Fluency Assessment Guide © 2008 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Portions © 2008 Altis Avante Corp. 2 Earobics Reach Fluency Assessment Guide Table of Contents Introduction to Fluency Assessment Guide The Purpose of Fluency Assessments ......................................................................6 Fluency Assessment vs. Fluency Practice.................................................................6 What Is a Student-Administered Fluency Assessment? ...........................................8 Fluency Assessment Instructions Earobics Reach Fluency Assessment Steps..............................................................9 Steps for Teacher-Administered In-Person Assessment...........................................10 Steps for Teacher-Administered Recorded Assessment ..........................................12 Steps for Evaluating Previously Recorded Fluency Assessment.............................13 Steps for Viewing Fluency Assessment Scores.......................................................15 Steps for Scheduling Fluency Assessments Manually ............................................17 Scoring Rubric for Prosody ......................................................................................18 Fluency Rate Chart...................................................................................................19 Fluency Assessment Unit Table ...............................................................................20 Earobics Reach Passages Exploring Lechuguilla...............................22 Light Up the Night...................................76 Rescue!...................................................24 Into the Great Unknown .........................78 Wild About Worms..................................28 The Oklahoma Land Rush.......................82 Life in the Rainforest...............................32 Bill Picket: Rodeo Cowboy ......................86 Sea Turtle Night .......................................34 Treasures of the Deep.............................90 Rhino Man...............................................38 Jose’s Three Wishes................................94 Up in the Air ............................................42 Graham Hawkes: Pioneer of the Deep...100 The Flight Contest...................................44 Smokejumpers ......................................104 Daredevils in Flight..................................48 Storm! ...................................................106 A Picture of Peace...................................50 Give Them Space ...................................112 Captain Stormalong.................................52 Accidental Foods ...................................116 Bugs and Crime ......................................56 Greenwood’s Champion Ear Protectors ..120 The Sun’s Energy ....................................58 Success at Last: Jan Matzeliger............126 Sun Power...............................................60 The Power of Dance..............................130 Mission to Mars ......................................64 Tattercoat...............................................134 Celebrating a Neighborhood ...................68 Alvin Ailey: 1931-1989 ...........................140 Seth’s Birthday Party ...............................70 Underneath a City .................................144 Fluency Assessment Guide Earobics Reach 3 Table of Contents (continued) Deven in New York ................................148 The Massachusetts 54th.......................248 Venice: The Sinking City ........................154 The Boston Tea Party.............................252 Crossing to the New World...................158 A Brave Soldier......................................258 La Amistad: A Child’s Journey...............164 Mount Everest ......................................262 Angel Island...........................................170 The Giant Rock: A Sierra Miwok Tale......268 What a Gem! .........................................174 Sherpas: Living and Leading in the Wally’s Tale ............................................178 Mountains..........................................274 Point of View: Offshore Drilling .............184 Kenya James: A Teenage Inspiration.....278 Buried in Ash.........................................188 The Little Rock Nine ..............................284 The Scariest Day of My Life..................192 Cesar Chavez: Uniting Farm Workers.....290 The Hindenburg Tragedy........................198 Cool Art .................................................296 A Musical Wonder.................................202 The Cartoonist.......................................300 The Great Jazz Quartet .........................206 Everyone: the Artist ..............................306 A Song of Hope and Power...................212 Legendary Volcanoes.............................310 The 1988 Jamaican Bobsled Team ........216 San Francisco’s Tragic Day.....................314 Racing to Victory ...................................220 When Earthquakes Strike......................320 Remembering Dale Earnhardt...............226 The Great Wall of China ........................324 Writing with Symbols............................230 My Days at Mesa Verde........................330 Fitting In ................................................234 The Skywalking Mohawks ....................336 The Rosetta Stone ................................242 Index of Reading Passages ……………………………………………………………………………. 340 4 Earobics Reach Fluency Assessment Guide Fluency Assessment Guide Earobics Reach 5 Introduction to Fluency Assessment Guide his book is intended to provide teachers skills through recording and hearing himself Twith the materials and knowledge neces- or herself read aloud. sary to administer Fluency Assessments to their students as part of the Earobics Reach Because Fluency Practice has no mastery reading intervention program. This book hurdle that must be cleared before the stu- includes instructions on how to schedule, dent can advance to the next unit, Earobics administer, grade, and report scores of the Reach measures the student’s progress formal Fluency Assessments. The entire text using a system of teacher-graded Fluency of each of the program’s reading passages is Assessments administered at regular inter- provided as part of this book to enable stu- vals. These Fluency Assessments also pro- dents to read aloud from a printed page dur- duce student performance data that is ing the assessments. recorded by the system and can be presented in various individual and aggregate reports. For instructions on how to use Earobics Reach in the classroom and details on the Fluency Practice vs. Fluency instructional material found in the program, Assessment see the Earobics Reach Teacher’s Resource Guide. It is important to understand a few distinc- tions between Fluency Practice and Fluency The Purpose of Fluency Assessment. Both activities involve the stu- Assessments dent reading passages aloud (and potentially making audio recordings), but the two activi- Earobics Reach contains a sequence of ties differ in a number of fundamental ways. instructional units based around 72 reading passages of gradually increasing Lexile level. 1. Student-Led vs. Teacher-Led: Fluency Each unit consists of four different instruc- Practice is an entirely self-directed activity tional areas—Phonics, Vocabulary, that students can engage in for a period Comprehension and Fluency. Each of the of time limited only by the Fluency four areas instructs the student on distinct Practice timer in the student settings (15 literacy skills. A student achieves mastery of minutes is the default). Fluency all four instructional areas within a unit Assessment, by contrast, is a short (gen- before moving to the next unit. erally one minute) reading administered and graded by the teacher. (An alternate In the instructional areas of Phonics, scenario involves the student recording an Vocabulary and Comprehension, the system assessment without the teacher being automatically measures student mastery of present; see “What Is a Student- the material presented by scoring student Administered Fluency Assessment?” responses to the activities. In Fluency, how- on p. 8.) ever, the activities consist of self-directed Fluency Practice, where the student builds 6 Earobics Reach Fluency Assessment Guide Introduction to Fluency Assessment Guide 2. Frequency: Fluency Practice is presented to 4. On-screen vs. Print: During Fluency Practice, the student multiple times in each unit the student reads from a passage presented (except the program’s first unit, A11). A on-screen. In a typical Fluency Assessment, Fluency Assessment is normally administered the student reads aloud from one of the pas- only when the student reaches the last unit sages in this book. of each three-unit sub-theme (except the pro- 5. Support: In Fluency Practice the student has gram’s last unit, D63). Teachers also have the different levels of support available, including option of manually scheduling a Fluency word cards, pacing guidance, and instruction- Assessment at any time. al commentary. There are no such supports 3. Passages Used: Fluency Practice utilizes text available to the student during the Fluency familiar to the student, while Fluency Assessment. Assessment uses reading passages that the 6. Decision to Record: In Fluency Practice the student has not seen previously. Thus, when student has the option of making an informal the student is in Fluency Practice mode, he recording of himself,