Literacy Assessment

1. Literacy Assessment Katrina Spencer Director of Literacy and Site Improvement

2. Purpose for today • Agreements across the region about common, valid and valued reading assessment tools. • Consistency / congruence between these assessments and our Limestone Coast Literacy Position Paper and Reading Standard AND Literacy Secretariat policy / position.

3. Why are we here? • What do you want to get out of today? • For yourself • For your teachers • For your students • For your school • For your region?

4. So why do we measure?

5. Research shows that… Teachers want… • assessment to inform instruction • to incorporate student self-assessment • a continuum of year-level expectations • consistency within year-levels • assessment data that can be effectively shared with parents • to assess how students use literacy outside of school

6. One teacher’s thoughts “I want assessment to be a part of what happens all the time in my classroom. It shouldn’t be an event; the NAPLAN is an event. Assessment should not be an event. What I would like to see is for it to be so much a part of what happens that we do not think about assessment any more than we think about turning on the lights in the morning.”

7. Taking the temperature In a whole school approach to assessment we need to be clear about: • Who we assess • What we assessed • How we assess it • When we assess it And then • How we use this assessment data • Whom we share it with- and how

8. Assessment as, for & of learning AS Setting goals and targets along the learning journey CURRICULUM PEDAGOGY OF Staff talk and work together to share standards. Staff use assessment information to plan for improvement. FOR Determining prior knowledge and giving feedback about expectations on the quality of work. ASSESSMENT Classroom assessment involves high quality interactions, based on thoughtful questions, careful listening, and reflective responses Students and teachers share all steps of the assessment for learning process Adapted AQTP 2007

9. Which Tool should we use???

10. Which specific assessment tools should we use? If you only have a hammer you tend to treat everything like a nail! There are many tools and many purposes for using them

11. Which specific assessment tools should we use? Ones that can: • reliably and validly identify students who are at risk early, before a problem is established • inform decisions about what to teach, how to teach, and establish clear standards for learners • support regular monitoring of progress toward meaningful goals and ambitious standards • enable us to reflect on and review outcomes of our teaching to continually improve learning outcomes

12. Cautions Assessments can do more harm than good if they: • Require students to work on tasks that are not in the best interests of their literacy development • Force teachers to teach to standards that are not at the core of literacy development • Provide us with a false sense of progress on tasks that don’t really matter • don’t assess what has been explicitly taught and if students don’t know the assessment criteria • If you don’t use it to improvelearning then DON’T collect it!

13. Appropriate purposes • To assist teaching and learning • To measure individual achievement • To evaluate programs • To monitor progress towards and achievement of agreed standards Appropriate Use Questions to ask • Does it yield new information? • Is it instructionally useful to teachers? • Is it appropriate for classroom use? • Is it congruent with my beliefs, teaching practices and the resources I use? • Does it align with whole school practice?”

14. Increasingly Targeted • Assessments need to happen often and as unobtrusively and naturally as possible • It is only when the temperature is raised we should go on to the next level Informal Progressively More Targeted

15. Types of Assessment • Universal Screening: Identify students abilities and those “at risk” or in need of more diagnostic information • Progress Monitoring: Determine if students are learning critical skills at an adequate rate • Diagnostic or Targeted: Identify specific skills that will be targeted with intervention • Outcome: Evaluate the effectiveness of the actions taken to achieve identified goals

16. Assessment for ??? • Is this information we NEED and/or WANTfor ALL / SOME / FEW? Why? • How much data is enough? • Is the assessment anend in itself or doesit provide insight andvalue for the teacheras it is conducted? • If so then why are so many assessments conducted by SSOs??? • Key in decisions- PURPOSE, NEED and TARGET

17. Getting down to the tin tacks! Before you start deciding WHICH assessments- • What standards will you assess against? • What commitment do teachers have to these standards? • What cultural norms/practices do you need to confront? Name the elephants in the room! • What knowledge and skills do staff need to conduct these effectively and consistently? • What systems and structures do we need in place to support staff? • How will you monitor, analyse, recordand use assessment information? • How will you share this information?With students? With families?

18. What do we mean by an assessment system A system is a deliberate, negotiated, articulated group of assessments identified to support both teaching and learning- a known and agreed whole site approach

19. Systems of Assessment include: • Classroom assessments to monitor progress and inform instruction. • School assessments to evaluate student achievement and program effectiveness. • External assessments to validate and compare achievement to region, state or national standards.

20. A successful assessment system requires • Multiple Assessments • Assessments of broad, holistic applications AND • Assessments of discrete skills • Use of ongoing tools eg  NAPLaN, ESL Scales, Australian Curriculum literacy continuum, progress against achievement standards • Connection to School Culture • Prepare teachers to administer assessments • Build knowledge base and access- PD, PM, documentation • Support teachers to make informed instructional decisions • Systems (and times) to conduct, share and analyse • Connection to School Improvement • Used to make program and strategy decisions • Used to communicate achievements/needs to the community • Used for continuous improvement

21. Accuracy and Fluency with Connected Text Kame’enui, Simmons, Coyne, & Harn, 2003

22. Assessing Reading’s Big 6 • Oral Language • Phonological Awareness • Phonics and letter-sound knowledge • Vocabulary • Fluency (and prosody) • Comprehension START with regular teacher observations and judgements to informally monitor learners use of language skills and reading abilities.

