Just curious, what level are your students reading at right now in Guided Reading? What is the expectation in your district for students to be at by the end of the year?
In my district K students have to be at DRA-2 level 3 by the end of the year to be considered on grade level. I teach sped and many of my students will end up being able to do this by the end of the year, since at a level 3 they can rely heavily on the pictures and sight words and most will have learned to sound out CVC words. By the K standards, most of our students, including my sped students, are "at grade level" by the end of the year. However, the expectations rise so quickly in 1st that they quickly fall behind. Kids are supposed to be a level 16 by the end of 1st grade.
My district's guided reading level expectation is a D at the end of the year. Before that I was in a charter school and the expectation was an E. My first year teaching K, most of the kids were at an A/B for guided reading at the end of the year. I think it is so interesting that Kindergarten is very different depending on the district.
I think it depends on the level kids come in to K at also. In my first district we tested letter names and sounds the first week of school and kids that didn't know at least 90% of them were immediately placed into an extra small group intervention. Only a small percentage of kids needed this- most really did come in already knowing their letters. I remember our K teachers talking about expecting them to write correct paragraphs by the end of the year. To me that sounds crazy! In my current district, 95% of kids come in knowing 0 letter names/sounds, not even the ones in their name. They also have no knowledge of print concepts or what letters are. We spend a huge chunk of the year working on just getting them to learn their letters and sounds.
DIBELS assumes kids come in on RB (Reading Behaviors), and expect Level D at the end of the year. Most of our kids come in below PC (Print Concepts), but they're still expected to reach Level D.
