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Anecdotal Records

1. What do I want my students to know?
2. How do I know they are learning?

These two questions drive instruction in my class. It took many years of classroom experience to learn that I needed to figure out my assessment strategy before I conceived of any lesson plan. I need a map. I need to know where I am going with my students. I need to stop and check periodically to see if I am still on the right road. I need to observe. Are my students on the road with their classmates?

I love the term kidwatching coined by Yetta Goodman. She put a word to what I do with reading instruction. I watch my students intently. I want to know how they negotiate their reading world.

• What strategies do they use?
• What do they do when they get stuck?
• Do they give up easily?
• Do they learn from lessons, personal discoveries, and mistakes?
• Do they read?
• Can they understand what they read?
• What do they read?
• What do they do well?
• Do they set goals?

I take notes, formally and informally, in a notebook divided into sections - one section for each child. I try to write as much as I can when I am in the classroom working with children. Sometimes I keep a clipboard of 1" x 2" stickers. I can write on them quickly and then stick them on a child's page. Or, I use sticky notes which I then transfer to the child's page. Sometimes, I find 30 minutes to write and I just flip through the notebook and write to myself about what I remember - what stands out about my students from the previous couple of days.

Sometimes, I make my anecdotal records more formal. I watch every child doing the same grade level task and collect data for my notebook. Once I know what each child knows and where I want each student to go, then I can design a learning environment that will make sure that students arrive.

Read on to get a brief introduction to...

1. Running records for intermediate children
2. Finding out what children want to read through reading inventories
3. Helping children set reading goals by assessing themselves with reading territories
4. Using lexile numbers to match students with books

The teacher who is systematically taking running records of children's reading, ideally about one every two to four weeks, is building a pattern of evidence from which he can make fairly reliable hypotheses.

Fountas and Pinnell, Guided Reading

Taking a Modified Running Record

I have to listen to each child read to me as often as I can. I need to read with my strugglers more often but I should be listening to every child. The running record is one of the most valuable tools in my assessment toolbox.

The work involved in gathering running records looks much more complicated to most teachers than it has to be. I think that's because school systems have institutionalized running records and have made the process unwieldy. I usually spend 10 minutes with each child when taking a modified running record. My reading class time is structured this way:

• Whole group working on a variety of projects: reading, reader's notebook, so what projects, self-selected books, reading for strategy circles, etc.
• I pull a small group together and teach a minilesson or do a think aloud.
• I send the group to do the reading assignment silently or in pairs and excuse one child from reading to read with me for 10-15 minutes.
• I bring everyone back together. The others review what was read in the book for the student who was with me.
• We hold our strategy circle discussion. The child who read with me participates and actually ends up being a great catalyst for conversation because the student authentically wants to understand what he/she missed.

I don't ask the child to read unfamiliar text when other children are listening. This is a private session between each learner and me so I can get to know the answers to the questions listed above in as natural a setting as possible.

Sometimes I want each child to read a text they have never seen before and sometimes I want them to prepare something to read to me. From a prepared text, I learn what each child can do with practice! I also learn what book the child has selected for himself, including what reading level and what author or genre interests the child. From an unseen text, usually the book the group is reading, I see what the child can do when confronted with new information and whether the child is handling the text successfully. Both readings give me valuable insight.

I even had my 10th graders read to me. From 1:1 reading I learned that many of my students still read just any ole' word when they came across a word they didn't know. Usually the word they conjured up had the same first letter. Sometimes the word they called was an utter nonsense word.

In the safety of a one-on-one session, I could say, "Does that make sense to you?" A smile. A glance downward. "No," would come the reply.

I had to explain to 16-year olds that reading just has to make sense. Self-correcting is O.K.

Good readers stop and figure out what is wrong. They stop, puzzle over words, take words apart, look for words within the word that they recognize, try to remember where they've seen that word before, look words up in a dictionary and ask people close to them what words mean and how to pronounce them. Students, even older students, don't know these strategies. I only find that out if I listen to them read.

