Sorry for the confusion, but never fear–we are here to help you.
What assessments does your school use for reading–such as DRA, Fountas & Pinnell, a computer program? That would be the beginning assessment information to help find the appropriate reading level or which strategies your students need.
ON the CAFE website, there is an area called Assessing Student Learning. Here’s a link to where you can find those assessments:
https://www.thedailycafe.com/cafe/assessing-student-learning/assessing-each-strategy
Just locate the strategy you have decided on for your students, and use the rubric provided, and lesson info if you wish. You might do this before beginning instruction and use the rubric again after you have conferred with your students.
Other assessments would be running records you do with your students and perhaps writing about reading.
Does this help? Don’t hesitate to ask any questions you have.

Thank you for the quick response! We use MAP for math and comprehension in the fall, winter and spring. We use AIMSWeb for our fluency, again, in fall, winter and spring.
I am trying to picture what my conference looks like with my 5th grade student Billy, names have been changed to protect the innocent ;). What is it that I am having him read to assess his Comprehension, Accuracy, Fluency, and Vocabulary? Is he just reading his best fit book and I’m trying to decide what he is lacking in? Do I have some “test” that I am administering for 5 minutes and pulling data from that?
Again, thank you for your help!

Got it, thank you so much for your help!

This is an area of confusion for me too!

Hi,
Assessments in each school district and school often is different.
In my school district, each school is supposed to standardize the assessments for each grade - meaning if there are 2 or 4 classes of a grade, each class gives the same assessment. What we have done are a couple of different things:

• one school we used the full count as and pinnell program and had students reading levels throughout all grade 4-6. I often taught my own class only ( since I got fairly similar levelled groups). we rated on the grade level associated with Fountas and pinnell for each grade and where the students level was. WE did no other formal testing - this was formative (for student learning and student, teacher and parent information) and at times evaluative (for marks)
• another school took our provincial recommended reading assessments and used those three times a year - we used two reading from their each time and some from different states like California to make a fairly comprehensive assessment - for evaluative assessments.
• I had an old grade 5 assessment (Jerry johns reading inventory) that I gave a half page reading with 10 questions at the beginning of the year to give me a very quick snap shot about what kind of readers I have. it helped me to see quickly, who are really struggling and who I probably will not have to worry about.
  I recommend you consider and think about and talk with other staff at your school, how they do their assessments. THe Daily 5 / or 3 in LA that I did in grade 5 really was formative and gave evidence to say at grade level, below grade level or above grade level. RE-read the conferring and notes and watch the videos and how the sisters have made goals with students, conferred and written their notes. It works. it seems difficult at first to get around different ways of assessing(evaluating). following the daily five with all the anecdotal notes tracks student learning and gives lots of data. Most of all, students spend more time reading and writing so they improve more. You can do it. THe Cafe book and cd have lots of good resources to organize your data.
  some ideas for you to consider,
  marg

Thanks for the great information Marg! I’m not sure what Cyndy is stuck on, but it wasn’t so much the “3 times a year” assessment that has been a sticking point, but the weekly “assessment during conferences each week”. I think I’m getting a better handle on it thanks to srea’s responses though.
If I understand what she was saying, we aren’t using any formal assessment tool during conferences, instead we are using our best judgement to determine which of the CAFE items they need to work on and then set goals and determine which strategy they should focus on to help them increase their abilities. Hopefully that is a valid snapshot (in case that is what Cyndy is stuck on!)?
I appreciate the help folks, what a frightening and yet exciting year this is going to be!