Massillon City Schools Has Plan in Place to Address Third-Grade Reading Scores

School districts across the state of Ohio recently received their students' scores from the state's October OAA reading assessment. With nearly half of its third-grade students scoring below the 400 proficiency level, the Massillon City School District already has a plan in place for helping these students succeed.

"The Ohio Achievement Assessment our students took on Oct. 8 was significantly different than previous OAA exams," said Dr. Angela Chapman, Massillon's curriculum director. "The content has changed as well as the benchmark. Last year the Third Grade Reading Guarantee benchmark was 390. This year the benchmark is 392. The assessment was also dually aligned to the Ohio Academic Content Standards as well as the Common Core State Standards. Throughout the course of the school year we will work with students, teachers and parents to increase student reading levels as we align to these new standards."

Students who are at risk for not reading at grade level by the end of third grade have been placed on a Reading Improvement and Monitoring Plan (RIMP). This is an individualized plan for each student. Additional academic support will include small group instruction time with teachers and tutors, after school tutoring and a summer intervention program. The district will also provide additional professional development for teachers.

In addition, all K-3 parents are invited to attend an Elementary Parent Night on Tuesday, Jan. 21 from 6-7 p.m. in the district administrative office. The meeting will provide parents with strategies to help their children prepare for the OAA.

The assessment given in October was designed to provide districts with baseline data of how students are performing in Reading. When the test was given, students only had 32 days of instruction. The assessment will be given again in April when students have had 150 days of instruction to see how they have improved. The assessment can also be taken again in the summer and OAA alternative assessments are will also be available as well.

Under Ohio's new Third Grade Reading Guarantee, students who do not score a 392 or higher on the OAA by the end of third grade can be held back. For more information on the Third Grade Reading Guarantee please feel free visit the Ohio Department of Education’s website at  http://education.ohio.gov/Topics/Early-Learning/Third-Grade-Reading-Guarantee.

"The Massillon City School District staff has been preparing for the new third-grade reading standards," said Superintendent Richard Goodright. "The level of rigor on the new assessment is significantly higher so we are not seeing the levels of proficiency we have in the past. With the first assessment complete, we have a clearer understanding of what is being tested and can help our students achieve higher reading levels.

Understanding Informational Text

Ohio’s New Learning Standards for ELA/Literacy drawing from the Common Core State Standards for ELA/Literacy stress the importance of all K-12 students having increased access to informational texts and writing in response to reading informational texts. In last month’s issue of Educational Leadership, Nancy Frey and Douglas Fisher (San Diego State University) wrote an article which suggested a number of strategies to help students master informational texts – that is, materials that teach about the physical, biological, or social world. Frey and Fisher don’t include literary nonfiction (biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs) and hybrid texts (for example, The Magic School Bus series) because these have narrative structures that make them more like fiction.

What makes informational texts difficult for so many students? Unfamiliar vocabulary, different grammatical structure, and densely packed content. “Teachers need to help students find access points that enable them to gain entry to complex informational text and then trek their way through to a successful conclusion,” say Frey and Fisher. Their suggestions:

            • Establishing purpose – Teachers must provide some kind of “hook” that increases motivation so students begin reading with a clear idea of what to expect. Teachers should also alert students to tricky parts and encourage them to use illustrations and graphics to understand the content.

            • Close reading – “Close reading requires a skilled teacher who can resist the urge to tell students the correct answer at the first sign of confusion,” say Frey and Fisher. “In fact, struggle is an essential part of the learning process; it provides an authentic reason for rereading and discussing the text.” This means scrutinizing a text, identifying central ideas and key details, investigating vocabulary and structure, and putting it all together to get the meaning. Students should annotate, answer text-dependent questions, and develop the habit of rereading.

            • Collaborative conversations – Students need to interact with each other using concepts and academic language. Book clubs, reciprocal teaching, and Socratic seminars are good formats for placing the text at the center of rigorous discussions.

