So, I've begun my study through the University of Canterbury; doing a micro-credential in the Better Start Literacy Approach, or BSLA. There is a lot to get my head around before I can even begin this new way of teaching my reading class.
As I have a Year 3 group of learners, they begin with a Year 3 Spelling Screener. This checks their phonological awareness skills. While a small group of learners showed they needed to move up to a harder assessment task, the majority of my Reading class needed to be tested down on the Year 2 Spelling Screener - which has a combination of real words and made up words.
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| The Year 3 Spelling Screener - you can see the different levelling of target sounds here. |
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| The Non-Words tested in the Year 2 Spelling Screener. |
I was looking for two things - which Taumata (or level) best fits my whole class for the whole class teaching element, and which level is their best fit for their small group instruction. Based on their individual results they then were tested on Non-Word Reading and Non-Word Spelling tests to find the level to begin their small group instruction on.
This has been a lot to get my head around and has really drawn my focus away from any vocabulary and comprehension (you can't even bring this into it when dealing with Non-Words!) but I do see the value in doing these assessments.
I look forward to beginning my instruction properly to see how I feel once the lessons have been implemented. The nice thing is once the levels are decided on, the planning is all done for me and I just follow through the lesson plans with a bit of Teacher Judgement to assist with the pacing of their learning.
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