PRESS Phonemic Awareness Word Meaning

PRESS provides this progressive inventory to determine skill mastery and areas of needed instruction. While the focus of phonemic awareness is to determine student dexterity with sounds, assessing meaning provides additional skill information for the inventory assessor.

Nonfiction Questions

Use these generic questions with nonfiction texts or passages to determine student thinking and understanding of topic, main idea, and craft. Teachers note how students connect text elements to personal experiences.

PRESS Decoding Inventory Word Meaning

PRESS provides this progressive inventory to determine skill mastery and areas of needed instruction. While the focus of decoding is to determine student phonological skill, assessing meaning provides additional instructional information for the inventory assessor.

“What Can I Work on as a Reader?”

Use this self-reflective tool to help students set goals from twelve reading areas. This tool works best when administered one-on-one or in small groups. It has been developed by Jennifer Serravallo for the Reading Strategies Book (Serravallo 2015). Spanish

Fiction Comprehension Questions

Use these generic questions with fiction stories or passages to determine student thinking and understanding of plot, characters, and theme. Teachers note how students connect text elements to personal experiences.

Student Questionnaire

Develop a deeper understanding of students including learning grouping preferences, topics of interest, and literacy habits.

Teacher Self-Inventory and Reflection Journal

Reflect prior to a new school year and throughout as you gain new information about yourself, your students and their families. Set goals for yourself and your students based on data and

Family Questionnaire

Develop a deeper understanding of families including learning preferences, family values, and literacy habits.

Cult of Pedagogy Questions

“Sometimes I will be going about my normal day and I’ll notice a negative haze has descended on me — some vague feeling of apprehension, guilt, or maybe self-pity — but I won’t have a clue where it came from. If I ignore this feeling, it just gets worse. But if I stop and try to trace it back to where it came from, I can usually pinpoint something…” —Jennifer Gonzalez

Teacher Questionnaire

Reflect on meaningful literacy experiences to reflect on personal definitions and understanding of literacy.

Interview Questions

Using open-ended questions to engage students at the beginning or end of a lesson. Note student responses to gather further insight into student values or preferences.

Energy Awards

Girls on the Run celebrates runners through silly or funny actions, performed as a group to celebrate individuals for overcoming challenges or meeting goals. Girls on the Run Rockies

Encouragement

Conscious Discipline has developed a number of rituals, songs, and ways to connect and encourage students as they learn new things and build relationships.

Implicit Bias and Microaggressions

“Students and teachers are made of powerful feelings, but these feelings are not fixed and set in stone. Emotions can be identified, excavated, understood, and managed. And when we work through that process together, implicit bias can be unlearned.” -Todd Finley (2019)

Implicit Bias Assessment

“Hidden Bias Tests measure unconscious, or automatic, biases. Your willingness to examine your own possible biases is an important step in understanding the roots of stereotypes and prejudice in our society.” -Teaching Tolerance

Teachers are People Too

In this article, “data from two national data sets investigates teachers’ explicit and implicit racial bias, comparing them to adults with similar characteristics. The findings suggest that if schools are to effectively promote racial equity, teachers should be provided with training to either shift or mitigate the effects of their own racial biases.” (Starck, Riddle, Sinclair, & Warikoo, 2020)