Progress monitoring and student data tracking are an ABSOLUTE MUST as an educator. It doesn’t matter if you teach general education, special education, or intervention groups, you are responsible for monitoring the progress of each individual child. This can be time-consuming and incredibly overwhelming!

After ten years of teaching, I can now say that I have perfected my method for progress monitoring. But wait…let me remind you again, this happened over a period of TEN YEARS! This was not something I decided I was going to do and then it just happened. There was a big learning curve for me. Between figuring out what progress monitoring tools to use, time management, and then actually doing something useful with the data, I spent a lot of time trying to make this work.

But guess what guys? I am now officially obsessed with data. Yup, that’s right. I.LOVE.DATA! By mastering progress monitoring, I have made my life as an educator so much easier. Writing report cards and IEP reports is a breeze. Holding parent-teacher conferences is straight forward and simple. Differentiating for my class no longer makes my head spin. The list of advantages goes on. So I am here to tell you all about it, and to help you with this process as well.

What is Progress Monitoring?

The progress monitoring definition is when we assess children to monitor their academic growth and struggles in specific areas. Progress monitoring includes collecting data that can then be used to drive instruction.

Who Should Track Student Data?

If you are an educator, and under the impression that you don’t have to progress monitor, you are wrong! Whether you teach general education, special education, or anything in between, you should be progress monitoring your students. It will help you develop a deep understanding of each individual’s strengths and weaknesses. In turn, this will help you optimize your teaching and target the specific needs of your kids.

When Should I Progress Monitor?

You should be collecting data as often as possible. Remember, it doesn’t always have to be a formal assessment. Informal data collection can be just as helpful as formal data. However, be consistent about when you collect formal data. For example, I always progress monitor, my students, using the same assessment at the start of the year and then at the end of each semester. This specific progress monitoring tool assesses them on all of the key skills for phonics and math that I want them to master by the end of the year. By being consistent with this, I can easily track growth, pinpoint struggles, and get a clear sense of where instruction should be going with my class.

Where Should I Track Student Data?

I’ve administered one-on-one assessments during center time, on the floor in our classroom library, out in the hallway. Anywhere you feel will give you fair results, go ahead and collect that data! Don’t worry about having a perfectly quiet room or finding the perfect environment. As long as your surroundings are not distracting, you can progress monitor.

Why Should I Progress Monitor?

Well, because you can’t successfully do your job without this. I don’t say this as a blanket statement. I say this as someone who stunk at progress monitoring and then worked hard to master it.

Let me share a specific event that is forever etched in my brain. It was my third year teaching (second year in kindergarten) and I had an IEP meeting. I walked into that meeting feeling great. I felt like I would make a great impression on the principal and social worker who was involved in the meeting. The social worker, a lovely lady, ran the meeting. She started with some vague questions, which I nailed, but then she got down to the nitty-gritty. She asked how many sight words this student knew. I said, “She knows her sight words.” Yup, that was my response. She asked about her reading abilities. I said, “She’s a level C.” I had nothing of actual substance to share. The responses I gave were not only vague but useless!

How can we come up with goals and plan for her if I’m saying things like “she knows her sight words.” It was after that meeting that I decided I had to really figure this out. Let me tell you, sitting in a meeting and saying “On November 13th, this student could fluently read 34 sight words.” Or, “On January 20th, Ella could fluently read 7 out of 10 cvc words. This was an increase of 4 words since her last assessment in December.” Concrete facts make for great meetings, great IEP’s, happy parents, and happy teachers.

Student Data Tracking Examples

1. Have an all-in-one progress monitoring assessment

The best thing you can do is have an all-in-one data tracking assessment. One resource that you can use over and over to monitor growth, identify areas of weakness, and collect necessary grade-level data. By doing this you will eliminate the need to hunt for an assessment when it’s time to progress monitor. It’s also really important that you are consistent with the assessments when you are tracking key skills.

Here’s a peek at my go-to data tracking assessments:

This particular resource comes with progress monitoring sheets for key phonics and math skills (available for kindergarten, first and second grade), progress monitoring forms for teachers, and a year-long digital tracker.

It’s important to know what you are going to use so that you are never scrambling to find something to monitor your students. It is equally important to have consistency in your assessments when collecting data.

2. Have a Student Data Tracking Plan

Student data tracking should be happening on some level daily. However, those big assessments, the ones you use to determine small groups, rti decisions, goal setting, etc…those should be well planned.

Student data tracking can be time-consuming, so make a plan for when this will happen. Having a plan at the start of the year will allow you to carve out the appropriate time to properly progress monitor all of your students all year long.

