I taught second grade in a primarily Caucasian, middle-class school, located in a suburb of Omaha. As of October 2018, there were 429 students enrolled in our building. In 2017-2018, 31.1% of our school’s students were minorities and 27.27% of our students were a part of the free and reduced lunch program. I was a general education teacher and I worked in a classroom with 20 second graders.  Of my 20 students, 11 were boys and 9 were girls. Two of my students received literacy intervention services for performing below level on beginning of the year benchmark assessments, as well as performing below the 20th percentile on the Measure of Academic Progress (MAP) test. The MAP test is an adaptive achievement test, given three times each year,  which helps inform the teacher's decisions to assess each child’s academic growth. Three of my second grade students were on specific behavior plans or had behavior referrals. This required me to have very structured instructions and lesson plans in order to keep my students with behaviors on task and focused. It was important to have structure for them and my other students because if they were engaged, understand what was expected of them, and why reading was important they would want to learn more about how to read.  I had one student who was pulled for resource services and two students who were pulled for literacy support. Of the 20 students that I interacted with on a regular basis, 25% (4) met with the counselor because they had experienced personal trauma of some kind. Knowing all of this information about my classroom was important because it changed the way I approached my lessons. I used wait time, and clear structured instructions that allowed my students to have choice but allowed me to be in control at the same time. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

According to the Fountas and Pinnell text levels, of my 20 students, ten of my students were reading below grade level, five were reading on grade level and five were reading above grade level. This wide range of skills and levels showed me the need for differentiated instruction in order for my students to progress and meet their reading goals. By the end of second grade, students needed to make a year's worth of reading growth. On grade level students should be at level M by the end of second grade. This meant, because of the wide range of levels in my class, I needed to effectively differentiate my small group plans to increase the reading competency of each of my students. According to the Fountas and Pinnell progress monitoring chart, 48% of students were not on track to meet the goal of reaching level M by the end of that school year. I used the Fountas and Pinnell Benchmark assessment system to determine an inventory of each of my student’s current range of reading abilities. This data identified the emphases for teaching, allowed me to select text appropriately, identified teaching goals, determined the facilitative language to support my students, and teach with efficiency. This data also helped me form my reading groups based on similar reading levels.
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Two more points of data I collected were anecdotal notes and running records. The anecdotal notes collected in the fall, showed my students had a high need in fluency and comprehension. Through the evaluation of my running records, which were conducted once a week for all of my groups, various themes emerged. I noted most of my students could self-correct words, but could not comprehend what they were reading.  Running Records were used to track miscues, strengths, and misconceptions of students and to alter my instruction to meet the unique and specific needs of my students. A running record, in my classroom, was used to monitor students during a warm read aloud to identify miscues. A warm read is a text that the student as already seen. I used these running records to assess a student’s reading progress by evaluating oral reading and identifying recurring reading errors. Our guided reading curriculum guided me to pay close attention to reading behaviors during a running record. These reading behaviors referred to the twelve systems of strategic actions which need to be executed with proficiency and efficiency to the move on to the next level. 

My fourth point of data, demonstrating a need to focus on differentiation and leveled instruction during my reading block, was my Student Reading Feelings and Attitude Survey. This survey showed 60% of my students felt unconfident about being successful readers. This helped me understand my students' feelings about reading and helped me know what I needed to do as a teacher to help them enjoy reading more.

In the fall my students were also assessed using the Measure of Academic Progress (MAP) test. The MAP test is an academic test that students take three times a year that shows academic growth. This fifth, and final, data point showed my classroom had a standard deviation of 14.5. In order for our common curriculum to cover all needs of my students in whole group reading the standard deviation should fall between 10 and 14. Since my standard deviation was 14.5 my students were a little bit over the norm so guided reading was an area that worked well for my classroom. It filled in the gaps for student needs that were not being met in whole group instruction. MAP data showed me that I had 11 students who were high or high average in characteristics of text. I had 8 students who were low or low average in main idea/detail and building vocabulary. This data informed me of what teaching points I needed to focus on for each individual group during guided reading.  This on-going assessment data helped identify progress made in reading achievement and skills throughout the year. These scores helped inform my instruction as the student MAP test results were reported in RIT scores (short for Rasch UnIT). A RIT score is an estimation of a student's instructional level and also measures student progress or growth in school. RIT scores through MAP show for what skill or skills specific students are ready for.  Using the MAP data throughout the year helped me identify how much progress my students were making in reading. All of this data demonstrated a need for differentiation and leveled instruction, specifically, in reading for my students.