Diagnostic Reading Assessment (DRA)
The DRA is a formal assessment that tracks text level, letter knowledge, sight word knowledge, emergent behaviors, and dictation skills. DRA is tested in October, January, and May. This helps track studnet growth throughout the year and identify students who are or are not making adequate growth. The DRA indicates what score are considered on grade-level. This helps me compare my students scores with what is average and expected of all first-grade students. The information I gather through the DRA is helpful when creating guided reading groups, selecting reading materials, an determining what instructional strategies to use to target areas of growth.
The data shown here is from the 2018-2019 academic year. It shows student growth in sight word knowledge and text level throughout the three assessment periods. My students made an average growth of 31 sight words, and an average increase of 8 text levels. This assessment allowed me to track which of my students were on below, on, and above grade level with their reading scores. At the start of the year, 39% of my students were on or above grade level for the beginning of the year. By the end of the year, 89% of my students were on or above grade level for the end of the year.
The data shown here is from the 2019-2020 academic year. It shows that as of the October testing period, all 21 of my students are reading below grade level. It also shows that of the 54 lowercase and capital letters, my students were, on average, able to successfully identify 36. It also shows that students know on average 5 first grade sight words. This beginning of the year data is important to understand where my students are coming from. It also shows that my class this year has a drastically different starting point than my studnets last year and as such will need drastically different supports.