3. Use your Progress Monitoring Data to Drive Instruction

Curriculums are great and all, but do they know your students on an individual basis? Certainly not. I have found every curriculum I have worked with, problematic in one way or another. Although my list of complaints is long, my biggest one has to be the lack of differentiation available. So now imagine that your curriculum does not offer ideas for differentiation AND you are not exactly sure as to where each individual student stands. How would you plan proper instruction? You have to be able to pinpoint the exact area each child is at, so that you can properly plan out whole group and small group lessons.

An easy way to manage the data you collect is to use a file folder and post-it method (as shown above). After completing our progress monitoring phonics assessments, I looked at which skills I had to focus on for each child. Inside of a file folder, I wrote the phonics skills and placed each student’s name (on a post-it) in the appropriate column. Now I know who to bunch together for small groups and what to focus on with them. Once a child masters the skill they are working on, I simply take their post-it, and move it to the next column and small group.

4. Begin Monitoring Progress Towards Individual Goals

Progress monitoring in special education is imperative and an everyday task. Proper data tracking allows you to write IEP goals and then work towards mastering them. I use a digital tracker that once the information is put in, color codes into green, yellow, or red. This allows me to easily identify specific information. If I’m looking to see which skills as a whole my class needs to work on, I look for a column of majority yellow and red. If I’m looking to see which skills my class as a whole has mastered, I look for majority green. The same goes for individual students. My color-coded system helps me directly identify where I need to focus my attention on each child, and allows me to work towards their goals.

5. Keep Families Informed

Lastly, remember to keep families informed. Share this data with them. Provide them with suggestions for what they should be doing at home. By providing families with clear and specific information, you help them to better understand their little learners.

If you’re struggling to find data tracking assessments, check out these products below. These are tried and true and have changed the way I teach!

Grab your data tracking assessments here today!

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When I first started teaching, I wasn’t very comfortable with progress monitoring. I didn’t know where to start, what materials to use, or how to collect and store data. This obviously led to a lot of pitfalls in my teaching abilities. Creating groups was difficult, writing report cards took an insane amount of time, my IEP reports were vague, and much more. I quickly realized that if I wanted to use data to drive instruction, I had to begin collecting it from day one. Since then, I have worked tirelessly to perfect my progress monitoring tools and assessments. I have seen a tremendous increase in my students learning, the more I perfected my data collection process. It is directly connected to students success. So here are some of the things I have learned during my progress monitoring journey.

Progress monitoring is a term used to describe assessing students in a way that allows you to track their growth in specific areas. By progress monitoring, an educator can see specific areas of growth and areas of need for individual students and/or whole group.

• Understanding Student Abilities: By collecting data on each student you can get an understanding of their academic abilities. It will help you track trends for students. For example, student A may have a strength in math but struggles with phonics skills. Or student B is great with memorizing skills but struggles to apply them out of isolation.
• Tracking Progress with Grade Level Skills: Backwards planning is important when thinking about progress monitoring. Ask yourself: Where do you want your students to be at the end of the year? What skills should they have been exposed to and have mastered? After you have fleshed out these responses, find assessments that target these skills. From the beginning of the year, test students on this, even if you haven’t taught it yet. This will help you track progress. You will be able to see which students have mastered specific skills and can move on, and which students need targeted instruction for certain skills. I use this baseline bundle to help me track a full years worth of growth all in one spot. It is perfect because as a special education pull out teacher, I service students in grades k-2.

• Data Driven Instruction: After all of your assessments have been completed, take a closer look at the results. Look at them on an individual level and on a whole group  level. Use this data to drive further instruction. Specific things to look for include:
• Which skills are the class as a whole struggling with?
• Which skills have the class as a whole mastered?
• Which skills should you focus on next?
• Which skills need some more time and can be spiraled into centers or word work stations?
• Which students are ahead and need to be challenged?
• Which students are struggling with basic skills and need small group intervention?
• Which students are not making growth?
• Which students should be flagged for RTI?
• How can you use this information to differentiate lessons, homework and future class assignments?

• Creating Small Groups: Do you have small groups during the day? Think about what you are targeting in these groups and then use the data collected to appropriately place students. For example, during center time I work with a small group to focus specifically on phonics. These groups are determined by looking at my data, and I also use the data to determine which skills to practice with them.
• Flagging Students for RTI: If you are testing students on the same skills and notice that they are making little to small progress, you must begin intervention with them. Similarly, students who are falling behind in meeting classroom expectations should be flagged for intervention.
• Flagging Students for Evaluations: Have you provided RTI within the classroom and still see little to no growth? Continue to collect data on these students and reach out to other professionals within your building about next steps. This student could qualify for pull-out services, and if these next steps are not successful, starting the evaluation process may be beneficial to them.
• Writing Report Cards: Writing report card comments can be a challenging task, but it is our responsibility to be clear, specific and helpful in our comments to parents. If you are progress monitoring throughout each marking period, you can simply refer to this data in your comments. Telling parents that their child knows “most of their sight words” isn’t a useful comment. However, telling them that their child knows “70 out of 100 sight words” helps parents have a better understanding of their students academic standing. 

