As this was the first time in recent years where we are administering and tracking a Schoolwide Reading assessment, Staff debriefed about how it went. Staff identified some of the advantages:

• Clear data for future use in organizing staff professional development, as well as distribution of materials and resources (including helping the TRIAD work/plan together to support all students)
• Additional information that can be communicated with families in written and learning updates
• Standardized materials can help provide more comparable data and uniform metric for all students
• Measure of noticeable change (progress) that has been made over time with interventions, identification of areas that may require more intervention, identification of possible gaps in learning which are sometimes difficult to identify through regular classroom interactions alone
• Additional opportunities to read one-on-one with students

Some of the topics that were identified as challenges included:

• Preparation for this Schoolwide reading assessment paperwork is onerous; DART materials are hard to book from the DRC at certain times of the year
• Necessity of more time to administer and discuss results with their TRIAD
• Reading assessment used may not be relevant to students’ interests
• Timing of the Schoolwide Reading Assessment wasn’t ideal
• Identification of the need for current primary level Reading intervention materials

Based on the feedback that was provided, our next steps are as follows:

• Form committees for purchasing Guided Reading materials (consultation with the District Literacy Consultant, Briana Adams, was done previously)
• Consult with our Inclusive Support Teacher, Viji Shanmugha, about appropriate Reading Intervention programs to use with students based on their needs
• Revisit Learning Resource support to see if there are creative ways to group students with similar literacy needs for the next term
• Determine ways to facilitate preparation for the DART paperwork, as well as way to streamline the scheduling process so that two members of the LRT/ELL team can be part of the administration
• Seek a more relevant Standardized Reading assessment, if possible