As we roll into the first report card session of the year I am finding that some things we have been doing as a Personalized Learning team have made this time easier and some things I had to really think hard about. Here is the low down:
Easier:
- Having the Google spreadsheets (Student Proficiency Profiles) has made reporting the exact standards students are proficient to families, special education teachers, interventionists, administrators much easier! All I have to do is share the link and they have access to it all!
- Students have a better knowledge of where they are at and where they need to go on a consistent basis because we have shared a link with them to view their profiles. I really enjoy having conversations with them about their goals.
Things I had to really consider as we change over to Student Proficiency Profiles:
- In the past we have used a sliding rubric for our Fountas and Pinnell fluency reporting based on the 3 trimesters. This made it a bit tricky on the Student Proficiency Profiles that only have levels that indicate each grade level. I had to determine how this would transfer over to them when reporting it either as a D for developing or a P for proficient. Here is a link for what I have come up with so far: Fountas and Pinnell Reading Reports
- We had to consider how we would communicate with families and how to interpret information concerning the Student Proficiency Profiles. Families are unfamiliar with the format, levels and standards. We had a meeting at the start of the year as well as conferences in October, but as we looked at data we realized that there were some differences in their Fountas and Pinnell fluency scores, MAP testing and state testing. It did not always match up nice and neatly! We composed a letter to families to help with this.
As we continue on this journey I will keep you updated on family reactions and feedback. At conference time the feedback was very positive. Parents felt that their children were more challenged and motivated. Students gave positive feedback as well when asked how they felt personalized learning was going for them with comments about how they understood what levels they were at and what they needed to do to progress.