TECHNICAL MANUAL
ASSESSMENT BACKGROUND
Rationale Teachers know that students come into the classroom with a wide variety of literacy skills. To account for these differences and effectively differentiate instruction, teachers need to have a clear picture of each student’s literacy profile. This logic was confirmed by data when reading researcher Dr. Carol Connor and colleagues identified four types of instruction that, when combined with information about a student’s literacy profiles (i.e., assessment data), could be used to inform effective individualization for any kindergarten through third-grade student. Consistent with the Simple View of Reading (Gough & Tunmer, 1986), they divided the “content of instruction” into two types, meaning-focused and code-focused instruction. They also observed that either instruction type could be delivered by the teacher (teacher-managed) or completed by one or more students (child-managed). By identifying both the content of instruction and who was managing the students’ learning, all reading instruction could be sorted into one of four quadrants (Figure 2). Although this is a relatively simple framework, it can predict a student’s reading growth trajectory with surprising accuracy simply by knowing how much of each type of instruction children had received in these four areas across a school year. Although all children need code-focused, meaning-focused, child-managed, and teacher-managed instruction, the specific amount of time required for each student or group of students depends upon the students’ decoding, vocabulary, and comprehension skills. A2i plays a critical role in determining how many minutes a student should receive on code-focused and meaning-focused instruction. To do this, the A2i assessments create a literacy profile for each student by measuring their decoding and comprehension ability (Letters2Meaning) and their vocabulary level (Word Match Game).
Code-Focused
Meaning-Focused
Teacher- Managed
Child- Managed
Figure 2. The four types of reading instruction as identified by Dr. Carol Connor and colleagues.
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