In order to raise reading scores on MSPAP, All Teachers must:

1. Learn the reading outcomes.
2. Learn the four reading stances.
3. Study the proficiency levels closest to your grade.
4. Teach kids the CUCC strategy and then reinforce it with all directions they encounter.
5. Teach kids the icons, particularly Language Usage.
6. Teach kids the vocabulary they are likely to encounter in not only the testing but in their reading about their discipline.
7. Learn to develop quality reading activities. Look for reading materials that support their content and the topics they are doing. Then develop questions about the reading that fall into two or more stances, require kids to infer, and require kids to use support for their answers. See the types of reading, RLE, RBI, and RPT, below.
8. Teach kids strategies for reading to use on MSPAP.
9. Teach kids the"Comma-Quote" Strategy for evidence from the text. Begin this orally, then in writing.
10. Realize that demonstrating reading understanding on MSPAP is really a matter of how well a student can prove in writing that he or she understands what is read. Therefore, writing clear answers to various kinds of reading experiences is essential.
11. Share my "generic" scoring tools for reading. Reinforce their use by having kids review the strategy before reading, which encourages text support, a key to scoring well in reading.
12. Anytime reading is responded to with writing, share kids' answers on the overhead projector, have kids analyze the responses, improve them, score them, etc.
13. Teach kids that whenever they have to read something and then write about it, it will be scored for reading. Reading is not just a literary experience (RLE). It can be reading to be informed (RBI), as well as reading to perform a task (RPT). Lots of experience with each type needs to be done.

Cam Miller
Curriculum Planner
Stephen Decatur Middle School
(formerly Berlin Middle School)
Worcester County