Running records are very effective tools used to gather data on students' reading progress, which is used to form instructional decisions. This formal assessment can yield useful information on the students' word identification, as well as reading fluency (Tompkins, 2010). The teacher records which words are read correctly and which are read incorrectly, mispronounced, substituted or omitted. Self-corrections are also noted. Following the administration of running records, students are frequently asked to retell the story and answer several comprehension questions. An analysis of the students' errors or miscues can provide insight into what reading strategies the students primarily use.
In my professional experience, I have administered a variety of formal assessment systems, those of which include mClass Reading 3D, Fountas and Pinnell Benchmark Assessment System and the Qualitative Reading Inventory-4 (QRI-4). I used the mClass Reading 3D program to assess students' reading levels and knowledge at the beginning, middle and end of the school year. Similar to that is the Fountas and Pinnell system that I used for progress monitoring throughout the year. I felt the sense that some of my students were ready to move up in reading levels and the running record and answers to the comprehension questions provided concrete data that supported the notion. Of course, some students fit right in their new guided reading groups while others did not perform as I expected based on the assessment, but that is one of the benefits of having fluid groups.
After analyzing miscues from my students' running records, I discovered that the large majority of the children were relying very heavily on visual cues, some meaning cues and little to no syntactic cues. I then realized that I had been focusing much of my teaching on the beginning and ending sounds of words, that I had failed to teach students to cross-check the picture with the words and self-monitor. This makes a lot of sense knowing how much children rely on visuals to help them understand the world around us. Using the information I gathered from the assessments, I improved my teaching by modeling cross-checking and asking myself if the words I was reading made sense and sounded right. My students soon began to utilize those strategies and began to make great gains.
References
Tompkins, G.E. (2010). Literacy for the 21st century: A balanced approach (5th ed.). Boston, MA:
Pearson Education, Inc.
Christina: you are doing an excellent job assessing and monitoring your students' reading progress. From the information you shared, I can understand the importance of reading records. I like the fact that you analyzed student miscues, used the data to modify your teaching style and modeled cross-checking to help students improve and advance. Tompkins mentions that running records are a very effective assessment tool due to its authenticity (p. 88). Do you also use informal reading inventories and day-to-day observations, anecdotal notes, conferences, checklists, rubrics and student work samples?
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