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     The article we read on assessment was  called "Matching texts and readers:  Leveling early reading materials for assessment and instruction."  This article discusses using developmentally appropriate books and gives a guideline for how to assess the reading level of texts.  It gives a guiding criteria that is broken up into ten levels.  I think that this article is very useful and will be something that I could use as a reference when I am trying to set up my classroom library and won't to label texts by developmental level.
    The other text that we read pertaining to assessment was Marie Clay's Running Records. This text is basically a manual for how to use running records in the classroom.  It tells you how to take a running record and then how to score one and then analyze the data.  I think this book will be a very useful tool in the classroom when trying to assess student's reading skills.  Running records seem like they will be tricky to use but with this manual it will make it easier.
      Assessment is an extremely useful tool that should be used to inform instruction.  I have seen running records taken in a class but I never saw the teacher use the information to inform her instruction.  I think that it is vital that as a teacher you always know where your students as far as their learning is going and the best way to do this is through ongoing assessment.


       The article "Looking inside Classrooms:  Reflection on the 'How' as well as the 'What' in effective reading instruction" discusses research that has been done on classroom practices that have shown to improve students' reading abilities.  The study observed several classrooms looking for certain classroom practices.  Some of the useful classroom procedures were coaching students using hints, including small-group instruction as well as whole group instruction, and using scaffolding techniques.
     The article entitled "The schools we have, the schools we need" by Richard Allington discusses several misconceptions about education that are limiting or misdirecting educational reform in this country.   Some of the areas that are being confused are experience vs. ability, acceleration vs. slowing down instruction, sorting vs. supporting, curriculum vs. instruction, reading vs. seat work, teaching vs, assigning and understanding vs. remembering.  Allington suggests that we need reemphasize the importance of the classroom teacher, eliminate distributed learning and replace deeper levels of understanding on fewer topics and reformulate the evaluation  processs.