Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Special Education Teachers Only Need Reply (sorry gen-ed)



Data collection is a very important part of my job. My school has six six-week long grading periods, and I am required to send progress monitoring data home to parents each grading period. With IEP goals individualized, I am struggling to collect data on my students in a way that does not eat up valuable instructional time.  Does anyone out there have a  method of data collection that works particularly well for you?

8 comments:

Unknown said...

Every Friday during our daily 5 rotation rather than whole group lessons I do individual conferences and complete assessments. I use Aimsweb for most of my assessments, you can input data and it generates graphs for you. Our new online IEP program (Tienet) actually allows you to input progress monitoring data and generate graphs - you can set the schedule to weekly, bi-weekly, and monthly. I haven't done that because it is much more time consuming. In aimsweb you download the assessment, give it, then go back in and input the results. It works well for me - but we only do four grading periods, and it's a lot of work! I can't imagine six!! I already feel overwhelmed with paper work at grading times!

Unknown said...

Oh progress reports they take so much time out of my life! This is what I do to monitor my student's IEP goals. It might not be faster...

1. I look at their grades if anything is lower than a C than that it's a warning sign.

2. I keep a binder with all of my students goals in them and if they complete work in my class that relates to that goal I put it in the binder...which also comes in handy for IEP meetings.

3. I compiles a list on Word, of sentences that can fit into any student's goal. Ex. Ivan demonstrates skills in reading by being able to identify plot, characters and author's purpose.

I hope this helped a little! Good luck!!

Meg
http://thoughtfullysimple.blogspot.com/

Midwayedancer said...

Sorry if this has posted multiple times. For some reason I am having a hard time commenting on blogs. I try to align goals with data wecollect on all students anyways (for example, the sound symbol test, or DIBELS scores). Why do double work?

I also use the binder method. I type up a notes sheet with each IEP goal and put them in a binder with a tab for every student and a timer in it. I also familiarize my assistant with the goals and she is great on helping me with data collection.

Mallory said...

I just came across your blog. I Love it! I'm not sure if you are still looking for answers to this question. I am a first year special education teacher and my student's IEP all state that they will be tested weekly. I just finished my first full week of teaching but the method worked well for me.

I have a large binder that includes all of my students (The teacher before me had an individual binder for each student) according to grade level. The binder is divided according to each student and then sub-divided according to each child's goal. I have a recording sheet (printed from the iep website) at the front of each math, writing or reading section. When I give the assessment and grade it, I can quickly write the students score on the recording sheet. Then when I have enough time, I can submit all the scores online at once. For those that had math goals, I copied a months worth of assessments so I can just pull the next one each week. I did the same with writing and reading assessments. When I was finished on Friday, I put the finished assessments back in order so I can simply view the progress each week.

I spent a lot of time preparing it, but it really made everything go smooth last Friday. I'm sure I will change things each week. I am thinking I will add each student's IEP or maybe just their accommodation page so I can quickly look if needed.

I hope you find this the least bit helpful! :)

traci said...

I LOVE your blog!! I've been a K-1 intervention specialist for almost 10 years in a very inclusive and cross categorical setting. I am going to be setting up a K-2 resource room, which I've never done...ideas?? Anyone??

traci said...

My specific concern is scheduling? Determining time in and time out....I have several students with autism, a few with multiple disabilities and a few with minor learning differences...K-2. I'm pretty sure I will also end up with some other students from co-taught classrooms who've been demonstrating disruptive behavior.

Heather Unger said...

Traci, I teach in a wonderful yet extremely large school (around 900 students.) Unfortunately it is not very inclusive. Any first or second grade student identified as needing services typically receives 2.5 hours of reading and language arts instruction in the resource room in the morning.

The benefit of this is that scheduling is not a problem for me. Right now I have 15 students in my room in the morning. This will soon be 17. I am concerned because this is only September. I will probably have 3-5 more by the end of the year, which will put me up to around 20.

As a result of my large class size and time block I run my room somewhat differently than a typical resource room. I have my kids broken into four groups. I have four 25 minute stations that the students rotate through: blue table for reading/writing instruction with me; yellow table for phonics/language instruction with my assistant, spelling center (where they write their words 3 times and then have various centers they can choose from) literacy centers (listening center, 2 ipads, word work and puzzles.) In addition to our rotations we have whole group music time to start the day as well as whole group story with comprehension.

The down side to this is that I am only directly working with each child for 25 minutes each morning. I would like to have first grade by themselves for 90 minutes and second by themselves for 90 minutes. I don't think that will happen though because many teachers will not want these kids in the regular classroom for more time. I am afraid to push the issue because I don't want to appear as though I am trying to provide less services.

Learning Ahoy said...

HI! I just stubbled on your blog this morning. Love it!! I am a K-2 Special Education teacher, who also stuggles with how to collect data. One of my co-workers went to a class last year that has helped me with some data collection. I have a chart with all of the kids on it and specific goals or objectives that we are working on. Then I can mark if they meet that objective. My problem is no room for comments. I have also done a binder with all of my students and wrote on the goal pages progress and keep an work samples to refer to.

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