Math and ELA Data Binders and a Freebie!!

This past year, I worked VERY hard focusing on not only my math instruction, but also on re-vamping the way I taught math. You can see in other posts, that I have been following Robert Marzano's "The Art and Science of Teaching". This past year, I started to create learning targets with my students and also allowed my students to create and set their own learning targets using the new Common Core State Standards. All of my students' goals centered on the new Common Core Standards "I can" or "We can" statements, which are written in kid language, and are very easy to understand.

Today, I want to talk to you about the next step on this Common Core/data tracking journey. What will I do to establish and communicate learning goals, track students' progress and celebrate success?? AND...What will I do to help students effectively interact with new knowledge?

This is where my NEW DATA BINDER comes in! You can see in this previous post, I talk about Marzano's Four Levels of Understanding. In this new era of education with the tremendous amount of data we teachers are required to keep, and with students tracking their OWN progress, we (HARDWORKING, AMAZING, SOMETIMES EXHAUSTED) teachers CAN make an enormous difference in helping ALL of our students see success in the classroom. I stated in a previous post that *no joke* I had over 75% of my class WELL above grade level for math. I don't mean to keep harping on that, and I am by no means an expert teacher, but I do believe in these methods, which is why I am LOVING to share it all! Trust me, when those scores came back I about did the SUPER SUPER happy dance. I KNOW you can relate (as my boyfriend is saying...maybe you shouldn't put that part in there...)

When it comes to your students tracking their own learning/progress, each student should have their own Common Core Binder to track their progress and keep their data as the math unit (or ELA unit) occurs in your classroom.

*Side note: I have already covered my Common Core Standard "I can" and "We can" posters that I communicate and post for students' learning objectives.

The next step is to allow students to track their own progress and assess how they are progressing toward proficiency to the stated learning goals. I shared with you how students use "Marzano-like" scales to track their level of learning in another post, HERE!  These posters and rubrics are super important for student's to track their progress, and the entire bulk of the data binders below are aligned to these posters and rubrics:

Now, getting back to the meat of the binder!! Within each binder, each student would receive their own personal learning targets that are written in kid language in a checklist format (I took the Common Core Standards and broke them down in kid language as best as possible to make it easy for my kids to read- myself too!!) This way students are made aware of the actual content within a unit (vs. blindly learning a bunch of random/isolated standards).

As a class, you can work to check off each "I can" statement as they are taught or, depending on your class, allow students the freedom to check off their statements on their own to give them a bit more independence in their learning.

Next, each learning target "I can" statement is set up in a data table format.

With this data table, students can document the day they started to learn a math or ELA standard (or the day they took their pre-assessment). They can use the "Assess Yourself Formative Assessment Rubrics and Posters" explained here to rate their progress towards mastery of the learning target. Then, students go back to their binders and "rate it/date it" AKA- rate their learning on the start day of a unit.

Then, the learning takes place, students go back to their binder to "rate-it/date it", take their post-assessment and document it in their binders.

Then, the last step for tracking progress includes documenting or GRAPHING the pre and post-assessment scores in order to "track" the growth or SEE the growth for an individual standard.

The assessments I use for this align perfectly to these graphs for a quick snapshot for not only myself but for my students too. Click HERE to see these assessments (and teaching notes!). 

EASY!?!?! YES!!!!

Like I said, these binders have been an amazing tool in my classroom! I absolutely love the organization of them, and my kids love them as well. After a few days of using the binders, the majority of my kids were able to fill them out with complete independence and would on a couple occasions remind ME that they had to fill out their graphs and track their progress!!!

Interested in ELA Data binders? Click HERE to check those out! 

Click HERE or the picture below to check out the "Marzano" posters/rubrics:

ANNDDDD...of course this awesome freebie!!!  

This super cute binder cover that can be used as an organizational binder cover or as a Common Core binder cover.

Here are ALL of the data binders, but you can click HERE to see more of a preview. Click the pictures of the data binders to check them out in my store!

 

**See THIS BLOG ENTRY for Student Data Tracking Binders for 2nd Grade, 3rd Grade 4th Grade, 5th Grade AND NOW 6th Grade!!!!!

**UPDATE- Read MORE about the data binders HERE and HERE! 

**See how I use these data binders to report grades and feedback efficiently to parents at conferences HERE!

**See how to implement these data binders in the middle of the year HERE!

Still have questions about implementing the data binders and assessments? See this FAQ post!