Notes
ANGIE DORRELL COACHING MEETING 9.23.26
Angie Dorell and I met for her second coaching meeting on Wednesday, September 23, 2026 at 9:20AM.
REFLECTION ON THIS WEEK’S READINGS
Angie just got into the course in the last week, so has been catching up on the work in Module 1 and 2. In module 2, Angie was very interested in the whole notion of assessment, especially focusing on assessments that are not necessarily “tests” but rather on informal assessments such observation. She emphasized that she would like to be able to develop an observational assessment in which she listened to students read not only for words per minute, but for accuracy and prosody. A concern is the number of students that she has in her class and considering how she could get around to all of them within reading time. That led us to the Rasinski article which I had sent her in which Rasinski discusses the value of reading in other content areas. This might be a way to buy time for Angie to be able to listen to students read.
Angie also discussed the work that she and her literacy specialist are doing to increase fluency, which currently involves partner reading. The Raskinski article discussed partner reading and effective ways that partners can be selected. The literacy specialist had identified the partner groups and some students were partnered low with high, others with similar ability. Angie described one group in which one of the students is reading at a first grade level and the other at a 7th grade level. The partnership seemed to work—the 7th grade reader was very patient with the 1st grade reader and the 1st grade reader enjoyed listening to the 7th grade reader. We discussed an interesting idea for research—what are the characteristics of partnerships that work???
FOCUS OF INQUIRY
Angie knows that she wants fluency to be her focus of inquiry for the course. We discussed several possibilities to study fluency, each of which focused on not only on increasing words per minute, but also on accuracy, prosody and enjoyment of reading. Involving students in discussions of why they are struggling, or what are there reading interests areas could be important strategies to consider.
DREAM GOAL
At this point, Angie is not ready to identify a goal for this semester’s work. I shared with her the elements of the Dream Goal along with a sample goal. We will settle on the goal at our next meeting.
Next Meeting
Our next meeting will be held on October 2 at 9:20 AM.