            • Wide reading – “In the push to increase the complexity of the informational texts that students read, there is a risk that students will actually read less,” say Frey and Fisher. “Complex texts take time to understand, and close reading slows students down as they reread and annotate.” Teachers need to give students time every day to read high-quality, appealing texts in class, as well as encouraging them to read outside of school. Frey and Fisher believe students shouldn’t be required to write logs and reports on this kind of reading, but instead engage in ungraded follow-up activities to share their ideas.

To better assist with the implementation and understanding of Informational Texts I have compiled some instructional resources for you. 

Guiding Questions for Using Informational Text (based on the ELA/Literacy Instructional Practice Guides from Achievethecore):

• How does the unit allow students to persist in efforts to seek evidence for their responses by returning to the info text when discussing or collaborating?
• What opportunities are provided for students to build on each other's observations or insights around a piece of informational text - including charts, maps, primary docs etc.?
• What tools/strategies will students be able to use to help them gain content knowledge from informational text?
• How are questions and tasks designed to help students build academic vocabulary (content or domain specific vocabulary and syntax)?
• How are questions and tasks designed to require students to use details from the text to demonstrate understanding and support their ideas about the text?
• What factors have been considered to make sure the text used is at or above the complexity expected for the grade level?

Instructional Resources:

• Guide for Writing Text Based Questions
• InfoOhio-Informational Text Resource Kit
• Readworks.org- This website provides K-9 lexiled reading passages and supporting text dependent questions aligned to the ELA Common Core State Standards 
• Close Reading Strategies with Informational Text-Classroom Video 
• Increasing ELL Student Reading Comprehension with Non-Fiction Text-Article
• Closing in on Close Reading- ASCD Article
• Exemplars of Close Reading Lessons

PARCC Assessments

The PARCC Assessments are coming soon! This week we received notification that four of our buildings in the Massillon City School District were selected to participate in the Spring administration of the PARCC field test assessments.

PARCC Background Information

As you know, Ohio is leading the way in assessment innovation by developing new next generation assessments with other states and the District of Columbia as part of the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) consortium. PARCC is developing a set of assessments in English Language Arts/Literacy and Mathematics based on the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) that will be used by all states in the consortium. 

In preparation for the first operational administration of PARCC assessments in the 2014–2015 school year, a PARCC Field Test will be administered in the spring of 2014 to more than one million students across all PARCC states. Participating students in grades 3-11 will be assessed in English Language Arts/Literacy or Mathematics. We are very excited that Massillon Students will have the opportunity to participate in these field tests in the Spring.

The primary purposes of the PARCC Field Test are to:

• Examine the quality of items so that PARCC can build assessment forms for the 2014-15 school year;
• Test out assessment administration procedures; and
• Give schools and districts the opportunity to experience the administration of PARCC assessments.

In preparation for the PARCC field tests and the PARCC assessments teachers should familiarize themselves with the sample items. Today, PARCC released new sample test items, PARCC has now made public exemplar test items across the grades in both mathematics and English language arts/literacy. 

These sample items are designed to help teachers, students and parents get a better sense of how PARCC will measure student learning in mathematics and ELA/literacy. The new assessments are aligned to the Common Core State Standards. 

PARCC will make all of its sample items available later this year on the PARCC technology platform, providing an opportunity for students and teachers to try out the assessment system in the manner in which it will be administered. 

For more information about PARCC, please visit www.parcconline.org.

