Shannon shares with Mary the steps she follows for analyzing student data. This Date Your Data process requires multiple steps of looking at test scores, improvement goals, student strengths and weaknesses, and then connecting the data to standards to facilitate data-driven instruction. This method of data review makes the test score information meaningful to teachers, students, parents, and other stakeholders. Listen to find out how to Date Your Data to get to know your students and their learning better.
RECOMMENDED RESOURCES AND ONES MENTIONED DURING THE EPISODE
Shannon shares with Mary the steps she follows for analyzing student data. This Date Your Data process requires multiple steps of looking at test scores, improvement goals, student strengths and weaknesses, and then connecting the data to standards to facilitate data-driven instruction. This method of data review makes the test score information meaningful to teachers, students, parents, and other stakeholders. Listen to find out how to Date Your Data to get to know your students and their learning better.
RECOMMENDED RESOURCES AND ONES MENTIONED DURING THE EPISODE
6.11 Date Your Data
[00:00:00]
Mary Saghafi: Hey, Shannon, I am in need of a topic discussion about data. So can you maybe navigate with me and show me a little bit how you dig into your data?
Shannon Betts: Absolutely. I have three words for you. Date your data. I showed some other teachers how to do this and I'm happy to show you as well. Let's do it.
Shannon Betts: Welcome to the Reading Teachers Lounge. Come join the conversation with other curious teachers as they discover teaching strategies and resources to reach all of their learners. I'm Shannon.
Mary Saghafi: And I'm Mary, and together we bring an honest and experienced point of view to the topics we cover to shed light on best practices.
Whether you're a new teacher seeking guidance, a seasoned pro looking for fresh ideas, or a curious parent, our community offers something for everyone. [00:01:00] So grab your favorite cup of coffee or tea and cozy up in the virtual lounge with us and eavesdrop on our professional conversations.
Shannon Betts: Listen, learn, and immediately add to your bag of teaching tricks.
Find what works for your students with us in the Reading Teacher's Lounge.
Mary Saghafi: This is Season 6, Episode 11 of the Reading Teacher's Lounge. I'm Mary Sagoffi, and I'm here with Shannon Betts today. We are excited to dig into data discussions with you.
Shannon Betts: Let's flashback to first and second season of the podcast.
Yeah. If you remember the fourth episode, I think of our first season, it was about MAP data. And I shared a little bit about the workshop that I was teaching the teachers around the local air Atlanta area called a roadMAP to read MAP. And it that workshop came about based on my own learning. [00:02:00] About the test scores, because I had a student, I mean, a very thoughtful, very smart student who asked me, like, what does my RIT score mean?
I mean, I told him, you know, I pulled him in a little data conference. I'm like, okay, your RIT score is blah, blah. He was like, what does that number mean? He was like, am I where I should be? Am I above? Am I below? I mean, this is a second grader asking me very thoughtful questions. And I was like, dude, I don't know.
Okay, back to you and that's because that was like year 2. I think implementation of MAP it in my school district. And now I'm 7 years plus into using MAP data. And so I'm a lot further along, but that data conversation with the student, like, sent me on a journey to really understand. better what the scores are telling us and making the data become useful and not just numbers on a page because that's what I had done previously and I mean that was like your I think 14, [00:03:00] 15 in my teaching career.
I mean, I had, you know, maybe you're 13, 14, but I've been teaching a long time and I would have thought I was a data focused teacher, but I really was just sort of manipulating numbers on a page and I wasn't using them as a teaching informative tool, and I really appreciate that student pushing me forward and took me on a journey to fully, you know, I took some online workshops through MAP.
They have like a really good. resource section where you can kind of do your own learning and I took some online webinars as well and I finally really understood exactly what the MAP data tells us and I ended up falling in love with the MAP test. It's, I mean, no test is perfect and no test is, you know, Early test, you know, can replace teachers or anything like that, you know, and we need to have formative data as well.
But I think as benchmark tests go MAP is the best one out there that I've seen so far. [00:04:00] And I like it because it's adaptive and it measures. Students achievement based on norm references so based on other students around the country, but then also it measures their growth. And I just appreciate that so much because having worked with students who were English language learners and who have, you know, typically been the struggling students behind their peers.
It's really nice to have a data point that celebrates closing the achievement gap. Because if you're only using a test like Iowa, that's constantly just measuring them across grade level, and they're never seeing something that's on their level, then it's harder to measure that growth. And really, students see, you know, like them sort of baby steps getting closer and closer to where they need to be.
And MAP really celebrates that, and I appreciate it so much.
Mary Saghafi: Yeah, I, first of all, I have to commend you because I think that it's kind of a humbling experience, but it's also one of those experiences where you realize how your [00:05:00] students. Make you so much better of a teacher when they can humble you in that way.
And I really like that. You really dove into this. I similarly, I think in those very early stages when when the MAP test was just kind of early rolled out and we were focusing on benchmark tests. Our district had allowed us to develop our own
benchmark tests, which were disastrous. It was really difficult.
Like I. I did not major in curriculum design. I have no you know, reason that I, I would be, you know, very good at developing an instrument that would measure this.
Shannon Betts: Well, it's hard to find those because you're, are you measuring the skills or are you measuring the background knowledge based on the passage that you choose?
Mary Saghafi: So that, yeah, that was the biggest thing. To assess the kids. So I think that there was a bit of a blow to a lot of the culture in the schools in our area. Particularly and it was just like, okay, well, here's one more thing that they're going to try to put on our plate. And I think that [00:06:00] in that for that reason it didn't get rolled out very well.
And teachers were not trained very well at the very onset of MAP testing. And so I can very much. feel like I would be right in your shoes with a student who'd be like, what is this? Or a parent would ask me, what is this? And what I didn't quite understand was that we didn't have other adaptive tests and adaptive tests are really unique because it helps us identify where are the gaps located above, below students learning foundation level.
And so you can really dig in and find out, Oh, I, they missed this question. Oh, did they miss it? Because they were just clicking through the test so quickly. It times it, it gives an error on the screen if they're just clicking through the test. That's very valuable information, especially if you have a student.
This often comes up when we're talking about student accommodations and IEP meetings. Do they need the extra time for a test or not? Mm-Hmm, . And [00:07:00] so they often wanna look and say, well, on the MAP test, are they just clicking through too quickly? Are they, are they really thinking about an understanding right at the, the level that they know the information and showing truly what they do know based on this test?
So I'm, I've become. Eager to teach parents about this too especially in my my path of coaching parents because parents know that these tests are important, but they get a one page printout and they don't always know what it means. They want to know is their kid in the red area in the yellow area, orange or green and.
Okay, that's great. But this number 172 RIT, what does that mean? Mm hmm. We'll talk about that. I think that's where we kind of need to dig down a little bit today and really answer that question one more time. And let's talk about maybe how you and I approach data and how we have those conversations, like [00:08:00] maybe modeling a data conference.
Shannon Betts: That sounds fantastic because I really haven't had time to dig in my MAP data. I've been really busy with some other paperwork things. Okay. And so I'm behind looking at my winter MAP scores so we can look at them together today. Before we dig into that, I do want to say you brought up a really interesting concern of like when the students are clicking through and not really taking their time.
So I think that it really needs to be said at the start of each testing session and also As a culture of your classroom and ideally a culture of your school where you show the students that MAP is a fair test. It is adaptive. It's going to give them some questions that are purposely too hard for them.
Let them know that. Don't get stressed out if you see these hard questions. They're going to throw above grade level questions at you to see if you know them or not. Do your best and then move on. They're also going to throw some at you that are too easy because they're trying to figure out you're just right level.
So you want to encourage the students from the onset [00:09:00] to show their best work and to care about their scores. Not to the point of where they're stressed out about MAP and things like that. It's not that kind of high stakes. It's just more of do your best so that I can get information from this. And I was able to get all my second graders in my class on board every year and then school wide at my public, at my private school I work at, I do MAP conferences with all my students.
For the most part, except for some of the middle schoolers who are kind of getting a little burned out, I can get them caring about the tests too, because they like seeing growth, especially some of the reports are really student friendly and they like seeing their number go up, you know. So even if the first time that you implement MAP, they're not SATA conferences as a class, as a reading group.
