MAP-R & Reading Group Assignment

[Anonymous]

My DD is in the 3rd grade. According to her teacher, she’s been assigned to a group reading at level P.

Although this is consistent with her assignment from 2nd grade, she claims not to be challenged and is bored.

Last week she took the MAP-R and scored 218 (Lexile 950) and according to the county, this corresponds to a several levels reading levels higher (W,X,Y).

Any advice on how to advocate for her without antagonizing her teacher would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

MCPS Chart for RIT to Guided Reading Level
https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/uploadedFiles/schools/clementems/programs/Reading%20Level%20Correlation%20Chart.pdf

[Anonymous]

MAP-R is one data point. I'm not saying she couldn't be higher than a P but I'd ask the reading teacher if your daughter has been given a running record since she started school a few weeks ago. It would be interesting to see if your daughter picked up where she left off on the spring mClass assessment from 2nd grade. Don't be afraid to ask for her MAP-R strand scores to see if she scored higher/lower in a given area on MAP-R (Literature, Informational or Vocabulary). These tests are meant to inform instruction but not too many teachers have been trained on the dozens of reports available on the NWEA MAP testing site. At least by analyzing the strand data you can ensure you focus on any gaps.

In addition, the emphasis this year in grades 3 - 5 is to have all students reading complex, grade-level text. In other words, text that is rich enough for our students to really sink their teeth into by employing close reading strategies. If a student is reading complex text above grade-level I'd inquire about more opportunities to participate in texts from the William & Mary and/or Junior Great Books programs.

[Anonymous]

It is possible your child is an outlier in the class, or, they just don't teach past level P. The current curriculum does not really really provide advanced work.

[Anonymous]

20:02 here - we make sure our outliers (no matter the level - far below or very high) go to a different room for reading so they have peers in a group. I like to make sure teachers don't have more than 4 reading groups in their classes. We sit down in September and again in January to see if there are students who need to be reshuffled to ensure they have a group that best meets their needs.

[Anonymous]

The PPers have some great advice. You should bring this to the teacher’s attention. Although I’m no expert, your DD’s score seems a bit high side for level P and is likely an artifact of the prior year’s mclass testing. Further, mclass is a subjective test that can be administered differently from one teacher to the next whereas the MAP-R is a nationally scored standardized test.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It is possible your child is an outlier in the class, or, they just don't teach past level P. The current curriculum does not really really provide advanced work.

There's another group in the class reading at level R.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:20:02 here - we make sure our outliers (no matter the level - far below or very high) go to a different room for reading so they have peers in a group. I like to make sure teachers don't have more than 4 reading groups in their classes. We sit down in September and again in January to see if there are students who need to be reshuffled to ensure they have a group that best meets their needs.

Just because this happens in your MCPS ES, doesn't mean it is happening everywhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:20:02 here - we make sure our outliers (no matter the level - far below or very high) go to a different room for reading so they have peers in a group. I like to make sure teachers don't have more than 4 reading groups in their classes. We sit down in September and again in January to see if there are students who need to be reshuffled to ensure they have a group that best meets their needs.

Just because this happens in your MCPS ES, doesn't mean it is happening everywhere.

They used to do this at our ES but think they lost funding for the resource teacher. :/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is possible your child is an outlier in the class, or, they just don't teach past level P. The current curriculum does not really really provide advanced work.

There's another group in the class reading at level R.

Something similar happened to my kid last year, too. She was assigned, at the beginning, to the second highest reading group, despite having good MAP-R scores. I discussed it with DD's teacher and was told that our school's principal prefers kids stay in lower groups longer 'to make sure' they truly develop necessary skills.

I just suspected that the advanced group simply was full, and the second one down was under capacity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:20:02 here - we make sure our outliers (no matter the level - far below or very high) go to a different room for reading so they have peers in a group. I like to make sure teachers don't have more than 4 reading groups in their classes. We sit down in September and again in January to see if there are students who need to be reshuffled to ensure they have a group that best meets their needs.

Just because this happens in your MCPS ES, doesn't mean it is happening everywhere.

I'm aware but that doesn't mean it couldn't be given as a suggestion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is possible your child is an outlier in the class, or, they just don't teach past level P. The current curriculum does not really really provide advanced work.

There's another group in the class reading at level R.

Something similar happened to my kid last year, too. She was assigned, at the beginning, to the second highest reading group, despite having good MAP-R scores. I discussed it with DD's teacher and was told that our school's principal prefers kids stay in lower groups longer 'to make sure' they truly develop necessary skills.

I just suspected that the advanced group simply was full, and the second one down was under capacity.

if your child is outscoring most kid in the higher group, they’ve clearly developed the necessary skills Some teachers will try to pass this off as one of several data points but reality is they’re not even factoring map scores They planned groups based on least years mclass and mostly don’t want to be bothered by surprises like this. It’s sad but true.

[Anonymous]

NP who just thinks that the teacher-assigned reading levels are not that accurate. If there is an R group in your class, IMO the Map scores support moving to it.

[Anonymous]

When my dd was younger, she was stuck on a reading level for a while and I asked the teacher about it. She said she was good at oral reading and discussing the book, but her reading level was constrained by her writing-- the measure for reading level was based on a written response, and her responses weren't meeting the expectation in various ways (I think it was about not writing enough details, etc though I don't recall exactly). So it could be that the skills tested in MAP-R aren't the same as the skills for reading-level assignment. It is a good question to ask at the November conferences, along with what skills you can work on to move her up.

[Anonymous]

Did your DD tell you that she is not challenged and bored, or are you inferring that? The difference between P (38) and R (40) aren't huge, she might be bored and unchallenged in the R group too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When my dd was younger, she was stuck on a reading level for a while and I asked the teacher about it. She said she was good at oral reading and discussing the book, but her reading level was constrained by her writing-- the measure for reading level was based on a written response, and her responses weren't meeting the expectation in various ways (I think it was about not writing enough details, etc though I don't recall exactly). So it could be that the skills tested in MAP-R aren't the same as the skills for reading-level assignment. It is a good question to ask at the November conferences, along with what skills you can work on to move her up.

Nebulous excuses are often given to avoid changes which could prove inconvenient. Sure, it's possible, but if they're suggesting this, I'd ask for concrete examples to illustrate before accepting it.

My impression is the MAP-R is a more comprehensive, consistent and reliable metric than the mclass which is typically knocked out in under 10-15 minutes by an often harried classroom teacher. It does a much better job measuring a child's comprehension than answering 1 or 2 questions from a single story.