A Parent’s Guide to Progress Monitoring at Home - Página 3

How can I progress monitor at home?If you plan to progress monitor at home, it will be important to talk to your child about why you are doing it. You should share with your child that you want to be sure that he or she is learning to read well, and you should involve your child in setting ambitious but achievable short-term goals. Many children enjoy being involved in charting their progress and in setting and working towards goals.

There are a number of resources available to get started with progress monitoring. Here are some that are available at no cost — these may or may not be the same tools used at your child’s school, but they will likely be very similar. If you are using tools different than those used at your child’s school, talk to your child’s teacher about the differences between the systems you are using.

Materials to Get Started

1. A way to chart and graph your data. One of the easiest systems to use is CBM Focus. There are a number of support tools on the website that provide guidance on how to use the system. Another easy-to-use graphing system is available at Intervention Central. This site features pre-formatted Excel spreadsheets.
   
   
2. Grade level passages. If you are monitoring progress over the summer, you may want to use the grade level that your child will enter in fall. It is best to use passages that have been standardized — this helps ensure that the passages are essentially equivalent. You can download free passages from a number of websites, most of which will require you to register an email and address to access. Two commonly used sites:
   
   
   • Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy System (DIBELS)
   • Easy CBM
     
     
3. Norms for comparison. National norms are usually the best comparison because they are based on the largest number of students. You will need to use the norms for the set of passages you downloaded. You should use the goals associated with those students at “low risk.” The norms for DIBELS and Easy CBM are available when you register for those sites.
   
   
4. A timer. A stop watch or timer that will allow you to accurately time in one minute intervals.

Procedures

Progress monitoring is not complex, but it is important to follow a step-by-step process to ensure accuracy.

1. Establish a baseline. A baseline is the starting point of your child’s reading performance. You establish a baseline measure by collecting performance data on the first progress monitoring session. Best practice is to have your child complete three measures and then to take the median score as the baseline. The median score is the one in the middle when you rank order the scores. If for example, you administer three measures and your child’s performance is a 43, a 57 and a 52, the median score is 52, and that is your child’s baseline score.
   
   
2. Establish a performance goal. This is typically done by selecting the performance level at the next benchmark time. For example, if you start progress monitoring at the end of a school year, you may want to monitor progress until the beginning of the following school year, so you would use the fall benchmark for that grade.
   
   
3. Administer the passages. DIBELS and Easy CBM both provide directions for how to administer the reading passages. In general, the directions will have you show the child the student version of the passage, while you follow along with the teacher passage.
   
   
4. Score the passages. To score a passage, you make two lines at the end of the last word the student read when the one-minute timer ended. The child’s words read correct per minute is determined by taking the Total Words Read – Errors = Words Read Correct.
   
   
5. Test weekly. Each week you will administer one passage and plot your child’s performance. If you use one of the preformatted spreadsheets, the progress monitoring graph will be automatically generated.
   
   
6. Monitor the trendline. As the progress monitoring graph is generated, you will be able to see the trendline of your child’s performance. As the trendline is generated, you will compare the trendline to the goal. If your child’s trend is not on a trajectory to meet the performance goal you’ve set, you will want to consider talking with your child’s teacher about a change to whatever instruction your child is receiving.

Interpreting Your Child’s Performance

Remember that progress monitoring is just one tool to help determine whether a student is generally on track for meeting reading performance goals. Oral reading fluency is an indicator of whether a child is on track, but remember that the goal is not to simply train your child to read faster. More fluent reading is achieved by increasing their ability to decode words, increasing their vocabulary, and having your child read more.

Discuss how to coordinate and/or share results with your child’s teacher; to approach at-home monitoring in the spirit of partnership with the teacher.

Your child’s progress will be the result of both in-school instruction and at home support. One of the best ways to improve reading is to read more often, and that is best supported at home. If you are concerned about your child’s reading performance and progress, you should contact your child’s teacher, or other education professional. If your child consistently does not make progress even when provided appropriate reading intervention, you might consider requesting an evaluation to determine why your child is not learning to read.

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Evelyn S. Johnson, Ed.D. is Professor of Special Education, Boise State University, and Executive Director of Lee Pesky Learning Center. She  received her Doctor of Education from the University of Washington, and worked as a research associate for the National Research Center on Learning Disabilities under the direction of Don Deshler and Daryl Mellard. Evelyn's research is focused on the identification of learning disabilities, improving screening procedures to identify students at risk for learning disabilities, response-to-intervention implementation, and special education teacher preparation and evaluation. Her work has been supported by grants from the Office of Special Education Programs, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Idaho State Department of Education.