Anonymous wrote:Really? In any school improvement plan I read it says all children should improve in reading at least if not more than 1 grade level each year which I believe is about 10 DRA levels.

DRA levels don't work that way. Google it.

Really? In any school improvement plan I read it says all children should improve in reading at least if not more than 1 grade level each year which I believe is about 10 DRA levels.

Anonymous wrote:Child in similar situation to 19:54. Managed to go up about 8 levels during the year with some extra parent help and was one of the kids who made the greatest gains in reading. Sounds like PP had a really great teacher or great student. Unfortunately not all kids are making those gains especially with large class sizes.

This doesn't mean anything unless you share the beginning level and the end level. The DRA levels are not equally portioned.

Maybe the bottom line is that small group reading instruction isn't particularly valuable. So the 15 min. my kid got each week didn't really matter. It was just depressing to think how much of the school day was frittered away in "stations" and how little teacher interaction there was each week.

Small group instruction was important to me, as a teacher. It enabled me to see if progress was being made on a daily basis. It told me what skills I needed to repeat with the kids and which ones I could skim over.

In our Loudoun elementary school, the largest class I've ever heard of was about 28. Even that is rare. Past about 25/26 they add/move a teacher. One of the grades is especially large so each year when they move up a grade, the new grade gets an extra teacher. K is only 1/2 day but the classes are 17-23 kids and have 2 teachers.