CATEGORY

Beginning

Developing

Exemplary

Phonemic Awareness

I teach phonics not phonemic awareness.

All my students practice sound identification, sequencing and blending.

I assess my students and provide more intensive and strategic instruction in segmenting and blending at the phoneme level to those who need it. (15 - 20 minute mini-lessons per day.)

Phonics

I help my students sound-out words as they are reading from the text.

All my students complete phonics practice worksheets daily.

I assess my students regularly and use the information to plan systematic and explicit instruction with the goal of decoding unknown words.

Fluency

I listen to my students read in reading groups.

Everyday my students read alone, are read to and read with others.

I assess, model and encourage practice of fluent reading as my students read alone, are read to and read with others.

Vocaulary

My students look up words in the dictionary and write definitions for vocabulary words.

I teach my students important concepts from classroom reading.

I assess my students' vocabulary levels and explicitely teach passage-critical concepts and word-learning strategies.

Comprehension

My students read from the text and answer questions.

My students are taught to use context clues to aid comprehenstion.

I regularly assess reading comprehention; and then explain, model and guide practice of a few comprehension strategies.

Prior Knowledge

We read a story and answer questions.

I teach concepts my students may not have been exposed to prior to reading.

I regularly assess my students prior knowledge and scaffold my instruction to ensure successful reading.

Literacy Environment

My classroom contains books from the reading series and can go to the school library for other books.

My classroom contains many books.

My classroom contains a variety of different types of text, leveled-books, and books that are of high interest and are culturally appropriate for my students.

Integrated Reading and Writing

Reading and writing are two separate subjects in my classrooms

My students read every day and write connected text a few times per week.

My students practice reading and writing connected text in a meaningful and integrated fashion every day.

Assessment

I administer the District and State required assessments and the end-of-chapter tests.

I administer many types of assessments in order to screen for problems, diagnose the problem and monitor student progress.

I regularly complete many types of assessments in order to screen for problems, diagnose the problem, monitor student progress AND to evaluate my teaching methods and plan instruction accordingly.

Professional development

I do what has always worked in my classroom.

I like to try new ideas and approaches to reading instruction.

I stay current with best practices in reading instruction and only implement research-based practices in my classroom.