The End of Year DRA and TPRI results are in and it is an interesting picture. The TPRI scores for kindergarten are through the roof. The scores are much better than they have been in the past. The TPRI scores for first grade showed improvements, but did not show much difference in growth from other years.
The DRA for kindergarten is in most cases worse than in previous years. The DRA for first grade is in most cases better than in past years.
This poses an interesting question as to what caused these scores. I have theories. I think the TPRI phonological skills were stressed in kindergarten. All of those teachers see a need for those skills. I see evidence of this being done. However, not all of the teachers see the need to push reading. I think this shows up in the DRA scores being so low.
In first grade, I do not believe that phonological awareness was taught the way it was discussed. I think even though the teachers said they would do so, I think many of them got overwhelmed and went back to teaching the old way.
There was one teacher in kindergarten and one teacher in first grade that had remarkable growth in both assessments. I believe that these teachers did teach the way that was planned. I think that is why they saw improvements.
In order to test this I would have to get the individual teachers to admit to me what was or was not done. I do not know if I can do this with all of them.
I think this needs more study to identify the cause of the score differences or the study needs to be done again in a situation where someone can monitor what is done for fidelity to process.

The data is in....well, some of it.

All of the teachers have now turned in their TPRI data. I have spent a great deal of time working on entering the data into the online format so that it can be submitted. The teachers have all gotten their data in on time and are now working on DRA. It should be interesting once the DRA scores are in to see if my action research project showed gains or not. I now need to spend time evaluating the data from TPRI and looking at trends. I think I also want to look at the data from the teachers previous school year to see if their teaching has increased phonological awareness in their classrooms. I also want to look at how students performed in the past and see if there is a marked improvement this year as opposed to last year in their abilities. I think it would be interesting to study the results over several years to get an accurate picture. I'm not sure what trends I will see in this small amount of time.
I'm also interested to see what the teachers think about the results. I would like to see if they saw their instruction as beneficial or not when they added phonological awareness. I also want to see if this is enough to change their thinking if they do see positive results in the data.
This will be interesting....

The end is near....

Today is the beginning of the window for end of year TPRI testing. The teachers are given two weeks to assess their students and to see if there has been any growth in the skills that the TPRI assesses. I am interested to see the results. I'm not sure that all of the teachers followed the phonological awareness activities exactly as they were supposed to be doing them. So I'm not sure how accurate the results will be. However, looking back over this action research project, I do know that several things have been accomplished. More of the teachers now have an understanding of phonological awareness. Our kindergarten teachers were calling the knowledge of the sound the letter makes phonological awareness before this research project. I also know that the teachers have been provided with more activities for teaching phonological awareness. My hope is that this year will show the teachers the importance of teaching these important basic skills to our students and that the teachers will begin to put these activities into their lesson plans in the future instead of rushing through them because there is no worksheet to go with them. I will update my blog again once I have my results!

Middle of the year results are in...

The middle of the year TPRI results are in. The teachers gave the TPRI and have looked for any changes. The TPRI is to help assess fluency and phonological awareness. We looked at the students that we were servicing with RTI based on TPRI scores and are looking at how much they have progressed in reading. We have revised our tutoring groups based on these scores as well. The new TPRI has given the teachers more information to use in determining groups and we think it has been beneficial. We also took DRA assessments. The DRA assessments seem to be better this year than in previous years. I would like to see if I can find a correlation between what we are doing with TPRI data and how the students have improved their reading skills. It should be interesting!

Midway progress

The year has been flying by and we are now at the midway point of the school year. The teachers are giving their middle of the school year TPRI exams now and will be giving the DRA2 when they get back in January.
The teachers that I have talked to about the assessment are liking the new TPRI better than the old one. I'm hoping that they find they are getting more information from this new assessment and that it is more useful.
I have sent off flip books to the print shop to give out during phonological awareness workshops in January and have been planning what to teach at these workshops. I have also been monitoring how teachers are doing with progress monitoring for RtI.
I want to try and get into the classrooms more to see how the students are doing so that I can give more productive feedback.
I think things are really going well though.
I can't wait to see the changes!

First steps towards improvement

This last week we took the first steps towards improving the reading of our students in kindergarten and first grade. The teachers had to look at their TPRI and DRA2 data (depending on their grade level). Then they had to look for the areas in which their students struggled the most. The teachers came to a consensus that the areas in which our students struggle the most is phonolgoical awareness. We came up with activities and a plan to try and meet these goals. One of our issues is that many of the teachers do not fully undestand what phonological awareness entails. The other literacy coach and I have met with the instructional strategist for our campus and decided to pui\t on a series of workshops for the teachers where they create activities or an activity file for teaching the various levels of the phonological awareness continuum to their students. This will go in phases so that the teachers can learn what to do as well as get the resources needed to address the needs of the students. It should be beneficial. I'm looking forward to getting feedback from the teachers on what they think about the workshops.

the data says it all...

The data from the TPRI and the DRA2 have all been collected. Everything has been put onto a color coded grid showing areas of weakness for students. This past Wednesday we met as a faculty and discussed the results in a general manner as well as the usefulness of the data. It ended up being a great discussion with many teachers concerned and starting to think about what can be done. Now I am planning on meeting with each teacher individually to go over their test results and determine areas of weakness for them as well as students that need the most help. This is coming at a great time because with our SMART goals process we are also looking at the data to create a grade level SMART goal. This should help with that process.