One of the main things that we work on in my support class is fluency, since all of my students have low CBM scores. Every day, students practice fluency using a modified 6-Minute Solution routine. As a result, we progress monitor every Friday to track their fluency progress.
Since my district uses Fastbridge as a universal screener, I use the progress monitoring passages included with the program. In my first year, we hadn’t made the switch to Fastbridge, so I used DIBELS to progress monitor my students. I like the Fastbridge assessment because it is all in the computer, which saves me a lot of time.
One thing that I have really stressed to my students is that fluency is not just reading as fast as possible. Yes, rate is important for fluency, but there’s more to it than that. Readers need to read at an appropriate pace accurately and with attention to punctuation. I created a Fluency RAP poster in order to help them understand what truly makes a fluent reader.
I also created a Google Sheet to track fluency at a glance. I included conditional formatting in order for the document to change colors. This provides a neat visual for me, since I work with different grade levels that each has a different fluency goal.
My students and I track all 3 pieces of data per student each week when we progress monitor. The rate goal changes for each grade level, but the other 2 stay the same. Accuracy must be 96% or higher, and prosody needs to be a 3 or 4 based on the rubric. According to our exit criteria, students need to meet all 3 parts 3 times in a row.
What if they don’t meet the fluency goal?
My support class has 2 different exit criteria, so there’s always another option. Some students, especially those who have been struggling for years, may not make the grade level fluency goal. It’s just not realistic for some students. As a result, I feel like students need another way to exit from my support class.
The other way that students can exit my class is through our Fastbridge benchmark assessments, which we take 3 times per year. The aReading portion of that assessment tests comprehension and vocabulary skills. If students can bring that score up to grade level, even if their fluency is slow, they can also exit from support.
Do the activities in class actually help?
Our modified 6-Minute Solution routine is really useful to develop fluency skills. This shows up in the progress monitoring that we do each Friday.
All of the other activities that we do in class work towards the aReading criteria. The morphology activities that we work on each work help with vocabulary, and the comprehension activities in Group A/B help students when we take the Fastbridge benchmarks.
What happens when students meet exit criteria?
If students meet exit criteria during the quarter, they receive an exit letter that goes home to their families. My school has a policy that we don’t change students’ schedules in the middle of a quarter. It’s just too chaotic for the office staff and other teachers when we are constantly changing schedules. So, if a student meets exit criteria in the middle of a quarter, they stay in my class until the end. Then we change the student’s schedule.
I also add new students throughout the year. As students exit, I look to fill those empty spots in my class. When students change schedules at each quarter, I both exit students and add more students. The goal is for my class to be a “revolving door” so that I can reach as many students as possible during the year.
Leave a Reply