Conversion Chart and Guided Reading

          and a bonus:  Benchmark Reading Levels and Marking Period Assessments 

                                                     for 5 months of the year.

I like this conversion chart because it overlaps reading levels with grade levels. 

How do I use it you ask? After I have done running records, fluency checks, STAR testing, DRA reading, and Acuity testing (wow) I pretty much know where each of my children belong on the conversion chart and also strategy groups for Guided Reading and Small Group Instruction.

The Eight Components of Guided Reading (2010) align with the key tenets of the Common Core State Standards:

1. Complex, high level reading comprehension is the goal of guided reading instruction.
2. Guided reading centers on a sequence of high quality texts that support individual progress on a scale of spiraling text difficulty.
3. Guided reading lessons increase the volume of independent reading that students do; the goal always is confident, capable independent readers.
4. Guided reading provides explicit instruction in accurate, fluent reading.
5. Guiding reading lessons provide daily opportunities to expand academic vocabulary through reading, writing, conversation, and explicit instruction.
6. Guided reading lessons include teaching that expands students' ability to apply the concepts of print, phonological awareness, access to rich vocabulary, and accurate, fluent reading to the processing of print.
7. Guided reading lessons invite students to write about reading.
8. Guided reading lessons create engagement in and motivation for reading.

                                                                                       --Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell 

This link goes to 

Teachers College Reading and Writing Project 

Benchmark Reading Levels and Marking Period Assessments 

This is a fantastic chart-

I can't post it here, you have to go there!! BUT...

it walks you through where every student should be in

SEPTEMBER, NOVEMBER ,JANUARY, MARCH ,and JUNE

so cool!

http://readingandwritingproject.com/public/themes/rwproject/resources/assessments/benchmarks/Independent_Reading_Level_Benchmarks_2012.pdf

For example:  In September my 4th Grade students:

                                            

                                                                        1=M or below (avg. J)                       

                                                                        2=N/O (avg. N) 

                                                                        3=P/Q (avg. P) 

                                                                        4=R or above