Focus Group Data: Term 1

Now that our Term 1 testing has been completed, I spent some time taking a look at the data and comparing it to their scores from Term 4 last year.  I was easily able to do this for all but one student since he is new to our school this year.

This year, I will be focusing my research on a group of 7 Māori students in my literacy class (as discussed in a previous blog post).  Below is a graph showing the Reading Ages as provided by our 2017 Term 4 Running Record Data.  All of the students in my focus group are reading below grade level between 7.5 and 8.5 years of age.

One of the tests that students took last week, was the PAT-Reading Comprehension test.  Here is a comparison of their test scores from Term 4 last year (2017) to Term 1 in 2018.  The majority of the students did somewhat better on the 2018 Term 1 test, which indicates that there was not much summer drop off with my focus group of students.

Our students also sat the STAR (Supplementary test of achievement in reading) Test, which is another way for us to assess a range of our student's reading skills.  Although, the PAT shows not much drop off in the results, our STAR data clearly shows the opposite. However, I find that students who struggle with reading often decide that it is simply "too hard" and give up on the STAR test particularly in the beginning of the year.  Hopefully, this is the case and we see greater improvement during Term 4.

Lastly, as I stated in a previous post (linked here), I decided to administer an additional word recognition assessment to my focus group called the Burt Word Reading Test.  

I found the results of this test very interesting, especially when compared to the 2017 Running Record Reading ages.  The majority of the students had comparable scores on the two tests, with the exception of one student who had a drastic difference between the two test results.  When looking further, it was noticed that this student received intensive reading support during the 2017 school year, and is currently receiving a different form of support this year.