Reaching Struggling Learners
Reaching Struggling Learners
#75 Achieving Academic Goals through Effective Progress Monitoring
What if the progress monitoring tool you are using is not aligned with your academic goals? How will this impact the data you collect and the progress you can report? Let's explore these questions and more in this enlightening episode where we delve into the nitty-gritty of progress monitoring for academic goals. We'll shed light on the importance of focusing on the skill area pertinent to the goal and offer valuable insights on how to review goals effectively and select the correct progress monitoring collection tool.
Imagine having a five-step guide to kickstart your progress monitoring, complete with the right materials, examples, and actionable tips. That's exactly what we have for you in this episode! Get ready to learn how to prep your progress monitoring in advance, dodge printer jams and paper shortages, and organize your materials with intervention materials for stress-free access when you need them. As a bonus, we're also going to reveal how you can get your progress monitoring done in less than an hour a week in our next episode. So, stay tuned and let's master progress monitoring together.
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Links Mentioned in the Show:
https://teachingstrugglinglearners.com
5 Steps to Getting Started with Progress Monitoring
Goals, smart goals, progress monitoring, data, chats, graphs, mtss, man if these words stress you out, first of all, know that you are in some fantastic company, but also know that you are in company that knows how much is riding on all of this stuff. You work hard to make our goals. Now we need to make sure that that time that we spent making those goals, thinking about what the student really needs, isn't wasted. This week, let's talk about progress monitoring, the goal that you actually made.
Speaker 2:Hi, I'm Jessica Curtis of Teaching Struggling Learners. I'm a boy-mom and a veteran teacher. You're listening to the Reaching Struggling Learners podcast, where we talk all about helping students succeed academically, socially and behaviorally. Thank you so much for tuning in.
Speaker 1:So last week we talked about making good goals.
Speaker 1:We talked about how important it is that our goals are not test focused, they are skill focused. If you need a refresher or maybe you missed it, make sure you go back to last week's podcast episode talking about making sure that we make a good goal that makes sense. This week, we want to actually make sure that we are progress monitoring that beautiful goal, that focus goal, that skill driven goal that we made, so that we can report the awesome progress that we know our students are going to make because we focused on the right thing. So there's a couple things that we need to do to make sure that we actually progress monitor the goal that we made. The first one is we need to review the goal. Before we do anything else, before we jump into doing interventions and all that, we need to look at the actual goal and we need to take note of the actual skill level or the skill area that we talked about, the parameters of that goal and how often. So the first thing is actual skill area, and this is one that I probably harped on and you're probably getting tired of it, but making sure that we are looking at that. We are aware of the actual skill area, not just over. We're studying phonics, but know what part of phonics. Are we working on CVC words? Are we working on silent e words? Are we working on blends, digraphs, are we working on addition and subtraction, fluency, whatever the specific skill area is, that's what that is mentioned in that goal, that's what we need to be progress monitoring, that's what we need to be checking and we also need to figure out what did we put for parameters?
Speaker 1:Did we say that it's going to be a timed assessment? Are they going to have to be able to do a certain number in a certain length of time? Or did we say that the you know, the student was given a field of five. That's I see a lot of IEP, iep goals with. We have a field of five and the student would be able to pick one. Sometimes we'll put on there that hey, the site words that the student is going to see. It shouldn't be on a big sheet of paper with a hundred site words, it's going to be on flashcards.
Speaker 1:We need to make sure that we know the parameters that we put in our goal, because that is important. That is the set of limitations that we've said that we we think that child should be able to do that skill, be able to perform that skill within. And then, finally, how often are you going to be doing this? If you're tier two, you're probably only testing the kiddo. You're only assessing the skill area bi-weekly, so every other week. If it's tier three or you're talking about special education, you probably are testing them or doing that assessment weekly. So make sure that you know what level you're at, what skill you're at and what are the parameters. What exactly are the assessing rules for when you're sitting down with them?
Speaker 1:The next thing that you need to do after you have that clear in your mind, you have to choose your progress monitoring collection pieces based on whether it meets the goal exactly. So, for example, you don't want to choose a progress monitoring assessment that is spelling words out instead of reading them. There is a specific intervention program that I will not name because we're not naming things to criticize, but in I don't get me wrong. I actually think that the intervention program is high quality. I think it does a very good job for certain students, but the assessments that they use test the spelling of words instead of the reading of words. It also tests sight words and fluency and some. It tests a lot of different things and that's not particularly effective when you're looking at progress monitoring.