You know, just whatever setting you're in, but eventually try to get it school wide where the students are showing their best work. [00:10:00] You're not going to get that rushed clicking, clicking, clicking. And then the more careful the students are taking the test, the more meaningful that data is going to be, where then it's going to actually give you information.
Mary Saghafi: So that's where the value of the MAP is, is when you can really dig deep.
Shannon Betts: Okay, so it takes time. So that's why I call it date your data, because to me, it's like a dating relationship. Okay, like you have to go on multiple dates with your data. You have to look at it multiple times before you truly understand what the information is telling you.
Okay? Okay, great. So, the first stage is like the meet, cute, getting acquainted stage. Mm hmm. And that's where I was at the very beginning of MAP implementation. Of just like, hey, what's your score? What's your score? I mean, what's your name? Like, on a date, you know, like, what's your star sign or whatever, then this is just [00:11:00] what's your score.
That's about all the information you're gonna get, you know, and it's not really gonna tell you anything about the person you're dating. Well, it's also not going to tell you anything about the student.
Mary Saghafi: You want to know if, is there a student who is an outlier, who stands out, is, are there, is everybody kind of in a, a bubble ish range?
Shannon Betts: Yeah, you're going to see a little bit of that, but that's about it. Cause you're just getting to know the person. You haven't even really gone on a first date. You're just sort of like looking at it first time. Okay. And that's what I do when I MAP takes 24 hours. Well, like lessons where it takes overnight to like populate the scores in the system.
Okay. So like if my students take a test on a Tuesday, I would wake up very early on Wednesday morning, like super excited to look at my MAP scores. Well, because it's early in the morning, I don't have time to really dig into the data, but I'm just looking at, okay. Where are my kids? You know, what is their score?
Did they meet their goal or not? Or whatever. And that's about all I was looking at. [00:12:00] So then I would take other time and I would go on a first date and more dates. And now I'm digging more in the data and I'm looking at, okay, where are their, what's the color? You mentioned the color earlier. So the color is like ROYGBIV order, like rainbow order.
So it goes in order from red, orange, yellow, green, blue. It honestly took me like three years to realize it was ROYGBIV order, but once I got to that.
Mary Saghafi: Yeah, you're right. I don't think, well, I don't always see the blue, but you're right. There is blue on there. Blue is the highest level.
Shannon Betts: And they're about 20 percentiles there, but that's achievement or growth percentile by 20 percent.
Okay. Yep. So there's five colors, five groups of 20. All right. And so red is going to be zero to 20 percent percentile. Orange is going to be 21st to 40. All the rest start with a one, you know, like a one in the one's place. So then 41 to 60 would be yellow, which is like the on grade level. [00:13:00] And then slightly above grade level is going to be 61 to 80.
That's the green. And then the blue is going to be 81st to 100th percentile. So and I was even able to teach like my son, even when he was like in first grade, what his colors meant, you know, when he started paying attention, like, Oh, I want to get this color. I want to get this color. So, and they're going to get that color in two different things because MAP measures, achievement and growth.
They're going to get a color for their achievement based on grade level performance around the country. Right. And so fourth graders compared to other fourth graders. Then they're going to get a growth percentile. So let's say they're at a 4th grader but at a 2nd grade level. They're going to get put in a bucket of other 4th graders that are at 2nd grade levels.
And there's going to be some typical growth that those kids are going to be able to make to kind of close the achievement gap. And so they're going to compare that growth to other kids in the same bucket. So they're not, they're not compared to the [00:14:00] growth of like other 4th graders that are on grade level.
They're being compared to the growth of 4th graders who are at the same starting level as them. Okay, which I think is really smart because that's sort of the typical growth and you couldn't expect of someone
Mary Saghafi: which is really helpful because sometimes like if we're talking about a high achievement kid, the amount of growth that they're going to make is not always a high growth level compared to their achievement, but it could be possible if they're being compared to other students who are also in their same bucket.
That makes sense.
Shannon Betts: And I'll flip it to like, we keep talking about below grade level students, but MAP is constantly expecting every student to grow. So let's say, let's talk about fourth grade again. Let's say they're a gifted fourth grader and they're at a sixth grade level. They're going to expect that student to grow similarly to other fourth graders that are a sixth grade level.[00:15:00]
And so they're not going to be content MAP, when I say they I'm meaning MAP, is not going to be content with that students saying at the same level... they're going to expect growth from that above grade level student. And so you have to consider that as a teacher and I do have some suggestions for what to do with that to expose your students that are above grade level to above grade level work, so that they can see some of the content that they're going to be tested on
right, you know, and I would tell my second graders who were at like a fourth grade level. Like I don't have time to teach you division. Okay, like, that's right. I'm a second grade teacher, you know, like division's not really in our standards, but I'm going to show you these resources for you to work on division yourself.
And I'll take some time with you like once or twice a week to kind of review your work, answer any questions that you might have, you know, and kind of guide your own like guided study on these above grade level standards. That's, that's what I did as a classroom teacher. And it [00:16:00] really, then I did see growth even in my blue students.
Mary Saghafi: That's great.
Shannon Betts: Yes. Because sometimes like high achieving schools can get stuck in that trap where like it's really hard to see growth. Also, the one thing I don't love about MAP and I'm not quite sure why it is, but the, the scores are done by a, it's called, it's called a RIT scale, RIT. And the points aren't equal value.
Mm-Hmm. . So under 200, it's easier to gain points. Okay. Okay. So the difference between like a 1 68, 1 66, and a 1 68 is like nothing. Okay. Like a student could get one more question Right. And get it. Okay. Interesting. Okay. But it's really hard for a student to go from 212 to a 214. So like the points get tighter when you get in the higher.
Okay. I'm not sure why. I'm sure [00:17:00] there's a ton of research and data that I just, I have not even, I have not gone that far into it, but we have to make our upper elementary students understand that and they'll see it. You'll see it when you look at their goals, like, you know, like Okay. If a student is in first grade, they might expect them to make like 12 points growth, even from like fall to winter.
But if they're at the fourth or fifth grade level in their own grade level, they're going to maybe ask them to make like two or three points growth in that time.
Mary Saghafi: That is very helpful information.
Shannon Betts: The scale is not equal value.
Mary Saghafi: So, yeah, I would definitely encourage teachers to help explain and clarify that a little bit more.
But, I can also see, because I've been in those students shoes before, that like, sometimes you just are not shared, this information isn't shared with you, so how do you know how to share it? So, that's great. I think that's a really important piece. Especially for students who have, Like started to make a lot of growth and [00:18:00] now they're reading.
You know, let's say if we're talking about reading in particular. So now my student is now decoding, but they're really not making as much growth. But we've seen that, you know. In first grade, they made a lot of growth because their decoding scores really, they were able to actually read the content, but now maybe they're having trouble with comprehension, and then we can dig down into
that a little bit.
Shannon Betts: Okay, so you're bringing up one more important point, and we're still kind of on the second stage of date your data.
Mary Saghafi: Okay, sorry. Now
Shannon Betts: , no, no, no, we're still in that part, even the thing I'm about to say is that you're looking at, are they high or low? You're looking at what, what's their goal. The other thing you need to understand about the RIT score is that it is a, it's an average of the sub domains.
So sometimes it's easier to think about with math. Okay. So we'll talk about math and then we'll talk about reading. But so for math, there's lots of different areas of math, right? There's like geometry, there's measurement, there's like numbers, there's [00:19:00] algebra. Those are kind of the four main domains that are measured in math.
It's a little different from a Younger elementary and upper elementary, but I'm summarizing here and those four scores in those sub domains. The students are going to get an equal mixture of questions on those domains, and then they're going to get a sub RIT score in each of those four domains. And then the overall RIT score is an average of those four domains.
So the meet cute getting acquainted. What's your RIT score is like actually not a very helpful score because it doesn't actually tell you anything about what they know. It's just sort of telling you the average of like those four sub areas. And the sub areas for reading
are.
Mary Saghafi: Before you go on to reading, I just want to say that like, this is what you would see on your family report. So you can still see those four subdomains. You
can. But I didn't know until that student had, and I had that conversation. I didn't even really understand that these subdomains were that important.
Shannon Betts: [00:20:00] Right. Right.
So yeah, I do think that that part is really important is to look at those subdomains.
Because like we used to do as grade levels and as a school, we would have to like plot our students RIT scores and things like that. But like, that's really not, I mean, that's just putting the numbers on a page.
