Curriculum Based Measurement

I'm here! I'm here! I'm here to tell you that I use curriculum based measurement weekly with some of my dyslexic students. They love being able to visualize their improvements, and that in itself is motivating.

The site that I love is Jim Wright's Intervention Central! Check it out. I believe I touched upon it in this post when I was first falling in love with CBM.

Assessment

Alanna - fellow literacy geek - where are you?
I am currently learning about research-based assessments. Have you ever heard of CBA (Curriculum Based Assessment) and CBM (Curriculum Based Measurement)? It's a very interesting method of graphing student progress based on the norms of their specific classroom.
I was curious to know what type of assessment techniques do you have set in place at your job? What other types of assessments have you heard of people using? What do you think is most effective?

Here is a link about CBM if you're interested http://cbmnow.com/documents/cbaManualhand.pdf

BOOKS FOR LITERACY GEEKS

Now that I am an up and coming literacy specialist I wanted to share some of the resources that I have found useful and am curious about any resources you have liked.
First is 'Words Their Way' by Bear. The spelling inventory is a great resource for guiding instruction. I have used it with my ESL tutoring, and I'm not quite sure how effective it is for the ESL student, but it has helped me recognize the vowel pattern sounds that ESL students have trouble distinguishing.
Still in it's plastic is 'The Mosaic of Thought' by Keene and Zimmerman, which was recommended to me by a 30 year veteran teacher of reading. She said this book changed the way she thought of reading comprehension.
Also there is a handy website for leveling books: http://home.comcast.net/~ngiansante/index.html