this word.

Towards the end of the class I did get the chance to work individually with Jackson. I decided to give Jackson a hot read on a story that he read the first week that I tested him on, as well as a cold read on a new short story. I wanted to see how he did on the old text compared to when I first assessed him. I was specifically looking for an increase (or decrease) in how many words he could read per minute this time around and if his rate, expression and accuracy was good. All of these factors tell him if Jackson is a flueny reader and then knowing if he is a fluent reader I can tell if Jackson needs to work on reading comprehension skills. The very first day I gave him a running record, Jackson was reading 44 words per minute. Today, after he read the same passage as he did the first week and performed his hot read, Jackson read 54 words per minute. This shows me that Jackson’s fluency is improving and he is becoming more comfortable reading and being expressive with the text. After the hot read, I gave Jackson the cold read. When Jackson read the new story, he read 56 words per minute. This is a large improvement compared to the first running record and fluency test that I gave Jackson 6 weeks ago.

One small thing that I did notice that Jackson struggled with is the word empty. The word came up in the story more than once at different times and each time it came up, Jackson would stutter and look to me for help. I tried not to give him too much help with correcting the words because I won't always be there to corrent the students. Jackson just needs to continue to build his confidence skills one time next week and he could have great fluency and rate/accuracy.

#fluency #DIBELS #empty #improvement