Right. We want to see what domain are their lowest. It's really helpful to plot the subdomains instead. So anyway, the subdomains for reading in the lower grades. The, the, in the upper grades, they pull language and writing as a separate test. Okay. In the lower grades, K to two, that is built into the reading MAP.
And so there's foundational skills, there's vocabulary, there's fiction, nonfiction, kind of genre comprehension, and then there's language and writing those, those are the subdomains. And then in the upper grades, they pull out that language writing. And then it's. Fiction on fiction or like separate [00:21:00] domains at that point, you're going to get like a third grader or fourth grader is going to get a separate score for fiction and nonfiction, which I think is really interesting.
And then they'll get a vocabulary score. Okay,
Mary Saghafi: I'm totally with you now. Yeah, okay,
Shannon Betts: so that's pretty much dating, is you're looking at what's their RIT score, are they high or low, and then you're looking at what is their goal for the next time, okay? You're still not really using it to drive your instruction, okay?
You're not really committed to this data yet, you're just getting to know it, you're digging in there. It's going to take another one or two sessions to really dig into the data, and now I'm calling this like, dating and going steady. This is the third stage of dating your data. Now you're looking at those subdomains.
Mm hmm. And you're going to look at strengths and weaknesses. And what I saw, like, for example, in my second grade class, is that, like, All of my students had a weakness in geometry. I'm talking like 20 or [00:22:00] 30 points lower in geometry than the other areas of math. And then I looked at my curriculum and I said, Oh, yeah, well, I only teach the geometry unit in March, you know, and so I realized I had to do a lot of, spiral review of geometry at centers and geometry at some technology modules and your practice modules and geometry to keep that knowledge fresh for the students because it's 25 percent of the test, but we didn't work on it 25 percent of the time in our curriculum. So and then also when I, well,
this is the long term dating.
When I really dug into why they were low in geometry, I was able to make adjustments like super fast and then my students grew literally like 30 points in geometry after like two small group lessons because I drilled down to literally what they were missing. Yes. And then that brought up all my scores.
I mean, that brought up my data completely because I fixed that one sub area.
Mary Saghafi: Yeah. So how did you [00:23:00] do that? How did, how does that work? Okay.
Shannon Betts: Well, let's, let's dig. So let's, let's look through my data. So I'm going to start sharing my screen. Okay. I have a lot of screens open. Okay. Can you see my math scores?
I do. Yes. Okay. So let's go to student profile. And who I've been talking about the most, my fifth graders, maybe I've been talking about a lot. Okay. So, yeah. Yeah. So let's look at my fifth grade scores for winter and we're not going to share student names at all. We will just share initials and maybe gender but I don't know who I'm talking about and let me find the teacher.
There we go. I really like the student profile. That's the one. MAP has a lot of reports, first off. There's a school profile, which is really helpful. Like the student, I think the student profile was so popular that like now they created a school profile that's pretty [00:24:00] similar and that's only come out like the last year or two.
But student profile has been my favorite for like more than five years now. I call it the mountain one because it's like a line graph and it's got all the colors and it shows their progress over time. And then it's got a lot of clickable areas where you can go from that one score page. Also, because it's a student sheet, you can look at it with the parents during parent conferences.
You can look at it with the students on your Chromebook, at the small group table, you know, at little data conferences. And you're not showing them, you know, their peers scores like you would on like a, you know, a class report that's got everybody's names on it. You know, we want data to be private. for the students.
And so I really like the student profile because you're only looking at that one student score. So this is my favorite report by far.
This is also something that I love recommending if it's possible to pull up at an IEP meeting when you're going through the progress that a [00:25:00] student has made and, and really digging into it.
All right, so we're gonna look at two students. We're gonna look at one is a male student. He has I've worked with him for years. He has a disability in writing but it affects his reading as well because he has, and he also is English language learner and has a lot of vocabulary deficiencies. Okay.
And then we're going to look at one of my female students as well. Okay. So this student, so I'm on his student profile. So first, what I'm going to do is I'm just going to look at his RIT score to remind myself of what was his fall score and what's his winter score. Okay. So I'm going to click on the little colored mountain at the bottom, and I can see when I click on the little dot of his fall score, I can now see the sub scores.
Okay. Okay. Yep. So this student had an average of 184 in the fall and his literature score was 165. That's 20 points lower than the average. So [00:26:00] already I'm like, okay, what's going on in literature? You know, and so I can, this is where I'm starting to kind of get some information and then I'll eventually go longterm commitment and go into the continuum and look at the actual skills, but vocabulary was 185.
So that's very close to the average of 184. Okay, so vocabulary and then informational text 200. The student actually is really interested in background knowledge and things like that. So, like, that's a pretty good score. Mm hmm. And, but then I also can see that an average student in his grade level got a 204, which is 20 points higher than what he got.
Okay. I need to be aware that he's, he's, he's behind. Okay. His
achievement percentile
is 11th percentile. 11th percentile. On this. Yeah. So and. Yeah. Yeah. In the fall, it set a goal for him. I can't see it quite right now, but it set a goal for him of like where he should be in that bucket. Let [00:27:00] me see if I can click on that real quick.
Hold
on one second. Okay, I'm going to go to fall.
Excuse me.
Mary Saghafi: I've seen this goal page because you can actually type in goals. Oh, do you see at the top to the very right of the screen? You can customize the growth target goal.
Shannon Betts: Oh, yeah. I don't want to customize it, but okay. But it shows you.
Shannon Betts: Hello listeners, it's Shannon here. And I want to take a quick moment to tell you about one way I'm committing to my health this year.
I've started making green chef meals again, and my family and I are loving them. The food is delicious and easy to prepare. There's tons of sauces and spices and other ways to add flavor to the meals. There are also tons of gluten free options for me each week. I use the app a [00:28:00] lot. It makes it easy to make changes to the menu choices and pause a week if needed.
The great news is they've given me free boxes to give away. So if you're interested in trying Green Chef, head to the show notes for this episode to get the link. Or you can visit www. readingteacherslounge. com backslash quicklinks and click on the button for Green Chef. Happy cooking! Watch our stories on Instagram to see some of the meals I'm making.
Shannon Betts: Yeah,
normally, I don't know why I'm blanking on this right now. Normally like because so I'll just say like once we look at the winter, it's setting a goal for him for the spring. So let's just talk about that. And I'll find this later. And I can explain it on Instagram post or something. But anyway, they put him in a bucket of other students at his grade level that also got to see like what expected growth he would get on the [00:29:00] midterm.
Now, if we flash forward to his winter scores, he only made two points growth from the fall to the winter. That's not very good. Remember, I told you that they need to kind of grow more points under 200. And when I look at his percentiles for his colors, okay, he got red in both the achievement and in growth.
Okay. So we were hoping that even if he's still red achievement. That maybe he would have at least grown as much as the people that are in the same bucket as him, but he didn't. He didn't meet his goal, and so that's, that's definitely concerning for me. Okay, so, and then if I look at
his sub areas, so now his sub areas look very strange, because if you remember, So now his average is [00:30:00] 186. Now his highest sub area is literature. Yeah. And his lowest sub area is vocabulary. So like this is very different than what was done before. And I will say, background, I haven't been able to do a lot of personalized instruction with this student.
I'm mostly working on classroom curriculum with them. And so this is a sign to me, this is the first time that I'm really digging this data. As a resource teacher, I need a conference with the teacher about this and show that this student is not making the progress in the sub areas and that these sub areas are kind of all over the place and that I really need to drill down into some missing skills for this student in order to make some progress and for this student like I need to, yes, I can help with a little bit of the grade level assignments, but I need to be doing some personalized work for this student because they're more than two grade levels behind.
Correct. Yep.
Mary Saghafi: So that's, that's what I would be looking at too. And if I, and, and through my lens too, I want to know, is [00:31:00] there a particular area? So his vocabulary score, it didn't change that much, but his literature score did drop. So I really want to see, okay, what are those missing vocabulary scores?
He's not making a growth in that area. So what were the questions that he was able to get right? What Where is he developmentally able to start learning, which is really what the RIT score tells us.
Shannon Betts: Yes, and so that's why I really like this report, because right above the mountain of the colors, you go into instructional areas.
