Preparing Book Boxes for the Daily 5

As I am sure most school districts do, we utilize DIBELs, DRA, and a variety of other assessments to gauge the instructional reading levels of each of our students.  Our building has a calendar of when these assessments are given throughout the course of the school year, and the data is utilized to drive instruction and to measure student growth.

I stumbled upon this resource at the public library in hopes of finding some tidbits to enhance my instruction.  I was thrilled to find an Oral Reading Assessment, Silent Comprehension Assessment, and Instant Words Assessment that I can quickly utilize with each of my 6th graders to help identify their Independent Reading Level, Instructional Reading Level, and Frustration Level.  While DIBELs and DRA do provide this, I thought that these different tools can be beneficial as well, and can provide great information about each student quickly.

One aspect that I like the best is that the Oral Reading Assessment begins at easy first grade level or 1-A and students can be assessed through seventh grade reading level.  This will provide a really quick picture of what I need to be doing immediately for my incoming 6th grade readers.

My goal is to make the read to self and read to someone components of the Daily 5 as productive as possible.  If you are looking for a few quick and useful assessment tools in order to gauge student ability as you work to put together book boxes for each student, check out this resource.