At the beginning of the school year, I wrote about two benchmark assessments I am using with my students this year: the Decoding Inventory and Spelling Inventory. I gave the assessments during the first week of school and again a couple weeks ago to track my students’ progress. Now that I have gathered this data, I wanted to give an update about how I have used the data to help parents track their students’ progress so far this year.
Parent Teacher Conferences were last week, and I was so excited to have this data to share with the parents. Rather than just, “Your child has a 92% in English,” I could say, “Your child consistently reads long vowel words correctly but has not yet translated that skill into their spelling of long vowel words.” Of course, sometimes percentages can be helpful; I let a few parents know that their children had turned in less than 50% of their homework. However, percentages are not as descriptive for measuring knowledge. I liked being able to describe exactly what skills students had mastered and what skills they should work on next.
This data was especially helpful for that question every teacher dreads: “Is my child average for their grade level?” In the past, I might say, “Well, a grade of 90% is above the average for my class, so your child is doing fine.” This time, I could give a more descriptive answer. I know what spelling and decoding strategies are appropriate for this age group at this time of year, so I can compare students to that standard instead of comparing them to each other or to an average.
The information I gathered from the benchmark assessments also gave me clear avenues to offer suggestions for student improvement based on our scope and sequence for the year. At the beginning of the year, I knew which students had not mastered their long and short vowels yet, so I worked carefully with them during the first month of school when we reviewed short and long vowels. If students still missed short and long vowels on the second administration of the benchmark assessments, I could tell their parents to work especially on those skills since they will not be reviewed again this year. For parents of students who missed other skills, like vowel digraphs, I could assure them that we would learn those skills in class during the following months and that a gap in those skills was not yet a concern. Students who missed -ed or -ing endings are in luck because I am teaching that skill next week!
I knew that benchmark assessments would help me inform my instruction, but I did not realize how valuable that data would be for parents until I started preparing for Parent Teacher Conferences. I had valuable things to say about students’ progress, and I could offer practical suggestions for students with gaps in their knowledge. I’m hoping to administer the assessments again in January and in March to track student progress for Parent Teacher Conferences in the second semester. I’ll give you another update then if I learn anything else groundbreaking that I can do with the data I collect!
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