I'm sorry, I'm still fighting my cold, so I'm coughing. I'm trying to mute when I do it, but right now I'm talking, so people are going to have to hear my cough. Alright, so I'm going to look in instructional areas, and It's got the, it puts instructional areas according from like lowest to highest. So for this winter score, lowest is vocabulary, middle is informational text, highest is literature.
Then there's little right direction arrows next to those sub areas, [00:32:00] and I can click on those sub areas. And that arrow, and then find a list of skills. So that's what we're going to do, and it's going to open up like a new window. And now I heard in one MAP training, the really helpful an acronym.
First off, RIT stands for like some dude's name. Like, that's, it's called the RIT scale of like, you know, I told you the numbers weren't like fully Equal value, but some, his last name started with R or whatever. And that's the scale is named after him. Okay. But somebody that worked for NWEA told me that they think in their mind, they call RIT ready for instruction today.
Mary Saghafi: Ready for instruction today.
Shannon Betts: Yep. Which I think is really, really cool because that's telling you just right. We say those all the time on the podcast. And so RIT shows you what is just right work for this student. And it is making a case. If you are a school that has MAP, [00:33:00] then that district is telling you they want you to do differentiation.
Even if they're not overtly saying that, they are a school that values differentiation and values meeting the students where they are. And so if you're looking for a permission slip of like, okay, but I, I'm a 5th grade teacher and I don't want to have to go back to 3rd grade standards or whatever. If you have a student.
That's showing as a third grade level in these sub skills in these subdomains, you have to meet them where they are, or they are their MAP score is not going to budge.
Mary Saghafi: Yeah. Again, it's not going to budge because they are not ready to learn at a higher level. Their foundation has cracks. You have to fill the cracks of the foundation.
That is making sure that you are plugging the holes and ensuring they have the skills that they need. to start at grade level work. So yeah, if we're talking about this, I see this student is really ready to develop these skills. So they need more support [00:34:00] in
academic.
Shannon Betts: What's really helpful is like, look, let's look at base words and affixes, for example.
Sure. It tells me exactly this student needs the prefixes, dismiss, non, M, N, ill, un, re. That's not that many. No, I don't have to teach every prefix out there. That's a small group lesson. I need to work on those prefixes and start there with that student and really get those prefixes strong. In terms of suffixes, it says the student needs less, full, o r e r, or i s t, e r e s t.
It tells me exactly what they need. In terms of multiple meaning words, it says the student needs context for second grade, third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade, and sixth grade passages to understand word meaning. I'm going to really have to give a wide range of You know, working on different grade level passages, maybe from like read works or something and like a variety of Lexile levels so we can work on context clues [00:35:00] and things like that.
And so this is helpful because it'll give you like they definitely tell you like some grade level equivalents, especially when you get to math, it'll definitely tell you some math, you know, math equivalents like oh they're at a math level in multiplication of like a fourth grader or they're at a fractions level of a third grader.
That's kind of helpful, but yeah. This will tell you, like, what I would do is I would go then to if I'm looking for resources for this student, I can go to FCRR and find vocabulary games and other resources, maybe some things for prefixes and suffixes that focus just on those, go in my resource file and just pull out the prefixes and suffixes that they need to work on, and I can give some very specific lessons to help this student.
Or, what's also helpful, and I've told the students, we're an IXL school. And so what I've told the students for IXL is a lot of times the teacher assigns the grade level IXL assignment. Yeah. [00:36:00] And so like this student might get he's in fifth grade, so he might get fifth grade IXL assignments in vocabulary.
And I'll say, okay, that's good. I know your teacher is requiring you that, but in your extra time, or maybe when we're in resource time, let's go to IXL and let's go to second grade, third grade and fourth grade modules. Those are going to be at a just right level for you. You're going to be able to go much faster in those modules.
They're going to fill in some of those gaps. They're going to show you the things that I'm working on with you here. You know, these exact prefixes and suffixes I'm working with you. Those aren't going to show up in the fifth grade modules in IXL. They're going to show up in the lower grade levels and modules of IXL.
And have them go through those lower grade levels and then accelerate until they get to the grade level work.
Mary Saghafi: And I think the key is I've heard you say this before. The key is if they are doing work that it, that feels too easy, then they know what that feeling is. What is feeling too easy? Oh, I'm going to fly through this module.
Okay, [00:37:00] great. But I've got some success.
Okay.
Shannon Betts: Well, just right. It's not even too easy. I would say just right. Just right is fun.
Just right is fun. No, exactly. Yep. So, so you can say, Hey, if you're good at it, then you're going to be able to go through things quicker and it's going to be just right for you. I think having that conversation and giving that permission to the student.
And also making it as private as they need it to be is also fine because we know, especially in this fifth grade level, this is where they get very self conscious about you know, what their peers see them doing but, but this is a very private way to work on this.
Mary Saghafi: For me as a special ed lens, I'm always trying to figure out, okay, what is the goal that my student needs to develop?
So we are talking about top tier MTSS, we're talking about special education, this is where you would want to draw your goals from. So. If I was looking at the student, he was on my [00:38:00] caseload, I noticed that vocabulary was a big area of weakness. I would want to develop a goal that talks about how this student needs to developVocabul skills, then I might choose the area that would be most meaningful.
Maybe that would be doing the morphology piece here. And so then I would say we'll use Greek or Latin roots to determine, but then you create okay, we'll be using. Prefixes and stuff like whatever it is, however, you're going to do it. You're going to create an umbrella goal and then you're going to do many goals underneath it.
This is
where go ahead.
Shannon Betts: Well, I was going to say you want those goals to definitely also match the verbs of what you see on MAP. So because MAP is an adaptive test and also MAP. I mean, MAP isn't a hands on test because it's on a computer, [00:39:00] but it tries to be a hands on test. Like, for example, like in math, they have to drag a ruler up and then like, you know, they have to sort pictures sort of, and they have to use a mouse or the mouse pad and kind of click and drag and do a lot of things, okay?
So those verbs that you see on this list of skills, and that's called the continuum of skills for MAP, the verbs are really important because that's going to match The application on the test and how it's assessed. And it's also going to, I guess it informs the teacher like the, the level of complexity of understanding of what a student needs to do and to be able to show that knowledge.
So, for example in the base words affixes area. There's, there's just like four verbs in here. Oh, no, three verbs. So it's applies is, it always starts with a verb. So you just kind of look at the first word in this statement and it'll say applies or understands [00:40:00] or uses. Those are the three verbs that are in there.
And so we need to think about what that means. So if I read further, it says applies knowledge of Greek or Latin roots to determine the meaning of a word in a two through five grade band. So if it's saying applies knowledge of Greek or Latin roots. It might say, knowing, looking at this base means this, you know maybe like chronos means time, you know, like what would the word chronology mean?
So they're applying the knowledge of this one base and they're applying it to like some unknown thing. Another applies one says applies understanding of word meaning to define a compound word. Then for understands, it says understands how the suffix less or full changes the meaning of the word. So if I say [00:41:00] If careless means without care, what would be the meaning of careful?
And they might have four choices.
Mary Saghafi: Okay, that's really helpful. Yeah, so that's showing like that's how they're measuring the understanding of the suffixes and how they change the meaning of the word.
Shannon Betts: So we're getting kind of into the really like we're kind of bridging now like stage three and four of the date your data steps because now we're really digging into the language of the skill, which these.
MAP like tries to analyze that's the national test and we don't really have national standards. I mean, most of the state standards are kind of framed around the common core. They just sort of change some wording to not be, you know, to call them the common. Well, not call them the common core anymore. So for political reasons, but they try to look at the.
You know, as close to national level of skills as [00:42:00] possible to see, you know, what students need to know and understand and be able to do at a third grade level, a fourth grade level, a fifth grade level and so forth. So this is sort of the language of the standards or the language of the skills and teachers really need to dig into this and like, analyze that verb, try to see like, well, how would that question be asked?
I would start, once I started looking at this, I would do like exit tickets that were like more similar to how MAP would show it, you know? You know, like I would, if it said distinguish, you know, as the student needs to distinguish between different things, then like, as the exit ticket, I would give four choices and I would make them distinguish the correct choice.
