EASYCBM.com

I have discovered a resource that is going to be very helpful for my work in my Daily 5 classroom. EASYCBM.com offers assessment for reading fluency, comprehension and math. The website is supported through a federal grant. You can read an explanation of easycbm.com at easycbm.com-online progress monitoring system.

I am using easycbm.com with all my classes today as 'field testing' it for several days. My field test including paying my grandchildren $1 for each test they took for me. I wanted to see how close the tests were to their actual grade level. I also wanted to know what kinds of data I could get for them. I am very impressed so far.

Have any of you tried easycbm.com? I'd love to hear from you.

More on Three Ways to Read a Book

I have a few additional comments to make about our 3 ways to read a book lesson which was my previous post. First, in case you are not aquainted with the Daily 5, here are the 3 ways to read a book.
1. read the words 2. read the pictures 3. retell the story to someone

After Mrs. Leep's lesson on three ways to read a book, I took the 6th graders on step further. I let each of them pick a picture out of their reading material in their tubs. Most of them had magazines with lots of pictures. They were to show their picture to the class using the document camera. The class had to guess what the picture was showing. Then the student read the caption to the class and they compared how close they were with their guesses.

This gave the students additional practice on reading & looking at the captions plus it was fun to compare the guesses with the actual caption. Sometimes they weren't even close.

If you are wondering why I used this lesson for middle school, you might want to read this entry from the Daily Cafe web site-thedailycafe.com. Why would I teach 3 Ways to Read a Book when so many of them are reading chapter books?

Three Ways to Read A Book

I had worried that the content of the Daily 5 program would be too elementary for my middle school students. But so far, I haven't found that to be the case. We recently covered the topic of Three Ways to Read a Book.

I had a literacy coach from our elementary school come and present a specially prepared lesson.

She found an article with four pictures that she used to present the lesson.

Mrs. Leep talked about the three ways to read. I had told her before she came that my students really enjoyed reading magazines during Read to Self but I was worried because most of them seemed to be only looking at the pictures. So Mrs. Leep tailored her lesson to meet that challenge. She emphasized the importance of reading the caption to use pictures to help you understand the article or book. She picked an article from National Geographic for Kids. We looked at the pictures which she had put into a Powerpoint. Then we discussed the pictures-first without looking at the caption and then after reading the caption.

If you would like the Powerpoint we used for the Three Ways to Read a Book lesson, just drop me an email and I'd be glad to share it with you. Email: mydaily5journey@gmail.com