The daily minutia of teaching compounds quickly into large projects and it is easy to plan so well for the week that you run out of time to plan ahead for your student’s progress. There are many programs available to use to check progress, but how do you make time to track it and then use it in a beneficial way?
Simply put, student progress tracking can make your job as a teacher so much easier, but you have to have a way to seamlessly integrate it into what you already do so that it is not another thing on your already often overwhelming list. Once you are able to do so, the benefits are endless.
Following your student’s step by step progress can help you see the improvement that you might have otherwise missed, and so much more. Four of the main benefits of student progress tracking can save you time and effort, and help your students grow exponentially.
Your instructional strategies are on point rather than generally targeted
Using systematic progress monitoring helps you identify students in need of different strategies so you are not wasting your energy teaching to an audience that is not ready for, or is beyond, your instruction. Your lessons are designed stronger and your students can achieve better results.
Peer teaching opportunities are offered
Pairing students together, when one has demonstrated higher learning capabilities and the other shows lower learning levels, is an evidence-backed learning technique. Peer teaching helps students develop direct interaction and engage in active learning, while peer teachers are actively reinforcing their ability in that skill and learning new ways to explain it.
Real-time instruction and solutions can be incorporated into lessons
With student progress tracking, you can identify gaps in your students’ learning before you move ahead into the next lesson which may build on the previous skills that were not acquired. These gaps can be addressed in real-time, or you can use them to create differentiated learning groups to provide a solution for addressing them.
Interventions and advanced planning can be created quickly and easily
Rather than guessing at your students’ abilities in a skill based on what they have demonstrated to you in other areas, you can use student tracking to plan groups by using accurate and current data.
A good student data management system uses tools that you already incorporate in your day to day teaching to collect and manage data, making it seamless for you to use and giving you realistic and practical information that is beneficial to your classroom.
This data management system should analyze the data you use and provide you with results that are customized to your needs.
Use Data Tracking to Take Action in Your Classroom
Student data tracking programs do the mundane, difficult work for you so that you can concentrate on the important part – improving your students’ learning and active engagement, and ultimately helping them increase their confidence and understand the value of a good education.
[Image via: Google Images]