Does that make sense? Yeah. So I would use these verbs to try to, and then I would also try to even make my formative assessments sort of match what MAP was asking them to do. Not to teach the test, but just to like, Make sure that I'm actually, like, preparing the students for, like, what it's asking me to do because [00:43:00] sometimes our grade level standards are, like, kind of so broad, we don't always understand them, and so this drills down into more discreet skills.
Mary Saghafi: I, I find this analyzing the verbs in here to be so helpful. Mostly because, as a special ed teacher, I'm constantly looking at how am I developing goals, what goals do my students need, and how do I take progress notes on those goals. And so this was very, very helpful for me. And also, especially in a recent meeting that I was a part of I have a student who's performing below grade level in math.
It's been a consistent issue. He's getting tutoring from outside of school. From several different tutors and so mom really needs to have a consistent language about where are the deficits that her student is facing and and how can she communicate those by printing off this grade this exact kind of [00:44:00] page about where he's ready to develop based on his most recent MAP scores.
We were able to develop an IEP goal. She was able to print that off and give it to his tutors so that they were also working on those things. Everybody's using common language. This is where we can be a lot thinking smarter, not harder. Especially when communicating with student, with information about students with various teachers.
I think this is really helpful.
Shannon Betts: You're not shooting darts in the dark. You're actually looking at a dart board of some targets.
Mary Saghafi: Well, and I think that the other piece about IXL I, at our most recent conference for my own children, we found out that IXL and NWEA partner together. And so the MAP results can actually be correlated.
So if your district is utilizing a function that IXL is using on that for homework, those were some of the assignments that my daughter has been working on. And that. [00:45:00] Seems like such a great use of time to make sure that they're not just I'm just logging on to nothing wrong with cool math, but doing cool math and playing a math game, but let's do some targeted intervention, especially in when you have kids who maybe working on higher level skills, you can
do acceleration.
Shannon Betts: Yeah. You can do target acceleration. Let's give them a grade level or two above in IXL and let them, you know. Work on those things. And like I said, always have that invitation of the student. Like, come to me if you need feedback. Come to me if you have a problem with this. You could do that. We did that.
I use MobyMax the same way because MobyMax gives them sort of a In language and math and a couple of the other little areas, they give them like a pretest and then they kind of give them a great equivalency and then they lead them through the modules of that great equivalency. And I had that student who, like, literally went through the 2nd grade math, the 3rd grade math, the 4th grade math, and that helped him meet [00:46:00] his goals for MAP, because he was getting the content that I didn't have time. I mean, I was a second grade teacher. I didn't have time to teach it. So I want to show you something real quick while we're on this menu and I don't look at the next student, but we're still on that. Like we clicked on that arrow above the, you know, colored mountain thing and this right now we've been grouping by topic, but you can click on here and group it by standard instead.
If you want, and so that'll correlate it to the grade level standards, which is nice topic is a little more helpful because it's kind of grouped in bigger topics. But if you want to see it by standard, like if maybe you're a standards based report card or something, that would be helpful. Also, you talked about this in the, you said IEP goals.
This is the skills we're going to develop because RIT means ready for instruction. And right now that's what we're looking at. It's checked develop, develop, but we could also actually check introduce. And that'll show us the above grade level to kind of show us where we're leading the students [00:47:00] because in these sub areas, if I found one sub area that was really weak, my own personal goal was to try to get them to grow two RIT bands
which is two 10 point groups of points. Yeah, great. Okay, that's a RIT band that's like, you know, 180s or 190s. Mm hmm. I would try to get them to grow 20 points just in that subarea. I'm not trying to get 20 points on the average RIT to grow. But in that subarea, especially if it was way lower than their average, I'm trying to grow that one subarea.
So I'm not only going to look at, if they're in the 180s right now, I'm going to look at the 180s. to know what skills I need to work on. But I'm also going to look at the one nineties to know where I need to lead them. Yeah, absolutely. Does that make sense? Yeah. And I just, you know, double check that as well.
And also, I was able to, like, I was able to go on Teachers Pay Teachers. Like, I had a lot of students in my second grade class who were at the [00:48:00] 160s, 170s in language, for example. And so they were at the first grade level in language. And it had been a long time since I had taught first grade. Language like grammar.
So I was like trying to remember what it was. And so I was able to find some resources on teacher to pay teachers. Like I literally clicked like one 70s language RIT and like people had made like practice cards and you know, games and things like that for that one like group of standards. So I was able to do some of those in small group and things like that.
The other thing I was able to do is once I drilled down on these skills for my second graders I We said IXL was correlated to N. W. E. A. Ma'am. Imagine learning was too. And a lot of my students, you know, were in that secondary class were refugees, like brand new English. And so they were very low in the vocabulary domain.
And when I looked at the vocabulary domain, it was like stuff like names of animals, names of fruits school supplies, like [00:49:00] names of things in the community. It was like very specific vocabulary categories. And the games in Imagine Learning worked on those exact vocabulary categories. And so I was able to, first off, I could assign those in Imagine Learning.
I also just gave the students like morning work time, or when I was with another reading group, I would have them on Imagine Learning. And then also, Imagine Learning had some like offline print resources that you could. You know, print off and use in small group. And so I printed off some of those resources and use them kind of at the start of my reading group lesson where we would just review those names of fruits and review those names of the school supplies and things like that use them in sentences. And because I targeted those very specific vocabulary words, I was able to help them grow in that domain. Mm hmm. I didn't have to teach every vocabulary word in English. It let me know which ones they needed.
Mary Saghafi: Yeah, that's very helpful. And you don't have to reinvent the wheel or just guess at which ones they needed.
That's great. [00:50:00]
Shannon Betts: So, let's look at my female student and see how she did. Because this one, it was a little depressing. I need to, I definitely need to, I'm looking at this not, not really as a Reflection of the student, but also reflection of me as the teacher, as the resource teacher, like I have not done enough targeted instruction for this student.
So, this has been a very helpful data review for me to know what activities I need to do in the future with the student to help grow in those sub areas. Alright, this student looks better! Okay. She actually grew a color. She grew from orange to yellow. Mm hmm. That's good. That's really good. Yeah. And she's now like in the 200s.
So she was at 201 in the fall and now she's moved to 207. And like I said, it's pretty hard to move in the 200s. So if you look at her growth percentile. Yeah. She's at 57th percentile. She's like bridging like the yellow and green of growth, which means she grew better than the other kids in that same bucket.[00:51:00]
Yeah, that's great. And her achievement is now at 45th percentile, which is, is good. And let's see her achievement in the fall was at 42nd. So she's grown three percentile levels. So that is closing the achievement gap. This is, this is, this is exciting. So If we look at our sub areas, we're going to kind of, I'll be able to click on like the dot of her fall score and we're able to see like her sub areas for the fall and her sub areas for the winter at the same time.
So literature was 199 in the fall, literature is 201 now, so it's still the lowest area. In the fall, vocabulary was 200 and it was the middle area. Now in the winter, informational text is the middle area. Yeah. Yeah. And so vocabulary, she grew 14 points. So she's now 214 and it's saying that's a relative strength.
So her vocabulary grew a lot from the [00:52:00] fall to the winter. An informational text was a 203 in the fall is a 205. So that tells me I need to really dig into literature. And then I also maybe just need to look at vocabulary and be like, Oh, what did we do? What did her teacher do from the fall to winter to help that vocabulary score grow 14 points?
Because keep doing that if that's successful. But let's click on literature. And we're clicking on that, you know, right arrow to get those skill statements. And I'm already seeing she needs to work on a lot of figurative language. Illusion, metaphor, idioms, onomatopoeia, person, personification, simile. This is a big one.
Identifies flash forward in literary text, and understands how authors develop characters using flashback. So I could find some passages that work on that. And also like with the chapter books and things that she reads in her, [00:53:00] from the media center, I could work on that with that student. Also, this is a big one.
A lot of times students score low in literature because of the po poetry is like in the literature subdomain. So a lot of times we need to work on poetry, not just April poetry month, but we need to work on poetry all year long. So it's so hard sometimes . I know, I know. So I'll work on some poetry with the student because it says develop speaker's, attitude and poetry.
Understanding the point of view. In for narration, but also in poetry, identify analyze how specific parts of a poem contribute to its meaning. And so the way that might be asked on a question on MAP is like they might say, here is this line from this poem. How is this line showing us how the author feels about [00:54:00] trees.
