Progress Monitoring Special Education Students

9/6/2019

Progress Monitoring Special Education Students l Miss Rae's Room

"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion."
~ W. Edwards Deming

Data is what drives instruction, progress, and an IEP meeting so it is important to always make sure you have it!!! You can never prove that a student met his/her goal without the data!

At the beginning of the year, it is important to match each goal and/or objective to an assessment. This will make it easier to monitor progress throughout the year. It also gives you the baseline data to assess progress moving forward based upon your instruction.

Besides aligning my students’ IEP goals with progress monitoring assessments, I also begin the year with a full battery of assessments to obtain a baseline for a student’s achievement within the general education curriculum. It’s an added bonus if these assessments correlate with student goals!

The general education measures I employ encompass the basic skills needed for reading, writing, and math. For my younger students and/or students who demonstrate significant lagging skills, I administer a Phonemic Awareness Inventory and a Number Writing, Reading, and Counting screening. I utilize a Quick Phonics Screener for all students reading below a beginning of third grade reading level. Then, I test all students on sight words, spelling, reading, writing, math fact fluency and math problem solving. In order to assess High Frequency or Sight Word knowledge, I use either a school provided list or a list noted in IEP goals or objectives, such as the Fry or Dolch lists. I administer a Words Their Way Spelling inventory, depending on the grade level, to assess students’ encoding (spelling) skills. I also conduct reading assessments, such as a DRA or the Fountas and Pinnell Benchmark Reading Assessment, to obtain an independent and instructional reading level for each student.

I will give a writing prompt to gain a Writing Sample from students (generate a writing prompt HERE). I typically give narrative prompts, and then, we will have a chance to complete an independent research project during the school year, after modeling and with scaffolded instruction. This gives me an opportunity to gain a nonfiction writing sample.

As for the area of Math, I utilize Math Fluency checks in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, using 1, 3, or 5 minute drills (make your own Math CBMs). Once a student meets expectation on a drill, he/she moves to the next drill, and no longer is assessed at that level. For example, if Jenna is able to complete a mixed page of single digit addition facts to 10, she no longer takes the addition check. Instead, she moves to subtraction.

Math Problem Solving is another area I assess and monitor. For such an assessment, I either utilize curriculum-based evaluation measures, or I pull a few one step math word problems from our grade level texts for students to solve.