Current Data Collection Processes and Moving Forward

Daniel Schafhauser
The way I collect student data is very often in conjunction with my
co-teacher, Christina. I focus on my Special Education students (ones with
IEPs) while Christina focuses on the data for the General Education
students. I will write frequent anecdotal notes about student behavior/if
they are on-task/and student engagement in the academic nature of the
lesson. I will record this information on a word document and often will email
this out to other teachers if there is a particular behavior concern with this
student. Christina and I have unit benchmark exams that really reveal where
are students are in terms of their current reading and writing skills. We let
our students know their grades every Wednesday and we provide them with
Powerschool (school specific grade lookup software) so they can see their
grades at any point they wish to see them. Our students have folders that
they continually use to keep grade reports, projects, and other past work. In
the future, I would like to have a check-off system that lets kids know of
their daily grade at all times.
The way we track behavioral data is by the amount of IRs/emails we
send to behavior staff and our assistant principal regarding how our
students are behaving in class. We should probably have a system in the
future that daily records specific behavior, attempted redirections, and
results, and also incentives that have worked and not worked.
At the end of every marking period I progress monitor my caseload
(18 students). I put their data into school-provided forms and send these to
my Special Education Lead Instructor. These are mailed home and sent home
with the student. This progress monitoring really helps the IEP Process move
forward when the time rolls around for the student. This whole process is
wonderful for parent engagement.