Okay. And then there's like four examples and the students have to pick the one. I mean, that's, there's a lot of actually like thinking and analysis that goes on in some of these questions and the students are just sort of like you know, like, so that's why it's helpful again to understand these verbs and to really think about, okay, how would this be asked to make sure that, okay, we're not just seeing, do the students, can the students read a poem and understand it?
Like this is sort of defining what, what does understanding that poem mean? What does it really mean to, like, fully be able to read this poem at grade level? This is great. So, I'm going to dig into this. I'm happy with the student's score, but I also know, I know what I need to work on with this student as well.
So, yeah. Yeah,
this is great. And it
shows her growth too, which is wonderful. Yeah. And I see both these kids at the same time, so I'll probably, like, pull some lessons where I'll try to do, like, I might work on [00:55:00] some morphology stuff within poetry. So, I can do, like That could help both students at the same time.
And like, I know what skills they both need and I'll kind of use the same resources, but also like bounce ideas back and forth so that students can get what they need. But I also don't want to do two separate lessons for them. Yeah, no, that's great. So that's digging into MAP scores. We've now done pretty much like all four stages.
So we looked at their RIT score. That's, you know, meet cute, getting acquainted. We then were like going on the first date and more dates. We're seeing, are they high or low? What's their color? What's their goal? Where are they supposed to be? Then we're really dating and going steady and we, which was the third stage.
We're looking at their strengths and weaknesses. Yep. We're looking at this information. How can we use it for grouping? How can we use it for instructional planning? What curriculum resources do I need to pull? What modules do I need to assign in IXL and other programs? [00:56:00] Are they above grade level, below grade level?
How are the skills going to, you know, grow and build on each other? And then long term commitment is really data driven instruction. And it was where I would go pretty much. Once I got to this level of understanding with MAP, where I was constantly asking myself, what does the continuum say? What are the verbs of these skills?
What is it saying the students are ready to learn? I would constantly, I was checking this almost every day at this point to really fully understand the scores for the students. And you asked about this report for parents. I'm going to show you since you're looking at my screen, you would go to print and share.
And it would, it was called the family report. And I would click reading if I wanted. I could also do math and I wouldn't always put projected proficiencies, but I would definitely want the students growth scores growth [00:57:00] statements to be on there and then I could go in the reports queue and it would be there and it would be sometimes like a 30 page report.
So I would usually email it to the parents and not always print it, but I would be able to show them, this student, it would, the report starts with the, the colored mountain. Oh, this is not the right
one. Can I say, I think that the family report, what we want is the detailed individual report. Yeah. Because oftentimes the family report is the one that gets
sent home.
Okay. We want batch PDF.
Mary Saghafi: Yes, and the batch PDF is the one.
Shannon Betts: So this is where PDF had four choices. Thank you. So we're choosing the subject. And then what we're going to say, I was just going to say this is where There we go. We want growth goals in instructional areas, right?
Mary Saghafi: Instructional areas, yes, and growth goals would be helpful, especially if you are really dealing with a complex student or having a [00:58:00] parent meeting that really you need to like drill down on what can the parent do at home?
What, you know, and really giving some good clear communication. This is how you use the data to inform that meeting. Yeah, I, I really appreciate this. When I am like, I usually request information like this before you go to a meeting because sometimes teachers need to have this printed by the administrator.
If you are not super familiar with how to do this, sometimes teachers, all teachers don't have access. So if you are a parent listening to this, or if you are a A teacher, make sure that you really like kind of look at this before you, I wouldn't just pull it out of a meeting in the middle of a meeting.
I would really make sure that you're ready for it.
Shannon Betts: Yeah, you would want to have it prepped or sometimes I would show the student profile during a meeting and then I would say, okay, parents this afternoon, I'm going to email you the PDF of this and you're going to be able to see all these statements on your own.
Mary Saghafi: And, and I [00:59:00] think that this is helpful. You know a lot of times the parents who I'm working with, they are very, they want to know, they want to dig in and they want to know what is it that needs to be taught? What should I be working on? These are areas That if you can already have it assigned through IXL, I feel like that is a very easy way to give parents some information so that they can really have an insight as to what is the reason behind working on these skills.
Or again, if you are having a tutor and your child is working with another student and they need some really consistent communication. This is a really great way to say on this date, this is where the student was at. And if you are hearing in meetings, things like, well, the student was just clicking through.
It's really easy to click on the number and see how long it took the student to take that test. You can see if they were [01:00:00] just clicking through. So there's so much information that we can use that I think in the past has been easily discounted about. Using a test like, oh, it was just one day.
He didn't take it that seriously. So we shouldn't really consider that data. But I think sometimes that is an easy statement that people make when they are not super familiar with the data. So if you hear that, ask politely, can we dig into this? Or can you help me? Can you help me meet with somebody who can help me dig into this data?
Because I feel like it might be
Shannon Betts: useful in developing some goals.
Well, and I've taught the teachers, you know, at my school to look at this, the MAP data this way. And so when they see a student who has taken the test in 15 minutes and has just been clicking around, you know, like they'll, they know now to go to the counselor and say, this is not a valid score.
You know, can we have the student take it again, and we kind of look at it as a school, we're not just going to let every kid take the test over and over and over, but if there's a, you know, a valid case, we'll have a [01:01:00] conversation with the student and say, we really need this data to be useful. Take your time, we're going to retest you and we're going to retest you one on one to really make sure that you're trying your best.
Mary Saghafi: Yeah, I think that if you can. Change the lens from a meeting that's a little more subjective to data driven. I think that that really helps. But yeah, thank you so much for sharing this with me. This is amazing.
Shannon Betts: You're welcome. Another report that I really like. I'm going to show you real fast as the quadrant report and the quadrant report is really cool because I told you that it, there are two things that are measured.
It's measures achievement and then measures growth. And so this is a report where you can see both plotted at the same time. And so you can see, are they low achievement, high growth, high achievement, high growth? That's really good.
Mary Saghafi: Green boxes, happy place.
Shannon Betts: We want the green box or [01:02:00] the orange and the yellow are okay, too.
And the yellow box is high achievement but low growth. That's also helpful, like that, you know, that one female student, that's where she ended up. Yep. Because she is closing her achievement gap. Sorry, she is in the orange one. Low achievement, high growth. Yeah, she's in low achievement, high growth.
Mary Saghafi: But sometimes that's definitely a great place to be because, you know, those are the students that you really make a big difference with closing their achievement gap because they're making growth.
Yeah, that's great.
Shannon Betts: So you're looking when you, and I have a great look in the show notes. I have like a little freebie exercise that you can get on Teachers Pay Teachers as a download, where I'll walk you through how to analyze this report. But you want to look at the top half, the two top left and top right to see if they have high growth.
That's definitely, we want to see high growth in the students, whether they're low achievement or high achievement, we want them to grow as much as they can. [01:03:00] So we definitely want them in those top boxes. We're going to be extremely concerned if they're in the bottom left box, because that's low achievement, low growth.
That's why it's red. Even though they are low, they also have not grown very much. So what is going on? We really need to give those students a lot of attention and a lot of intervention to help their scores grow, because otherwise that achievement gap is going to grow larger, not shrink. Exactly. We definitely won't want them to fall farther behind when they're in our care.
And then the high achievement, low growth is concerning too, because if they're high achieving, but they're not growing, am I not maybe challenging them enough? Am I not exposing them to those higher grade level standards that they're seeing so you're going to have to go the continuum again for those students and see I keep using this example but like when I said the student, you know, in second grade needed to know division, like, I knew that because I looked ahead in the continuum and seeing [01:04:00] what he was ready for, and I showed him a little bit one on one and in his other high achieving group, but then also I gave a lot of independent study assignments for that student to do to make sure that he was getting curriculum that he needed.
Great. So high achievement, low growth is concerning as well. So this is another fun report. Let's switch to another kind of data and let's look at the same class, but let's look at their right score. So did I tell you about Write score?
Mary Saghafi: I don't think that we've really talked about it. I'm familiar with Write score.
I used it my last year when I was co teaching fifth grade.
Shannon Betts: And so I brought I wanted my school to start using WriteScore because we have purchased and started implementing an entire writing curriculum on empowering writers, which is going really, really well, but I think it's helpful to have.