23. Assessment System • Broad Universal Screening Tools • Broad Diagnostic Inventory • Targeted Diagnostic Tools

24. Assessing Reading’s Big 6 • Oral Language • Observation Survey and Concepts about Print Test (Clay) • Teacher Rating of Oral Language and Literacy (TROLL) • Oral Language Assessment (Crevola & Vineis) • Screen of Communication Skills (SOCS) • Receptive and expressive language checklists • Clay's Record of Oral Language • Phonological Awareness • Astronaut Invented Spelling Test (AIST) • Screening of Phonological Awareness (SPA) DECS • Sutherland Phonological Awareness Test – Revised (SPAT-R) • Regular teacher observations and moving more able learners on to phonics

25. Assessing Reading’s Big 6 • Phonics and Letter-sound Knowledge • Educheck • Words Their Way • Informal assessment • Oxford Word List - High Frequency Word Assessment • Vocabulary • Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) • Teacher developed vocabulary assessment • PAT R

26. Assessing Reading’s Big 6 • Fluency • Expected Fluency rates • By the end of Year 1- 60 words per minute • By the end of Year 2- 90-100 word per minute • In Years 3-6 100-120 word per minute with < 3 errors and the material becoming increasingly more difficult • Prosody Checklist and rubrics • Comprehension • Informal- oral reading, Cloze, 5 Finger Method • Neale Analysis of Reading Ability • TORCH • Progressive Achievement Tests of Reading • PROBE (developed in New Zealand) • Informal Prose Inventory (New Zealand) • PM Benchmark Readers • PAT R - vocabulary & comprehension

27. Assessing Reading’s REALLY BIG 1! Love and enjoyment of reading • Attitudes to and motivation about reading • levels of enjoyment, • scope of reading outside of classroom, • how learners see themselves as readers • Strongly correlates with reading proficiency • Teacher observation • Student self assessment • Oral reading observations • Reading inventories etc

28. Start from what you have • What is the current data you have available? • What is it telling you? • about individual, cohort, class, year level or whole site issues? • How can you investigate these issues further? • What are teachers using to make judgements and assessments in their teaching programs? • How widespread, ‘rigorous’ and diagnostic are these? • How are students able to judge their own progress? • Checklists and rubrics • Assessment criteria to support tasks. • What’s missing? • What more do you need? For who?

29. What to start with • School Entry Assessmentteachers’ observations in the first term of Reception. Can be used several times across the R-2 year and entered into EDSAS • Screening of Phonological Awareness (SPA) can be used with children aged 4-6 yrs. Administered 1 to 1 (takes about 15 minutes) and data can be entered into EDSAS. It can be used to monitor progress. • Running Records Ideally at least twice a year to monitor progress in Years 1 and 2. (and more frequently for diagnostic purposes, for those children you have concerns about) Can be used R-7- to understand miscues and plan teaching- need to be at an instructional level to inform teaching.

30. Most importantly • Start with your staff • Build their understandings of assessment AS, OF and FOR learning • Engage them in decisions about tools • Build their skills in INFORMAL observations, assessments and tools • Encourage sharing and moderation • Support regular student self assessment

32. Therefore as a site leader I will… Therefore as a teacher I will… Therefore as a student I will…

33. Program and practice assessments

34. The Golden Rule of Assessment The best designed assessment with the most reliable and valid measures administered by the best trained examiner won’t change a child’s reading trajectory . . . unless someone in the child’s life does something different!

35. Other stuff!

36. Lit Sec Tool Box 1 • The Screen of Phonological Awareness (SPA) a South Australian screening tool of phonemic knowledge for 5 year olds • The Sutherland Phonological Awareness Test (SPAT-R) a diagnostic assessment for students who have difficulties with phonological awareness in the first four years of schooling • The Astronaut Invented Spelling Test an assessment of children's phonological awareness through their writing • An Observation Survey of Early Literacy Achievement - a text containing a range of early literacy assessments including the Concept of Print Test developed by Dame Marie Clay • Tests of Reading Comprehension (TORCH and TORCH Plus) tests of reading comprehension • The Probe Reading Assessment • Spelling: What Teachers need to know  - author Peter Westwood • Reading and Writing Difficulties: What Teachers need to know - author Peter Westwood • The MultiLit (Making up for Lost Time in Literacy) kit an evidenced based program developed in Australia by Macquarie University suitable as a one to one intervention program for students in primary and middle years of schooling.

37. Lit Sec Tool Box 2 • Probe 2 an assessment of reading comprehension • Progressive Achievement Tests Written Spelling, Punctuation and grammar (PAT WS,P,G) • Effective Spelling- a whole school approach to spelling • Spell, Record, Respond • Read, Record, Respond • Strategies that Work: Teaching Comprehension for Understanding and Engagement • Working Together • News Talk for Teachers

38. Text Level Guide for Reading SEEN Texts 1 23 4 56 7 89 10 1112 13 1415 1617 1819 2021 2223 2425 26 End of Year 1 End of Year 2 End of Reception Remember: Use SEEN text, and analyse the processing NOT merely the percentage score For literacy characteristics at each broadband level, see handout Consultative Draft February 2011

39. Student Self Assessment • Self–assess accurately and successfully against the success criteria to self-determine their steps in learning • Peer assess accurately and successfully, giving feedback and against the success criteria • Set their own SMART goals in learning, then self-monitor and evaluate their progress towards and achievement against them

42. The Reading Process Oral language Oral language Fluency Fluency Meaning (semantics) Structure (syntax) Constructing meaning Vocabulary COMPREHENSION Phonological Awareness Visual information (grapho-phonic information) Phonics Literacy SecretariatLiteracy is everyone’s business

43. A model of the reading process, which fits with the interactive theory and with observed classroom behaviour. R E A D I N G Meaning Cues Structural Cues Visual Cues Predicting Checking Confirming Rejecting ContinuingReading Literacy SecretariatLiteracy is everyone’s business

44. How do the Sources of Information interact?

45. Reading is a meaning making process Reading programs • must develop children’s ability to use meaning, structure and visual sources of information in an integrated way • and also help children learn how to sample information, predict, check, confirm and/or self correct

46. Putting it all together