Day 26: Running Records

October 29,2015

Today while the class was doing their reading centers I pulled two students out (one at a time) to do running records. The classroom teacher was trying to decide on whether or not it was time to move those 2 students up a level in reading. She uses Reading A-Z. I've done running records with this program before so I was already familiar with how it worked. As much as I'd like to think running records provide a concrete answer on what level the student's reading is, after today my opinion has really changed.

Mike's* Running Record
95 word book
16 errors
4 self corrections

Accuracy- 83%....this would put him in the "Frustrational" category.
If a teacher saw this raw information she would move Mike* down a level and re-do a running record.

Insight: 8 of the 16 errors were exactly the same. Mike said "fast" instead of "faster" on every page in the book. If you only count this as 1 error and not 8, changes Mike's* Accuracy to a 91%. This would put this level text into an instructional level.

The book was about different animals. 2 of the animals used were not on a 1st grade reading level (in my and my co-op's opinion); tortoise and antelope. These also added on 4 more errors (both animal names were used twice).

My co-op decided that we would retest early next week on the same level just with another book. She had very similar views on the possible skewed results. I do find running records very helpful and for the most part fairly accurate; however, I do believe that you have to analyze the errors and recalculate based on that evaluation.

We also finally had our final production of the This is a Moose play that the class has been working on. They all did great!! We had a few parents that came and the 2nd, 3rd and 4th grade classes. Hopefully by next week it will be up online for all to see.