Write Score is a third party grading system. And so the students like [01:05:00] get these cold assessments where it's a prompt they've never seen before and they've got to type it into the computer or if they're lower grades they do a paper pencil and then it's graded by Write Score rather than graded by the teachers.
And it's very helpful to see an impartial judge. Because a lot of times when we are looking at writing pieces that the students have published, we have gone through the whole writing process with the students. We have like helped them along the way. We've done guided practice with them. We've had writing conferences.
We've like pulled them along the finish line of let's finish this piece and we finally assess it. And we're not really sure like how much of that assessment grade is due to like The prodding that we did for the student versus like what the student could do on their own. And so Write score shows what can the students do on their own without any teacher intervention at all.
So we just got Write score back for this class. And so let's click. And so remember date your data steps. First one is we're just gonna be like, what's their score? Okay. Are they below average or above? [01:06:00] That's all we're going to look at first. Okay. So one to three is below. Four to five is average.
Six to seven is above. Okay. So we're going to look at those two students. The male student is a one. So he is below and that female student is. Is she a three maybe? She's a three. Yes. So she got below, but it's the higher part of below. So that's better. Okay. Yeah. So so now we're going to look at dating and going steady and we're going to look at their actual results.
And so you can see here there's two different main areas that they assess in write score. The green area is idea development organization coherence. So that's the words, right? And then the orange part is like spelling conventions and punctuation and things like that. So, if we look at the male student and then for each of the little [01:07:00] areas within there, like introduction or conclusion, they're either going to get strong, sufficient, weak, or missing.
Okay, strong, sufficient, weak, or missing, or something like that. Okay, for focus, for development of support, word choice, things like that. So, unfortunately, this male student got missing in introduction, weak progression. Let's just click on his name so we can see it a little easier. Missing conclusion, insufficient tradition, transitions, insufficient focus, insufficient development of support, missing attributions, weak word choice.
So he really got low in all of the areas of the writing. Okay, his conventions weren't that great either. So now I'm gonna, so now I'm really going to dig into I'm not really to the standards yet. This is a little bit harder to look for on this part of the data, but I'm going to go ahead and just I'm going to view his essay.[01:08:00]
And the prompt for this one was they were supposed to read some passages about adaptations and then explain, I think, let me see what the student booklets. Let's just look at it real quick.
So they're looking at students who have adapted to living in the dark. Okay. Animals that have adapted to living. Yeah. Yeah. And so they had to write, thinking about the information, the two passages, write an informational essay about how certain creatures adapt in order to live below the surface of the earth.
Okay, so he wrote basically four sentences there. That's definitely not a five paragraph essay.
Mary Saghafi: Oh, I can't see what he wrote.
Shannon Betts: You can't?
Mary Saghafi: Oh, yes, now I can, sorry. According to the passage? Mm hmm, yep.
Shannon Betts: It's just not really long enough. It's not an [01:09:00] essay. What's really nice about Writescore, and I've guided most of my teachers to do this, is they have an exemplar essay after the students complete. and get their scores back, they give a grade level example. So like, look at this fifth grade example. This is like a two page essay.
Two page essay, five paragraphs. And what it has them do is it has them analyze and annotate. Why is this a good fifth grade essay? That's excellent. And the students, what they do is they look at their own, they can look at this essay at the same time they look at their own on the computer. And compare it and say, wow, how is mine different than this, you know, so, and then we'll say things like it gives a little guided practice, like draw a box around the transitional phrases that are used in these paragraphs show where the student, where the student writer elaborated, show where the student gave, you know, attributed to a [01:10:00] source, things like that, underline, underline, underline, underline, underline.
the main idea of topic sentence. And so the students are having to annotate and do a lot of work to really analyze which is really, really helpful. And then you can dig into the rubrics and things like that.
Mary Saghafi: Oh, I'm really glad to know this. I know that they are using this at a couple schools where my students are, and I'm eager to look at this, especially, especially working on developing goals for some students who I know who have weak writing skills or weak language skills, especially.
So this is a great way to see where is their baseline. It has a great rubric that goes along with it, but I especially like that they have exemplars so that students know what the expectation is. One of the big questions that I often have of the IEP team is how does the student know What the expectation is because it's [01:11:00] all well and good if we write them a really great goal and then we give them a worksheet and say, this is your data, complete this, what is the interim process?
What is happening in the in between? How do we know that they do they have a checklist that says, I need to remember my capitalization and my punctuation. I have gone back and checked my own rubric first. Sometimes
Shannon Betts: are you ready for this?
Mary Saghafi: Yes. Okay. So. Blow my mind, Shannon.
Shannon Betts: Yeah. There's a section on Write Score called Teacher Resources.
Super. And honestly, because this student is so below grade level, even though he's in fifth grade, I'm going to pull resources probably from the third grade section for him. Yeah, but I need to set a goal for him. So do I want to work on I mean, first off, I need to get him to a five paragraph essay. So that's one of the things I need to do because he only wrote four sentences for this five paragraph essay.
I also really want to work on like, so I might try to get for him as a reasonable goal is to work on a three [01:12:00] paragraph essay. I want to get an introduction paragraph. That's maybe three sentences and a conclusion paragraph. That's three sentences and maybe a body. paragraph that's like five sentences that's got, you know, some good elaboration and things like that.
Mary Saghafi: So actually I would stop you and say that you might actually want to work more at the sentence level because looking at his, he had some words that included an introduction or some phrases that would start an introduction, but when I'm looking at it he is still really struggling at some of the sentence level making sure that there's even spaces between words, ensuring that he has capital letters and appropriate punctuation.
So you might give him some really good topic sentences to work on first and conclusion sentences to work on first.
Shannon Betts: Well, and there are activities for all of those things in WriteScore. So even if you don't have a writing curriculum, yes, okay. I can pull that. So here we go is this first area is [01:13:00] called writing strong paragraphs.
So that's what you're saying. I need to do with the student It's just getting him to write a strong paragraph Mm hmm. And so here are a bunch of there's like anchor charts for the students You mentioned the checklist of like, you know things that they need to analyze for their own writing. There's checklists They have like all these very they have inside this they have a guided practice activities They have PowerPoint so you can show the students And then different activities to do for like basically all of those little areas that are assessed.
Introductions, conclusions, focus, things like that. And so there's all these units that I can pull for this student and pull some activities. And like I said, for this student, I would probably go to a lower grade level.
Mary Saghafi: Mm hmm. Yeah, I think that that's fantastic. Mm hmm.
Shannon Betts: And see, there's anchor charts. You know that these things all exist.
Mary Saghafi: You just have to know where to look. And I think that that's where teachers get so bombarded. But yeah, I am looking at an anchor chart right now, and it's what does an [01:14:00] introduction have? It hooks the reader. What are the words that can make the reader feel like they can't wait to read your essay? So having this as a resource for your students to go to and knowing how to.
Access these things and, and seeing what is an example of what the teacher is expecting me to do. How can I model this? That's exactly where we are and don't forget that sometimes even your 5th grade students, it's just like decoding and things like that. Sometimes they need to come back to the.
Sentence level, so, I think that's great.
Shannon Betts: So, here are some this is an activity where the students are reading different examples of paragraphs and then giving it their own grading. Like, how would you grade this?
Mary Saghafi: Yes, I think that these are really valuable activities.
And there's one that's checklist.
Shannon Betts: Yep, another, yep, this is how I check my writing, student friendly language, great. So, I mean, [01:15:00] when you count all the lessons that are in these, like, there are like, I mean, look, this is lesson 37, just in this red area of writing strong paragraphs, then you can go all the way to here, writing strong essay.
Look at these other lessons. I mean, look how many, there are hundreds of lessons. Basically for anything you want to do, even a little mini lessons, if you want to do for elaboration or mini lesson you want to do. I mean, it's just, it's just, it's a whole curriculum basically in within right score. And so that's just amazing, amazing professional resources.
Well, and also it says really carefully too, like there's really good verbs again. So you look at your language goals from your MAP test score, see where are they struggling when it comes to language. Is it sentence level? Is it word choice? You know, all of these areas. And this is a great resource. Okay.
Fantastic.
So I [01:16:00] know videos for the students to watch, like it's just, it's just incredible. Like stuff organized by genre. Like it's, this is where then you would take the data. You would look at the student's essay and you would set a goal with the student. And like, I walked into the first grade classroom with school the other day and.
