Using the Read 180 Workshop Assessment
For those of us that teach Read 180, an intervention reading and writing program, the workshop assessments are a great method for measuring student’s current understanding of the standards within the workshop that your class is in from a formative and summative standpoint.
We know that Houghfton Mifflen Harcourt has done an outstanding job on the data collecting software in the Read 180 program; allowing us to gather solid data on our students and make necessary changes in the way we go through each workshop unit.
If you are not using these workshop assessments, especially the online administered versions, you are missing out on an effortless and thorough assessment of you Read 180 students. However, there is one thing to look into before you administer your workshop assessment; if you follow the Read 180 lesson planning to the T (like the want you to do), your students will miss out on standards that they will be assessed on in the workshop formative and summative assessments. For example, in the Workshop One Interim Assessment (Level A), students have four questions that assess their ability to summarize. At no point prior to this assessment does the Read 180 lesson plans include students learning how to effectively summarize.
As much as the Read 180 coaches and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt team want you to follow the program exactly as they want, sometimes injecting your own worksheets into their Real Book work can help keep them on track through the workshop, but also help your students succeed at the workshop assessments and give you more practical data.
Aside from creating a more linear lesson plan, with backwards planning in mind, this assessment should be used in your Read 180 classroom if you have not been using it already. There is also a useful tool in the Data Manager of HMH Central that automatically displays your class’s average score, as well as how your class did on each standard being assessed. This data calculated itself almost instantly, and it can be a powerful tool to throw up on the projector if there’s time after your assessment.
