A Teacher's Guide to Progress Monitoring (Track Goals to Refine Instruction for All Students)

As new federal mandates require that schools help every child make progress, it’s more important than ever for teachers to collect data regularly, make data-based instructional decisions, and monitor student progress toward goals. This is the practical, teacher-friendly guide you need to harness the power of progress monitoring (PM) and uncover what is and isn’t working in your classroom.

You’ll start with a complete introduction to the fundamentals of progress monitoring, including why it’s a critical component of response to intervention (RTI) and multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS); how to use it in academic, behavioral, and functional settings; and how to support your teaching and assessment through task analysis. Then you’ll get real-world guidance on how to implement every key step in the PM process, from collecting data efficiently to making informed decisions about your instruction. To bring PM principles to life, chapter-long case studies take you inside five classrooms and show you how real teachers used progress monitoring to support their students’ academic and behavioral goals.

Ideal for educators in K-12 classrooms—but also applicable to preschool and transition programs—this urgently needed guide is your key to using PM to comply with federal mandates, refine your teaching, and help every learner achieve success.

LEARN HOW TO:

• Monitor student progress toward academic, behavioral/social, and functional goals
• Create clear, easy-to-read graphs of your data
• Analyze data to make the best, most informed instructional decisions
• Select evidence-based practices to accelerate your students’ progress
• Involve students with and without disabilities in monitoring their own progress
• Tailor PM to individual students’ strengths and needs
• Use PM to monitor progress toward IEP and 504 goals
• Manage your time and materials efficiently
• See the principles in action with five case studies written by special educators

PRACTICAL MATERIALS: Throughout the book, end-of-chapter exercises, visual examples, and handy downloadable forms give readers the tools they need to conduct effective progress monitoring in their own classrooms.