One year when I was teaching fifth grade, before I knew about running records, I decided to ask each child to read to me. It was June, right at the end of school. I thought, "Maybe I should listen to every child read before I mark the report cards."

I will never forget my shock when I found out that one of my best students could not read! By best, I mean she always answered every comprehension question correctly and had an A in reading class. When I asked her about it, she admitted that she struggled with reading. She showed me how she was able to match question stems to text and was usually able to get the right answer. But, this was June! I was sending virtually a nonreader to sixth grade and had just discovered the problem! From then on, I knew I would read listen to every child read often.

From Marie Clay, I learned to take a running record. Clay suggested that we literally take notes on the run - notes about how children read. In the upper grades I call it a modified running record mostly because it is difficult to keep up with older readers and record every word they read correctly. Instead, I record my students' answers to interview questions, errors they make when reading to me, and mutually agreed upon reading goals.

(1) The Interview: I begin by talking with the student, asking questions, and generally making conversation about reading habits and progress since the last time we met.
First time...

• What do you like to read?
• What was the title of last book you read? Tell me about it.
• Do you enjoy reading?
• What's your favorite book?
• Are you a good reader?
• Is there a problem you are having with reading that you would like to get help with today?

OR building on previous interviews...

• What was your reading goal last time?
• Are you making progress? Give me an example.
• Is there a problem you are having with reading that you would like to get help with today?
• Have you been able to read every day? Problems with finding time?
• Have you been able to work on building your sustained reading time?

(2) I ask the child to read a passage I selected or to choose a passage from the book he/she is reading to read aloud to me. I note the title of the book and the grade level if known.

• I say something like, "I'm going to ask you to read for me today. Please don't let me distract you as I take notes on the good things you are doing."

(3) I take notes in some shorthand version. I use codes and borrow heavily from what I learned from Marie Clay and Ken and Yetta Goodman. I note the kind of errors/habits the child makes as he/she reads in my reading notebook. I keep a section for every child.

(4) I figure out the percentage of words the child read correctly. (I count the number of words in the passage and the number of words he/she read correctly. I divide the number of words read correctly by the number of words in the selection to find the percentage.) 90-95% is considered the child's instructional level.

(5) I make notes about my observations as well while the student writes his own self-assessment. Is the student...

• calling each word?
• ignoring phrasing or punctuation?
• reading in chunks? with expression?
• using a variety of cues - looking at titles, words within a word, root words?
• rereading, substituting words that make sense?
• self-correcting errors?
• varying his reading speed when the text gets difficult?

(6) I quickly take a look at the kinds of errors the child made:

• Visual - the word called looks similar to the written word: horse for house as in He rode to the park on a house.
• Syntactic - the error follows grammar rules: He is home for He was home.
• Semantic - the error makes sense: home for house as in I ran into my house to tell my mom my story.

(7) I ask the student to retell the story to determine comprehension. Sometimes I ask, "What don't you understand?" or "What are you reading to find out? Did you find out?" I make notes about comprehension.

(8) When assessment is informal, I choose 1 or 2 habits to praise and not more than 2 suggestions for improving reading. I record the suggestions in my conference folder or notebook so that both the student and I can refer to what was said. The student writes the goal in a specific place as well.

When huddled in the corner of the room, the student and I together, my advice carries more weight, I believe, than making pronouncements to the whole class. I find this to be true with any age reader.

The 10th-grade students were wary of the individual reading sessions at first. They thought they had to read flawlessly when they read for the teacher, the first of many myths we worked to dispel. Teenagers are so conscious of reading aloud that they often cannot remember what they read.

However, I am convinced that running records are sound by the teaching I was able to do even in my limited sessions with them and by the written reflections of the students. "My individual reading session with Mrs. Haag was real good because of her being so calm. But my reading part was alright and this was the first time somebody asked me about my reading."