Weekly Communication

Dear Colleagues,

This weekend I received the latest issue of the International Reading Association’s Reading Today magazine.  I was hoping to find an article that would inspire my weekly communication with you.  I was reading an article by a professor at the University of Albany, State University of New York, when I became inspired.  Our curriculum team is in the process of evaluating all of the district’s textbooks and resources in order to determine those content areas that are in the greatest need for updated materials.  We are cognizant of the fact that your materials must be aligned to Ohio’s New Learning Standards.  Granted, it is challenging to teach these new standards with outdated resources.  Donna Scanlon (2013) brings up an interesting point in her article that I read.  In 2008, she and her colleagues conducted a study in which they provided professional development that emphasized comprehensive and responsive literacy instruction to kindergarten and first grade teachers.  These teachers were not from the same school district, but rather from multiple districts in which a variety of literacy programs and practices were in place.  Scanlon and her colleagues noted that these teachers, after having received focused professional development, were able to reduce the number of children in their districts who demonstrated literacy learning difficulties by approximately 50%.  This study suggests that teaching has a greater impact on student success than programs do.  What you do in your classrooms makes all the difference!  In an effort to continue to provide you with professional development that is aligned to Ohio’s New Learning Standards, we will soon launch our district professional development program that will provide you the opportunity to showcase your expertise, grow as leaders and collaborators and enable our students to compete in a global society.  So, please stay tuned!  Enjoy your week and continue to offer up your very best instruction.

Thank you,

Dr. Lynne S. Kulich
Coordinator of Instruction

MAP Assessments

This month we will begin administering the MAP assessments which stand for "Measures of Academic Progress". The MAP assessments will be administered to students in grades K-10 in Reading and Math. Students in grades 3-8 will also take the Science test. These assessments will help us determine our "readiness" as it relates to the Common Core Standards which will be assessed using the PARCC assessments beginning in 2014-2015 for students in grades 3-8. Using the MAP assessments to inform instruction will help our teachers become better teachers and our students become better learners.

What are the MAP assessments?
The MAP is a computerized adaptive test. This means that the assessment can adjust the difficulty of the questions to the level of the student. The test, which has no limit, will start with a set of questions that matched the child's grade level. If the students answers the questions wrong, the computer will pick an easier question next. The rest of the questions will be determined by the child's performance on previous questions.

How are the MAP assessments scored?
Since the MAP is a computerized assessment student scores are generated immediately and full performance data with information about each student's understanding about specific concepts are available within 24 hours. School-wide achievement reports are available within 72 hours of test completion. The score will be called a Rausch Unit (RIT), which is a special type of number scale that measures student achievement. A RIT score will vary from grade to grade as a student grows.

On the reading portion of the MAP, scores called "Lexile Measures" are also given. Lexile Measures score the student's reading ability on a scale from 5 to 2000. By knowing a student's Lexile level a teacher can match the student with a book that is appropriate for his or her level. 

The data from the MAP assessments will be used to support instruction in the following ways:

• Identify the skills and concepts individual students have learned
• Diagnose instructional needs
• Monitor academic growth over time
• Make data-driven decisions at the classroom, school and district levels
• Place students into appropriate instructional programs

What can parents do to help students perform well on the MAP assessments?

• Make sure that your child gets plenty of sleep the night before the test.
• Ensure that your child arrives to school on time.
• Let your child know that the test is important.
• Give your child a healthy breakfast on the day of the test.

For more information on the Map assessments please click on the link below:

NWEA Website

Welcome Message!

Greetings! Welcome to the Curriculum Corner for teacher and administrator resources related to Curriculum, Instruction, Assessment & Professional Development. This is a very exciting time in education due to the many changes that are transpiring nationally and locally. In Ohio, we have many new initiatives that are underway. We are transitioning to  Ohio's New Learning Standards; which include the Common Core Standards for ELA & Math and the Ohio Academic Content Standards for Science & Social Studies. We have a new teacher and principal evaluation system; OTES/OPES which includes student achievement data and Student Learning Objectives (SLO's) for teachers that do not have value added data from ODE. We are implementing the Third Grade Reading Guarantee which entails diagnosing all K-3 students using the Ohio Diagnostic reading assessment and creating plans for those needing reading interventions. This year is also the first year that all Ohio schools and districts will be evaluated using the New A-F District & School Report Cards. You can find out more about our district's efforts to transition to the Common Core State Standards by checking out the MCSD Common Core Transition Plan.