I went to the teacher and I said, well, you know, the Write score results are in. And she goes, Oh, I've already looked at them with the students. She goes, I figured out how to show it anonymously on the whiteboard. She goes, and we looked at all the students and scores and they were very excited that they got sufficient in most of the areas, but they really wanted to move to strong for conclusions and strong for introductions.
So they wrote that as instructional goals and they're all excited to take Write score again. And I was just like, I got goosebumps talking to her because I was like, you got your first graders to be excited. about writing and set goals for themselves and show what they're going to show the next time.
That is incredible. Yes. And she can go in these resources and pick a few of those lessons just to beef up her writing instruction if she [01:17:00] wants to, if she doesn't have enough curriculum resources already. Fantastic. And work on the specific things. So that's what your data is all about. It's just like looking at the student's scores, Getting information from it to make it meaningful and then making instructional decisions from it.
Mary Saghafi: I have a hot take on this. I think that this type of conversation with you and learning about this in this kind of casual setting is so useful. But it's something that I really wish I would have learned in college. It's one of those, again, like conversations like
There's no data analysis classes there for us.
I mean, I didn't have any kind of class like I didn't in my undergrad in my graduate school level. We did, but even then I felt like the answer was always go ahead and design your own. How are you going to fix this now? So here's the problem. How are you going to fix it? Go ahead and [01:18:00] reinvent the wheel.
And that is not helpful. It's not helpful for my students. It's not helpful for me. It puts so much more on my plate and people have already, who are much smarter than I am, have already put it into place. And I also think that this is something that happened when I writing my lesson plans a lot too.
And Instead of I feel like all I was constantly searching for was what verbs do I need to write to put into my lesson plans, rather than what resources am I actually using to make these verbs happen in my classroom. And so it's a hot take. And of course, you know, like, my hindsight is a little bit different, but I think that.
This is really, again, how you can utilize your resources well and talk with other teachers, open your door, share your resources, talk about what data means, not scary, not in a punitive way, but how can you make first graders excited about writing? [01:19:00] You know, that's so great, so beautiful. And I think it's such a quaint little analogy to say that you're dating your data.
Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take a look at this one pass. Here's another pass. I'm kind of excited.
Shannon Betts: No, I'm a self professed like data nerd. Now, you know, I mean, like, I actually like looking at scores. Like I, I, I'm like, when a teacher says, will you look at your, my data with me? I'm like, running down the hall, like, how soon can I be there?
You know? But it's because I've learned over time that it really can be useful. And I think I've just sat in so many meetings where I've just filled out these random reports with scores that where it hasn't been useful, that like, it's really exciting when it becomes useful. And again, it's not teaching to the test.
Like, I've never felt like I've like explicitly like prepared students for the test. I mean, I'm preparing them for life. I'm preparing them to live a literate life and to be a productive citizen in person in the world. But this just. helps me be able to hone [01:20:00] in on what they need. Like before, I mean, I had these students who were below grade level and I'm like, where do I start?
Like, I don't even know what to do. The student just came from a different country and they, I don't even know what to do, you know? And I was able to show movement in their MAP scores. Even though I couldn't get them to grade level work by the end of the year, I was able to really show, you know, like, hone in on, like, maybe the kindergarten things that they were missing and the first grade things they were missing so that then maybe the next year the teacher could work on the other grade levels, you know?
Mary Saghafi: That's really helpful. This has been, this is valuable for me. I really like
this.
Shannon Betts: This was a long one, so I think we need to end. I think so too. Maybe not everybody else is a data nerd like us. We'll post on Instagram. But if you are, you're our people. Well, definitely check the show notes. For the resources that we share in our show notes we have the date your data, like guide, [01:21:00] you know, guiding questions as a handout that you can download.
And then also that MAP quadrant report analysis that you can download as well. And we'll also put on Instagram, like some of the visuals, like, you know, not with student identifying information, but show some visuals of some of the things we talked about. Yeah
and I was prepared to talk about some of my data too, but I think this is super valuable and I think no matter where you are working with students on any spectrum, high, low, middle, this is really useful.
So what are you going to do? Like, how are you going to dig more into your data?
Mary Saghafi: So to be perfectly honest I'm going to. What I really wrote down was that I need to check out the Write score for a third grader that I'm working with. Okay. She has just completed a psychological evaluation through a private evaluation.
We know that she has dyslexia and some dysgraphia and I know that language [01:22:00] processing is an issue, but she hasn't completed all of those tests yet. What I really want to know is, what can she write at school? So what does her write score look like? What are some of those samples?
Shannon Betts: Does she have a Clever login?
Yes. Okay, then she can log in on Clever with you. Like put her on a computer and have her log in on Clever and then you can actually see her prompt.
Mary Saghafi: Oh, awesome. Okay. Yeah.
Shannon Betts: She'll be able to look at, I think she can look at the exemplar essay from her end too. I've had the students log in. Sometimes I love standing over the shoulder of students and logging in as them or seeing how they log in because I want to see what it looks like from their end.
Well, yeah, that's really helpful. Last year, that's last year was the first year we used write score. And that's what I did with some middle schoolers is I had them log in and see what did they see?
Mary Saghafi: That's what I want to do next to because if I can utilize any lessons that are already there for her, I will use those because I love to use the similar language.
So that is one thing that I've been really curious about because I haven't seen a whole lot of her [01:23:00] work from the classroom and what that looks like. So I'm, I'm curious to see. And now I know that there are some resources that are common resources that I can utilize here in tutoring as well as, share with her teacher
and have her use in the classroom. And you use writing revolution resources as well, right? So you like, yeah, you were saying when you were recommending to me like the sentence level. Yeah, I was, I was remembering we just finished reading knowledge gap and there's a whole chapter about the writing revolution and knowledge gap.
So I need to finish reading the writing revolution. Now that I've finished reading knowledge gap and look at what I need to work on at the sentence level with that fifth grader. Yeah.
And a lot of it is, you know, I think sometimes we miss out on the syntax and the semantics, and I think that, you know, making sure that they really are understanding, like, the structure of the sentence.
What is that actually asking of them? So, so I'm digging deep into this. She's a new student to me, so I'm still learning a lot of information about her. So [01:24:00] this is really exciting to me because I feel like I've spent such a long time focusing on, Getting students to learn to decode because I have a short amount of time in a tutoring session with them, but I feel like I can really stretch and provide resources for the parents and teachers if I can dig into some of these resources.
So just another way to support.
Shannon Betts: Oh, I was, while you were just talking, I was having an idea too that, you know, I'd already said I was going to be doing some different things in reading with that fifth grade group. So after I do the reading passages and the morphology work with them, I need to follow that up with writing.
Just like Wiley Blevins told me, like, put books in hands and pencils in hands as much as you can. That's when the movement happens. So after we maybe do a class period where we're working on those different kinds of literature. And working on the morphology and things like that. Now I'll have them work and apply as a response to literature, some of the writing things.
Mary Saghafi: [01:25:00] I'm telling you the most growth that can be made is when you give the students the chance to apply what they know.
Shannon Betts: And then I'm working on multiple skills at one time. I mean, in my two class period activity, I can be working on the skills that were identified on MAP and some of the skills that were identified on Write Score ..
Mary Saghafi: Look at you so efficient. Mm hmm.
Shannon Betts: Yeah, well, I need to find time to pull these kids and be able to work with them. That's the hardest part sometimes. But but yeah, no, this is this has made me really excited.
Mary Saghafi: And additionally to like, I'm going to start doing some more goal writing when I'm preparing for IEP meetings when I sit down.
With parents to prep because sometimes there are some areas that we're a little bit more concerned about than others. And so I feel like being able to pull those MAP test scores and look at the individual report. That's so helpful. So thanks for all this.
Shannon Betts: Well, we're recording this mid [01:26:00] season. So when we do our like season closer episode, let's chat and see like what we've, you know, let's see what I can do then.
Yeah, I'll share with you some of the data because I also keep the, the mid year data that that's what I was going to share today, but I think let's like, yeah, let's find out some
more. So cool.
Mary Saghafi: Thanks for chatting with me. Anytime. All right. Cheers to the reading teacher's lounge.
Shannon Betts: Thanks for joining us for this long. If you made it to the end of the episode.