Speaker 1:So if your goal and I see this a lot of the times is that the student will be able to read CVC words, cvc e-words, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and we'll be able to read them, you know, with 80% accuracy, because for some reason everybody puts 80% accuracy four out of five times. I don't know why, but that's what they put. And but then when your assessment comes around and you have them, spelling the words, guys, spelling the words is not the same thing as reading the words. That's actually two different skill sets, two important skill sets, but two different skill sets. And so if you're working on trying to get kids to read the words and that's your focus then making the progress monitoring tool more difficult by requiring them to spell the words is not actually progress monitoring the goal that you made for that child.
Speaker 1:Again, if, again, if your goal says that the student will be able to read the words you know individually instead of in sentences, but your progress monitoring tool has the words in sentences, you're not progress monitoring what you said you were going to, what your goal is, you're progress monitoring, something related, but the data doesn't actually reflect what the goal is. Why am I being a stickler for this? Because when you bring, when we bring not just you, I've done it in the past, don't get me wrong when we bring data that doesn't actually reflect the goal that's put up there, then we're not giving a good picture of what's going on and we can't actually make a good decision on whether the intervention was effective or not. Because, okay, my example with the student spelling the words instead of reading the words. The student may actually very well be able to read the words now, but we're requiring them to stick with that same intervention, that same skill set, even if they've really mastered it. We don't know if they mastered it, but they might have mastered it because, again, spelling it is more difficult. There's a big difference between encoding and decoding, and so we're bringing information to the meeting, to data chats, to whatever you're talking about. You're bringing flawed data, which means it's not actually reflecting what that student's able to do, and that can be quite the impediment for students making the progress that we actually think they should be able to do. So, once you have figured out your progress monitoring collection steps or your pieces there.
Speaker 1:The next thing you want to do is go ahead and print and copy your data sheets and your progress monitoring pieces for however long it is the duration of your time frame. I suggest that you do a little bit more. But that's just me. And the reason I say go ahead and print and copy and have all this stuff ready to go is because the last thing that you want on week four of your data collection stuff is for the paper, the printer, to jam, because it's going to at some point in there. The printer is going to jam, the copier is going to blow up, and, like in my one school where there is ink, just the ink, the stuff, the dust all over the copy room, and that was just a disaster. Just don't do that. That's going to happen at some point and then you're going to be sitting there going, but I don't have my assessment. Well, I guess I'll just pull this other thing.
Speaker 1:And now again, you have skewed data that doesn't accurately reflect what the student does. You said at the beginning you're going to test this one thing, you're going to assess this one skill area. Well, this is very similar, it's not the same. And you're skewing your own data. You're causing yourself more work. So go ahead and start off and make yourself successful by some sheer imagination. We know that at some point the copier is going to explode, the school is going to run out of paper, you're going to be running late. Just go ahead and print and copy your data sheets, your progress monitoring pieces, all of that for the duration. Have it ready to go and keep that stuff for next time, because you know you're probably going to need it again anyway. And that goes right into the next thing.
Speaker 1:Step number four Organize those materials with the intervention materials so that it's easy to access when you need it. So have your data sheets, all that stuff ready to go with what you need, because, again, you can do, depending on the parameters of your progress monitoring. You might be able to get this stuff done sitting on the floor with a student after they get something else done. You never know when you'll be able to just slip in. Hey, I forgot, we got to get this done. Okay, good, read those words. Okay, do it.
Speaker 1:It's possible, it is absolutely possible to get progress monitoring in on the fly if you have all your stuff ready to go. So, with that in mind, if you need a little bit of help getting started with progress monitoring, I'll put the notes or I'll put the link in the show notes, but I do have a getting started get started with progress monitoring freebie. It's just five steps and that will absolutely help you with getting all this off the ground for you. And if you already are ready to go, go ahead and check out my website it's teachingstrugglinglearnerscom, where you can see a whole bunch of different examples of progress monitoring that I've used over the years and you'll be able to see how you can drill down to the very specific skill not test focused, skill focused but you can drill down to the skills that your students need and you can have your progress monitoring materials ready to go all there for you without with very, very minimal prep and stress for you. I mean, nothing is stress free, but it doesn't have to be nearly as stressful as what we have had to deal with in the last few years.
Speaker 1:So, again, I hope that you've got something from this. Hopefully it was, you know, a helpful little bit of information for you. Next week we're going to talk about pulling all of this together and how you can get your progress monitoring done in less than sometimes way less than an hour a week. So I really hope you tune in next week to when we're going to talk about that. But in the meantime may your coffee be strong, your students calm and your parents super supportive. Bye.