Practical Steps for Informing Literacy Instruction: A Diagnostic Decision-Making Model - Softcover

Kibby, Michael W.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0872071332 ISBN 13: 9780872071339

Publisher: Intl Literacy Assn, 1995

Synopsis

Michael Kibby has created a cognitive organizer of the components and strategies important to successful reading and a schema for evaluating each student's reading proficiency in a rational and efficient manner. This easy-to-follow flowchart guides teachers through the process of assessing students' reading strategies and abilities, evaluating instructional materials, and developing diagnostic teaching sessions for the purpose of designing appropriate reading instruction.

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About this title

From the Back Cover

Michael Kibby has created a cognitive organizer of the components and strategies important to successful reading and a schema for evaluating each student's reading proficiency in a rational and efficient manner. This easy-to-follow flowchart guides teachers through the process of assessing students' reading strategies and abilities, evaluating instructional materials, and developing diagnostic teaching sessions for the purpose of designing appropriate reading instruction.

From the Publisher: In a period when many teachers are moving away from dependence on published programs towards the creation of their own literacy programs, they assume a great responsibility for designing appropriate instruction for the individual children in their class. To Michael Kibby, we owe a debt of gratitude for providing a conceptual organizer to guide our thinking about reading diagnosis.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From Chapter 1

In preparing a proposal for the U.S. National Reading Research Center, the University of Georgia-University of Maryland Consortium conducted a poll of International Reading Association members who were classroom teachers, reading teachers and reading specialists, asking them what they believed to be "important priorities for advancing reading research through the new Center" (O'Flahavan et al., 1992, p.12). The authors reported that 18 items were rated as significant issues by 50 percent or more of the respondents. Fourth on that list, with 68 percent rating it highly important, was "teacher decision making in the reading program"; and fifteenth, with 52 percent rating it highly important, was "teacher development in assessment."

Because many classroom teachers have adopted holistic, literature-based, or child-centered philosophies and methods, these two findings of the Georgia-Maryland survey seem logical; such instructional rationales require teachers to free themselves from the dictum of basal systems (be they eclectic, phonic, or linguistic) and their intrinsically prescriptive regimen of texts to be read, skills to be learned, practice sheets to be completed, and levels tests to be passed. As is the case in gaining any freedom, however, freedom from basals carries with it increased professional responsibilities-especially decision making and the assessment and evaluation that provide the information for making decisions.

In this text, the combined procedures of reading and assessment, reading evaluation, and decision making for reading instruction are identified as reading diagnosis. The word "diagnosis" comes from the Greek meaning through or thorough knowledge, and as I conceive it, reading diagnosis is a process, not a thing. It is a process of gaining a thorough knowledge of a person's reading performance, strategies, skills, and instructional needs through accurate observations for the purpose of modifying instruction. Because there is much variance in both the reading strategies of children and the instructional paths leading to improved reading, the information needed in reading diagnosis varies from child to child and teacher to teacher. Therefore, it is necessary to ascertain the specific information needed as diagnosis progresses over time. The diagnostic process is essentially a problem-solving process: it requires identifying needed information, obtaining that information, interpreting and evaluation it, an then determining what further information (if any) is needed. Without a conceptual framework or decision-making model, this process may become either hap-hazard and non-directed or standardized and inflexible.

In general terms, the reading diagnostic process requires a teacher to be able to assess the status of reading performance, strategies, and skills of any child in his or her class and evaluate any child's performance, strategies, and skills in terms of expectations for that child. Further, that teacher must be able to evaluate texts in light of any child's instructional needs (Lipson & Wixson, 1991, p. 57) and then, via diagnostic teaching, assess and evaluate that child's ability to learn and ascertain those instructional conditions necessary for learning. Last, the teacher must be able to integrate all this information and design instruction for the child's continued growth in literacy.

These five sets of tasks-- (1) assessing and (2) evaluating a child's reading strategies and abilities, (3) evaluating reading texts, (4) diagnostic teaching, and (5) designing instruction-are essential for reading diagnosis and remedial reading instruction as conducted by a reading clinician or reading specialist in a clinical environment and as elaborated in many excellent texts in diagnosis and remediation (see, for example, Barr, Blachowicz, & Sadow, 1995; Harris & Sipay, 1990; Lipson & Wixson, 1991; McCormick, 1995). Except for diagnostic teaching, these tasks are also congruent with the diagnostic and instructional portions of Marie Clay's (1993a) Observation Survey, used as the basis for her Reading Recovery program (1993b), and with the strategies recommended by Valencia (1990) for portfolio assessment. In literacy-based classrooms, however, teachers assume many of the same responsibilities and goals that are traditional for reading teachers or reading specialists, but classroom and special education teachers are responsible for instruction for children at all reading levels, not just those who have reading difficulties (Holdaway, 1979). Carrying out these five sets of tasks requires knowledge of many special skills, techniques, and materials. Equally pertinent is a rationale that provides a teacher with (1) a gestalt or cognitive organization of the components and strategies important to successful reading and (2) a sequence for assessing and evaluating components and strategies in a rational and time-efficient manner. The diagnostic decision-making model presented here provides both an overall perspective and a rational sequence.

Edition details

• Publisher: Intl Literacy Assn
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0872071332
• ISBN 13: 9780872071339
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 66