Low Aspirations

[IndigoBell]

Bloody hell I'm cross.

Why do teachers have such low aspirations?

How dare DDs teacher be happy with her attainment. Happy - as in rushed out of school to tell me how well she'd done in her latest test.

On track to almost get a C at GCSEs - and he's happy :(

I hate school. Every bit of it.

There is no expectation that children will do well - only that they'll make a set amount of progress each year.

Children are always told they're brilliant and wonderful - they're never told they're not doing well and they're actually going to have to work hard if they want to achieve something.

No expectations that a child will do well :(

The culture here sucks.

School thinks it's better to have a failing happy child - then a child who works hard :(

But because they make school so fun and engaging she refuses to let me take her out and teach her at home :(

Mathanxiety,

For us, assessment of reading comes in lots of forms:

• Notes from weekly guided reading sessions, which focus on different targets each week so provide information about decoding, expression, use of punctuation etc. It will also contain information about verbal response to comprehension questions about the text just read.
• Notes from any 1:1 reading done with the child.
• Continuous observations and informal assessment based on day-to-day class work - reading from the board, reading of a passage from a class book, questions about a book read aloud to the class as part of literacy etc.
• Occasional summative assessment in the form of written comprehension tasks.
• For SEN children, there is also a further 'information stream' from the specialist TAs who do interventions with the children outside normal literacy / reading teaching (this is our model for intervention, I know that other schools organise it differently). They report on progress through particular schemes, phonics knowledge etc etc.

(As well as what is in the teacher's head from the myriad of opportunities to see a child reading in the school day)

That information is collected and summarised on tracking sheets and AS A WHOLE inform the level given to the child. We would never take a single written comprehension test as providing a 'reading level' for a child - but equally, the inability to respond to such a test provides useful information about the child's reading as a whole. If it is a mismatch with a child's ability to comprehend and respoind verbally to searching questions about a text which has been read to the class, that mismatch provides yet further levels of information.

Yes mathanxiety the purpose of the test is to check reading not aspects of reading but the whole process

X-posted with Indigo. Absolutely. A child who can respond to verbal comprehension questions about a text read to them but cannot decode a text in order to comprehend it should have a very different 'reading profile' from a child who can both decode AND comprehend a text independently....and while that profile can't easily be expressed as a single 'number / letter', where a single level is given it shouldn't ignore that huge hole in 'actually being able to read the text independently'....

the point is a child with difficulties, such as Indio's daughter clearly has should not be given the test at all as her reading fluency is such she can't access it. It is intended for children able to read independently at level 2 or above.

However, mrz - a child who can comprehend a text read to them, and answer questions including inference, deduction and all the rest does not have that ability tested by SATs-type papers. That relative 'ability' is masked by the inability to decode.

What the test will do is to say (rightly) this child cannot read.

What it doesn't do is say (which may equally be right) this child has good comprehension of texts read to them and can demonstrate that verbally (and thus has the skills of comprehension), while lacking the skills of decoding to access the text independently or alternatively (or additionally) the skills to write their answers down

A child who can comprehend would normally be given a reading task (read 1-1 with an adult and verbally answer questions) rather than the written reading test

Absolutely - so the test measures the whole process of reading for children who have all steps in place.

What it doesn't do is measure which steps of reading aren't in place where a child lacks one or more (nor areas of relative competence if certain basic steps are missing). And as you say, an alternative test is therefore needed.

'the point is a child with difficulties, such as Indio's daughter clearly has should not be given the test at all as her reading fluency is such she can't access it. It is intended for children able to read independently at level 2 or above.'

'What it doesn't do is measure which steps of reading aren't in place where a child lacks one or more (nor areas of relative competence if certain basic steps are missing). And as you say, an alternative test is therefore needed.'

I agree with you both there, Mrz andTeacherwith2kids. That is what I was getting at above when I suggested there were two separate elements.

That was Indigo's point too ... why give her daughter a test that she can't access independently and inflate her ability levels ...mad!

The test didn't necessarily inflate her ability levels. It quite possibly gave an accurate account of her comprehension. But taking the test as a whole and expecting the DD to complete it in ordinary test conditions wouldn't give an accurate impression of either reading or comprehension. Reading a text and ability to comprehend that text are separate elements.

The test is designed to test fluency AND comprehension. In order for it to give an accurate level the pupil needs to read it and answer questions if someone reads the test for the child the level is inaccurate. If it had been a test purely of comprehension then having a reader would not been an issue as the test would be designed differently.

Been doing extra maths with her and realised she still sometimes reverses her digits - ie either writes 14 or 41.

Which means, although she knows exactly how to do column addition, half the time she carries the wrong number. :(

Reading fluency and comprehension are certainly interrelated, with fluency contributing to comprehension and comprehension contributing to fluency (although the extent to which each process influences the end result is still a matter of research). However, I do not see how this particular (non-standardised) test could have yielded useful information for either.

Indigo, as a matter of interest, what standardised tests does the school use to assess different aspects of reading?

Most schools don't use tests to assess different aspects of reading they use APP

A pity because APP is a very blunt instrument compared to standardised tests. It is also hard to measure IB's DD's progress or identify strengths or weaknesses using APP (as reported here) since she is having such difficulties accessing the curriculum.

I agree but APP is seen as good practice testing isn't.

We use the New Salford Sentence Reading tests which give a fluency level and a separate comprehension level (for most children they are the same but I've got two children in my class who have a comprehension level two full levels above their fluency level) It also gives standardised scores and percentile rankings for both.

She isn't having difficulty accessing the curriculum. There is no part of school she misses out on. (despite me asking if she could miss French, she still does it)

Standardised tests are a very poor way of assessing her ability because her abilities vary so much over the week.

By difficulty accessing the curriculum I mean that her difficulty in reading is keeping her from accessing it by the same means as children without dyslexia, even to the point of not being able to complete a test without having the material read to her. She may work flat out to the point of exhaustion to achieve a milestone another student might not find physically challenging or tiring just because of the mechanical difficulty reading presents. Doesn't refer to skipping subjects.

Variability of student performance according to physical tiredness, illness, level of emotional stability, etc can all be equalised with standardised testing. Retests can produce different results or similar, allowing comparison.

Wondering if IB's DD has done anything like this or these in school?

Some viewpoints on the pros and cons of standardised testing in the American context.

I very much doubt it mathanxiety