Heather and I discussed in our book club for Kindergarten Literacy the importance of professional development and how kindergarten is more academic (Part 1) and compared our kindergarten assessments to the assessements in Dr. Annes' book. We have started the Fountas and Pinnell Reading Benchmark Assessment and Jan Richardson's Guiding Reading at our school and were given high quality training in both instead of it just being handed to us and said here you go. When I started teaching kindergarten seven years ago, it was half day with snack to full day with my students reading by the time they leave my classroom. It is unreal where I started as a teacher and how much I have grown professionally so I feel like my students have too. In Part 2, we compared our beginning of the year assessment to the ones provided in the book. We normally assess on letter and sound recognition but I think it would be ideal to pull some assessments from this book such as print concepts. I had a child that if I had assessed print concepts at the beginning of the year I could have provided him with more support for tracking print because he would just follow along in his group based on what the other students were doing.
We also agreed that we liked the idea of using portfolios in our classroom. This is a great concept because 1) they involve students in their own learning and 2) they allow your students and you to compile samples of students' work that represent development over time. This is a great way to communicate progress to themselves, their parents, and their teacher. Also the writing rubric helped us think about our own students writing in the classroom. This will help us watch our students' progress and know exactly where they are. I believe this book will be beneficial to us as kindergarten teachers and help us strengthen us professionally.
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