Thoughts+on+Needs+Assessment

teachers to be trained on how to use the STAR Reading program independently by testing their own classes to determine their reading level, to run available reports, and to use these reports to help in determining what steps need to be taken in order to increase students' reading comprehension skills. Teachers can use reports such as the summary report, growth report, diagnostic report, reading range report, and parent report to fulfill assessment needs. Teachers will not depend on the librarian to assess students or run reports, but only to act as the administrator of the program itself, and seek help from the librarian only as needed. Instead of the librarian running all the reports as well as all the assessing, teachers will now have the knowledge and training to be able to take on these tasks.Teachers will free the librarian of this time-consuming burden, so that she can continue to complete other important tasks in the library and not fall behind in her daily routine.

Teachers should be the ones assessing students and running reports because they are the ones who have requested this program as the assessment piece that determines students reading levels. When students receive their level, they are to read leveled books within their level and then take a quiz over each book to determine how well they comprehended the book. Students use the Accelerated Reader program (AR) to take their quiz. Students are expected to earn points and reach a goal that has been established by their reading teacher, which in turn is used as part of their reading grade. How it works is teachers set point goals for each individual student per quarter and the student must work towards earning that goal by reading level-appropriate books and taking quizzes on them. Therefore, if teachers are using this program as a crucial assessment piece to determine what students reading levels are, what books they should be reading to help earn points for their reading goal and grade, then they should know how to use it.

Teachers now are depending on the librarian to assess students using the STAR program during librarian class time. Teachers also expect the librarian to run the reading range report after the assessment has been given and also determine if any students need to be retested.

Learning how to use the STAR Reading program should be important to teachers because it not only is the number one factor used to determine students reading levels and goals, but also offers a variety of information that can be used to determine students reading growth, reading grade equivalents, class rank, and normal curve equivalents (2010 Renaissance Learning.www.renlearn.com.June 20, 2010.) Teacher can also turn to the parent letter report which helps to aide in explaining the diagnostic information to parent in easier to understand language during parent conferences.

Teachers depend on the use of STAR to determine students reading levels. Once the levels have been established, teachers set goals for students to earn points for reading books within their reading range/level and taking comprehensive quizzes on them use the AR program.