Running Records

WHEN?
Running records (RR) should be done on a regular basis with your students (on level = 1x per month; below = bi-weekly).

WHY?
The purpose is to record the process and behaviors the student exhibits while reading to inform our instruction on both fluency (accuracy, rate, expression) AND comprehension. We want to see what the students are doing and understanding independently with the texts they are choosing.

If you have a very fluent reader, who is accurate and expressive, you will want to focus on the comprehension discussion after the sample of the student's reading.

WHAT TO USE?
You can pre-count words in a common text for a student to read during small group instruction. If you are conferring with a student, make sure you know the level of the student's own book, and listen to them read. Depending on the type of book the student is reading, usually a page and a half to a page is usually 100 words.


HOW?
Part 1

• Review of basic coding a RR and some interactive practice is included too!
• Video part 1 (8 mins) - insertions, substitutions, and omissions
• Video part 2 (8 mins) - multiple attempts, try that again, pause/told, 
• Video part 3 (15 mins) - appeal, self-correction, repetitions, practice with ALL types of errors

Part 2

• How to analyze what systems your student is using to decode while reading in simple term with easy to understand examples -->  MSV: Cueing Systems
• I usually do this after the comprehension discussion when I'm done conferring with the student

Part 3

• Discuss what the student has already read in the book. 
• Listen to him/her read. (part 1)
• Then discuss what the student read aloud, and how it relates to the rest of the book, to check comprehension. 
• Remember: it should be a discussion (the student retelling, sharing his/her thoughts, teacher asking follow up questions for personal understanding, and teacher modeling of strategies), NOT A QUIZ.
• Don't know what to talk about? I usually...
• ask the student to tell me what they've been reading about and their thoughts, BEFORE I listen to them read
• Student reads aloud as I take RR
• When student reads 1-3 pages aloud, I will say: so tell me your thoughts about what you just read
• if the student gives a thorough retell, then you can move onto higher level (beyond and about the text) discussion prompts based on what has been practiced in class.
• if the student can not retell, your focus will be on more basic/literal (within the text) understanding of what was read
• If you're not comfortable at listening to a student read and immediately knowing where your discussion should go, start off here

• Once you are more confident, here are some lists of discussion prompts/question stems to look at for more ideas
• discussion prompts organized by strategy (great 8)
• Prompts organized by skills

Example of a RR taken with a student in an intervention guided reading group. However, my RR look like this even with students with whom I confer.