Reading Inventories

There are all kinds of reading inventories in the literature. Nancie Atwell has one suggestion in In the Middle in the appendix. You can easily design your own. You want to find out what interests the student. What kinds of reading is he/she already doing? What's the student's favorite author? genre? series? fiction? nonfiction? How many minutes is the student reading daily? in one sitting? Does the student read for pleasure or only when assigned the reading? What reading materials would the student buy if he had the money to do it?

Reading Territories

The teacher models what he/she is reading and records the list on the overhead as a model. Then the teacher gives the students time to complete their own reading territories. The students can add to it as the year progresses. The activity helps the students to reflect on all the kinds of reading materials and the choices they are making. Nancie Atwell describes this technique in detail in her book, In the Middle.

For example, I might list the following books and magazines and authors, if I know them. I would talk about the books as I write, showing my enthusiasm.

I say something like, "I'm going to reflect on the reading that I've been doing lately. As I think, I will make a list of the name of the book, the author and the genre, if I can remember. It's a good idea to take a look every once in awhile at what I am reading to think about my reading habits. Watch carefully at what I do because I will be asking you to think and write about your reading territories when I'm finished."

• Gooney Bird Greene - Lois Lowry - child's book - trying to keep up!
• Essential Linguistics - David & Yvonne Freeman - a teacher idea book
• Lifetime Guarantees - Shelley Harwayne - another teacher book
• rereading New Entries - Karen Ernst - tells me how to incorporate drawing into my journal
• DaVinci Code - mystery, true or not true?
• What You Know by Heart - Katie Ray - to help me with writing
• the five people you meet in heaven - Mitch Albom - a fable
• The Charlotte Observer - at least the headlines every day!
• People Magazine - I love to read about people.
• Traveling Mercies by Ann Lamont - It's the book my book club is reading.
• Making Out in Chinese - a book about the informal language of China because I will be traveling there.

What will you do with this information?

• Match books with kids.
• Select books for your classroom library or assignments.
• Model reading strategies in minilessons.
• Conference with individuals, sharing strategies and books.
• Give book talks to get kids excited about reading.

Lexiles by Metametrix

Lexile - measure
Lex- lexicon    ile - percentile

One lexile is 1/1000th of the way from the lowest reading level to the readability level needed to get along in the world. A computer system scans books to determine level. With the software, Metametrix can score state tests and texts.

Metametrix developed the software with a research firm in Durham, North Carolina.

North Carolina has licensed the software.

Any school or district can buy the license.

Scholastic Books has "lexiled" many of the books it sells and has compiled an alphabetical list as well as a lexiled list of the books it sells.

Two factors determine a lexile.

1. The software measures the frequency of words heard based on the research done in Chapel Hill in a study in the 1970s.
2. The software measures the sentence length. It measures where the child is reading and comprehending 75% of the text.

Ideally, children need work in all 3 areas of reading daily: comprehension, decoding, and fluency. They should be reading on, below, and above their instructional reading level for different reasons. (Reading To, With and By Children by Margaret Mooney)

1) Students need to read above their instructional level to learn new vocabulary, to get a sense of story structure, and generate an excitement for what is to come!

2) Children read instructional level texts so that they can practice their reading strategies. When children are struggling with only one out of 10 words, they can comprehend plus apply the strategy work they have learned.

Our highest readers are rarely challenged to read texts that are on their instructional level if they are only given access to grade level material. These students need the challenge of reading above grade level texts that match their instructional level.

3) For enjoyment, students need to read texts that are below their instructional level. Just like we take a John Grisham's novel to the beach, not War and Peace, students need to read just for fun as well to build confidence and enjoyment. They also need to use below level texts to practice fluency and expression so they are not concentrating on too many things at once.

Lexile numbers cannot measure...

1. the child's interest in and willingness to read a text
2. the background knowledge a child brings to a text
3. the content-appropriateness of a text
4. whether the child has read the text before
5. whether the text has picture support

We can use lexile numbers as ONE WAY of helping teachers match students with texts for different purposes. As teachers, we make the final decisions, however. We need to be cautious when sharing this information with parents.