Basic Skills in Literacy

I’ve been working recently to realign lesson plans and strategies available through the Ohio Resource Center (yes, my place of employment) to help teachers/districts begin implementing the Third Grade Reading Guarantee (3GRG) this year (keeping in mind that although required reading diagnostics begin this year, it doesn’t begin impacting students until 2013-2014 with students entering … Continue reading →

RtI, FA, and Paying Attention to Each Student

I vaguely remember the moment when it hit me in my classroom…It was a couple years into my career as a secondary teacher, poring through half-sheet after half-sheet of reading pop quizzes from my 130 students, marking red “x” after red “x,” thinking to myself “We just talked about this!  Why didn’t they pay attention … Continue reading →

Teacher/Principal Evaluations in Ohio

I recently did a point by point summary of all the most updated information about the state of new teacher and principal evaluation systems in Ohio.  Remember that 50% of the new evaluation is dependent on student growth measures that are to be determined by local boards of education.  Part of this 50% must be standardized … Continue reading →

RtI and Progress Monitoring, K-3

“Cool Tools”  Informal Reading Assessments  (Found through the Ohio Resource Center) Created by the Florida Department of Education, this document contains many assessment types and formats for progress monitoring in the five areas of reading development:  phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and reading comprehension.