Coaching Data Tracker

Goals and Motivation, Instructional Coaching, Teaching Tips

One of my New Year’s resolutions as an instructional coach is to keep better track of the work I do with teachers.  I have a variety of “coaching tools” that I use with individual teachers throughout coaching cycles­ to document and organize our work, however nothing that provides a collective big picture.  In comes the “Coaching Data Tracker!”

Click to Download

I think this is an important document to create and maintain for a couple of reasons.  First, it can be passed on to your principal for the purpose of making sure that you’re both “on the same page.”  While I do have coaching check-ins with my principal, I knew she would just love to have a single go-to document that shows the complete coaching story at Tollgate.

Second, creating this Coaching Data Tracker is seriously great for your own reflection!  For example, in the process of creating mine it was rewarding to see the student and teacher growth I contributed to in my coaching cycles.  Additionally, it pushed me to think harder about how to achieve even better results in future coaching.

Reflecting on what we are doing well and how we can improve is an important part of our work as instructional coaches.  I hope this Coaching Data Tracker supports you in the process.

Tracking My Progress: Fluency

Goals and Motivation, Instructional Coaching

A few weeks ago I wrote about the importance of student-engaged assessment and progress tracking in motivating students and supporting their achievement.  In this post I’ll share a few ideas for how to help students self-assess and track their progress towards the following target:

Teachers can think of reading fluency as the bridge between the two major components of reading: decoding and comprehension (Honig, Diamond, Gutlohn 2008). Differences in reading fluency can distinguish good readers from struggling readers.

To support students in self-assessing their reading fluency, visually friendly rubrics with clear criteria for success can be very helpful.

Click to Download

After introducing the learning target to students, show them the rubric.  Ensure that students understand each of the four areas addressed (Phrasing, Rate, Punctuation, and Expression) and how to assess themselves within each area (Scoring a 1,2,3, or 4).  It can be overwhelming for students when the whole rubric is plopped in front of them and explained. Therefore I would suggest explicitly addressing only one area at a time.  Furthermore, it may not even be necessary to use the whole rubric with students if their next step in fluency is tied specifically to rate.  Use your professional judgement to make smart decisions for your kids!

In order for students to be able to self-assess their fluency using this rubric, they need to “hear” themselves as readers.  Rather than asking students to read-aloud, listen to themselves, and then self-assess, I think it’s much more effective to teach students to record their thinking, play it back, and then self-assess.  There is a free iPad app that works great for this…QuickVoice.

Click for More Information

QuickVoice is super user friendly and easy for students to use on their own.  Students can record and self-assess themselves several times using the rubric.  They definitely have fun with this!  To ensure that students are successful provide a model of what this self-assessment process looks like.  Additionally, provide students with short and engaging passages that they can read at an independent level.

For slow but accurate readers who need intense practice to increase their automaticity in reading connected text, you can try timed repeated oral reading.  With this strategy students can track their progress using a graph.

Click to Download

Begin be setting a goal with students.  For example, if a student begins by reading early-first-grade text, his final goal might be to read mid-second-grade text at 90 WPM (words per minute).  Mark students beginning WPM score on their graph.  From this point draw an “aim line” to meet the point marking the students end of 9 week goal.  This line shows how much daily or weekly progress a students needs to make to meet their final goal.

Introduce one new, short, engaging text to students at the beginning of each week that they can read at their independent level.  Be sure to first read the text with the student and have a conversation about it.  Share with students that rereading the passage throughout the week will not only support their fluency, but will also help them to better understand the text!

Do a one minute timed reading with the student each day of the week until they meet their end of week goal (indicated by the aim line). Mark the students WPM score for the week in the corresponding box for the day.  Students can also mark their score with a colored pen on their aim line.

It’s great fun to see students enthusiasm and motivation for reaching their goal.

I hope these tools and ideas will help you better support students struggling with fluency.

Student Engaged Assessment

Goals and Motivation, Instructional Coaching, Teaching Tips

Are you looking for a way to motivate your students, get them excited about learning, and support their progress?  Then student-engaged assessment is for you!  If you have never heard of this assessment strategy or don’t know how to make it happen in your classroom don’t worry, you’re not alone and I can help.

I first learned about student-engaged assessment when our school adopted the Expeditionary Learning model.  Expeditionary Learning embraces this assessment practice in building student ownership of learning and driving achievement.  Even after learning about what student-engaged assessment was, it took me awhile to really get it and begin to put it in place in my own classroom.   When I did, my understandings clicked into place and I never looked at assessment the same way again.

Student-engaged assessment teaches students to continually track, reflect on, and share their progress towards learning targets or goals they have set for themselves.  Using assessment in such a way is motivating and fun for students!  Who’d have thought?

A key piece in the success of student-engaged assessment is maintaining the belief that everyone is capable of high achievement and that learning comes as a result of effort.  This goes for both students and teachers!

I encourage you to give it a try.  To get you started, I have included a few “Tracking Progress” printables below.

Click to Download

This first document can be used in any subject area.  I used it frequently during our “expeditions” or long-term units of study.  Fill in your long term learning targets or objectives at the bottom and provide a copy for each student.  Then introduce your students to the different proficiency descriptors and teach them what they mean.  One of the most important pieces in teaching students to track their progress is to stress the importance of honesty.  Students are often hesitant to assess themselves as “Beginning”, but let them know that this is totally okay!  When they’re clear about where they are, where they need to go, and how they’re going to get there they will build the confidence and motivation to work their way up to “Proficient” or “Advanced.”

You can ask students to track their progress against a target being worked on once or twice a week.  Students can mark a dot to show where they think they are and record the date alongside it so that they can see  their growth over time.

As you work through your unit, help students analyze their progress charts and why they are or are not making growth.

In addition to the individual tracking progress sheets, you can create a whole class tracking progress chart.  These are really fun and supportive because you can see where everyone is in relation to the targets.  Student’s competitive instinct tends to kick in and they enjoy putting forth a bit more effort to ensure they don’t fall behind their peers.

Click to Download

This second document was created specifically to help students track their progress as readers.  Both a fourth and fifth grade teacher I have been working with are using this form with their students and tell me that their kids really dig it.  They now clearly know where they stand, what level they’re working towards, and the specific goals to focus on to help them get there (you can record these goals with students in the section on the right of the document).  This progress tracker can be adjusted to better reflect the reading levels appropriate for your grade level.  Another idea is to leave it as is and include it in end of the year information to be passed up to the student’s next year teacher.  Students can then continue tracking their progress as readers in their new grade level.

Developing the skills of data collection, inquiry, and analysis in achieving goals is a great skill to teach students in the elementary grades.  It will surely set them up for success in the future.

Thanks for reading,