Running Records and Other Things!

I would first like to reflect on the Running Records book. I found this brief review of recording/scoring procedures to be both informative and complex. I agree with Clay when she suggests that teachers should not implement running records without some training from another knowledgeable teacher. I realize the usefulness of using a recording strategy like this, but I doubt I would be able to use it effectively without lots of practice. I like that the end result is both informative to the teacher (in that it provides evidence of how well the child is directing her knowledge of letters, sounds, and words to find meaning in the text) and evidential to the parents. Although they may not understand the format, parents like to see proof of your concerns for their child. Having records such of these shows that you have spent time alone with their child and are not making generalizations based on the class's performance.

I also read the Rog and Burton article. I really liked the section about developing a leveling system. I had never considered the reality that each publisher uses its own leveling system, making the levels less uniform and reliable. The article says, "readability of a Level 3 book from one program might not compare to that of a Level 3 book from another program." I decided to research this further for myself, and I found this:

This is a DK Level 3 Reader- designed for 2nd grade and above. I could find little information on the criteria of which it was leveled as 3.

This is a Scholastic Level 3 Reader. The only specifics given are grades 1 and 2 or ages 6-8. No characteristics of the text were found.

As you can see from the examples, there are variances in the grade level (grades 1-2 vs. grades 2+). The fact that we as teachers cannot always rely on the leveling systems when trying to find the "just right" book is a very important realization.