• Writing IEP Reports: If you are responsible for writing IEP reports, or providing your special education teacher with information on a child, having concrete data and numbers is very important. We are our students advocates so we must be knowledgeable on their growth and their struggles.  By referring to your data, you can easily paint a very clear picture of your student.
• Holding Conferences: Parent Teacher Conferences can be an uncomfortable situation, especially if you aren’t prepared. Collecting data and having evidence of growth and areas that are challenging, will make the task easier. 

Progress monitoring should happen from week 1. You want to utilize every day of the school year to help students grow. In order to do that, you have to have a sense of where they are and where they need to be. Though the use of different assessments, you should be collecting data consistently throughout each marking period. Additionally, if you are using a baseline assessment throughout the year to monitor growth in specific skills (the same assessment multiple times), then you should conduct that at the start of the year, and at the end of each marking period. This will allow you to see just how far they’ve come each marking period.

The post The Who, What, When, Where & Why of Progress Monitoring appeared first on Mrs V's Chickadees.

Now here is my favorite part. The tracker that I record all of the data on in the beginning of the year, is the same tracker I will use until they are ready to go to the next grade. I will keep ALL of their information on that one piece of paper! By doing this, I can easily look at it and see what areas are their strengths and what areas are their weaknesses. When it is time to write report cards, I pull out the tracker and BOOM-all of the information I need is right there…and I mean specific information. I’m not saying “Johnny knows most of his letter sounds” I am saying “Johnny is showing progress in his letter sounds. He now knows 24 out of 26 sounds (he is struggling with /q/ and /m/), which is 10 more letter sounds than he knew last marking period.” I mean doesn’t that sound like a teacher that knows what she’s doing? (wink, wink). This is also used to drive parent-teacher conference conversations, and really go in depth on key skills with parents.  Whether you are a general education teacher, co-teacher, special education teacher or interventionist, this baseline is for you!

Using the Baseline and Tracker as a General Education Teacher

So as a general education teacher it can be really challenging to remember your special education students IEP goals, especially since you’re also trying to remember that Mary isn’t taking the bus today, Peter can’t sit at the peanut table at lunch, Joey needs an extra copy of the homework, and the 9 million other things that are swirling in your brains on a daily basis. BUT, that doesn’t mean it’s not important, it is SO important. So what I would do is, find the skills in my baseline that were connected to my special education students goals and highlight them on their tracker. That way I could check periodically, refresh my memory, and see where they stood with it. Constantly touching base with myself and holding myself accountable for targeting those goals in the classroom. Also, when it came time to write those dreaded IEP reports, I would use the data from the baseline assessment to give very specific information about their progress in the classroom. I was always told that I wrote such detailed reports and no other teachers did that, and the reality is, my reports took very little time to write because I was simply taking the data from my tracker and putting it into sentences. 

Just by quickly looking at the tracker above I can gather great insight about this student (Michelle). Here are some things I would note as the teacher:

Based on the September 2nd Results:
*Michelle has an okay sense of uppercase letter identification-I don’t believe she will need intervention, unless no gains are made by next assessment.
* Michelle has a good sense of lower case letter identification-no need to provide extra support in this area at this time.
*Michelle has very little knowledge on letter sounds– Keep this in mind when you come to this unit and consider beginning classroom interventions on this skill.
*Michelle has little to no knowledge of CVC words and syllables-Focus on the pre-requisite skills needed to access this knowledge, such as letter sounds

Based on the November 4th Results:
*Michelle has mastered letter identification-there is no need to test her on this moving forward.
*Michelle is making adequate gains with letter sounds-no need to continue intervention, but keep an eye on this to make sure she doesn’t slide back
*Michelle is making slow progress with CVC words-continue to work with her on this skill. Place her in a word work group with other students who need to build their CVC skills.
*Michelle has made almost no progress with syllables-time to start intervention with this subject.

-and so on and so forth-

Each assessment comes with more skills than you will ever need to assess. The assessment pages and tracker are customizable. Each skill is on a separate page, which allows you to print and copy ONLY the skills you want to use. Additionally, the tracker comes pre-made (for those ambitious teachers who do want to use every skill) and with an editable version. The editable version allows you to type in the skills in the order you want to assess!

Kindergarten Baseline Assessment HERE
First Grade Baseline Assessment HERE
Second Grade Baseline Assessment HERE
K-2 Bundle HERE

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