Update #4

With SOLs being less than 30 days away, classroom time is precious and I was unable to have Mrs. T to administer the Fluency section of this module.  Therefore, I administered the DIBELS Fluency and Recall test to 8 students during after school tutoring.  All of these students happened to be in my homeroom and it was a unique experience for me to be involved in using DIBELS.  First of all I have never used DIBELS so I had to learn the structure of it and the purpose.  (Remember I have been a math teacher for 4 years!).  I found that almost all the students read without expression.  I feel that since kids do not know how to read the text correctly, comprehension becomes more difficult.  I have the opportunity to become the Reading teacher for fourth grade next year and I will be using this Fluency and Retell exam to help me figure out what needs to be taught to the next group of students.  Mrs. T agreed with me that teaching how to read using expression would help increase comprehension and she has tried to this.  Unfortunately, being in year 2 of improvement, she was told to follow the IStation program and unable to really deviate from it.  Now she is teaching test taking skills with State Assessments so close.

Comprehension is improving in fourth grade, but it still low over all.  In the skills section of IStation, 59% of students are in Tier 3 (the worst tier).  It is the weakest skill by far with only 29% of students in Tier 1 and 12% in tier 2.  Many students are moving up in the Tiers for overall skill.  The program claims that students in Tier 2 could pass the SOL exam.  (We will see....)  In one class, 4 kids moved up a tier, 3 of those moved to Tier one!  Yay for progress!  In the same class, one student moved down.  This child is Hispanic and I wonder if he movement was a cause of a language barrier.  Even though he is fluent in English, Spanish is the primary language at home and vocabulary words are becoming more complex.  He might be having trouble translating and comprehending the passages.

Text fluency is also at 53% in Tier 1.