Instructional assessment: Finding teaching points - Running records

Over time, running records can show patterns in student use of cuing systems and self corrections. But individual running records can also be useful in instruction. After each running record, a teacher can choose a teaching point, using the student’s errors as an immediate opportunity for learning. Mistakes lead students to new learning and teachers to new understanding of students. As Peter Johnston notes, “For teachers, the most useful aspect of errors is that people do not make them randomly.” When a teacher gains understanding about the reason behind an error, it is then that the teacher can employ his/her knowledge of instruction to guide the student to learn.¹

Selecting a teaching point

Choosing which error is best for a teaching point can be challenging. First, the teacher should be sure that the piece of reading that was sampled was on the instructional or independent level. Then, the teachers should consider the errors made and figure out which error seems to be “partially correct.”. In other words, is there an error for which the teacher can identify the student’s reasoning in making the choice to read the text as he or she did? The teacher must put him or herself in the shoes of the learner, making no assumptions that the learner sees the text, or the world for that matter, in the same way the teacher does. Errors made in reading are explorative and a necessary part to text navigation.²

An example

Let’s return to the example in which a student reads “I like my pony” when the text was printed as “I like my horse.” A teacher may select this error as the teaching point. When the running record is complete, the teacher would go back to the page in the text that contained the error. The teacher could either read to the student the sentence as the student read it, or even ask the student if he or she remembers what they read on that page. The teacher would praise the student for making sense of the passage by using the picture for a clue. Then, the teacher should point out that there are other clues, such the information in the word itself (the letters or clusters of letters and their sounds). The teacher should encourage the child to make use of both kinds of clues and to try that sentence again.

A teacher would not select an insertion or omission of a word that generally did not interfere with the reading of the book or the student’s understanding of the text. If the text reads “I love going to school every day” while the student read “I love going to my school every day,” this error cannot be used to improve the way a child acts on text. There is not a strategy to be learned that is as valuable as cross-checking cueing systems, such as in the example of “I like my pony.”