Progress Monitoring

I spent last week doing this; highlighting and analyzing data to report out to parents about their child's learning.  Along the way, it gave me a chance to reflect upon my teaching practices and student learning.     

For the past few years, our kindergarten team has used ESGI to create, test and collect data about our students.  What is ESGI?  ESGI is an assessment tool which allows teachers to create 1-1 assessments.  What I love about this program is that the data is instantaneous.  In the past, we used to give assessments but never had a way to see "gaps in learning."  With ESGI, you can.  It has revolutionized the way our team creates assessments.  In fact, we use ESGI for all of our "formal" assessments.  

Here is what my ESGI page looks like.  

I actually send this pie chart home to parents so that they can compare their child's data with the class average. In addition, I am able to send individual test results which show "correct and incorrect" responses on each assessment given. Parents love this because it shows them exactly what their child needs.  The Test Result Letters are customizable and available in Spanish if needed.

As a team, we use ESGI in a variety of ways.  We are able to create "like" assessments for both our English and Spanish classes; especially in the area of math.  Our Bilingual teacher is also able to create assessments that fit the need of her students.  We can also create some paper and pencil exams and then input the results into the system so that it is in one collective spot.  We do this for number writing and counting objects.  More importantly, we use the data to create our intervention groups.  We usually work on one to two skills based on our data and pull our small groups for intense intervention.  We will progress monitor this group of student once every three weeks to see their progress.

Here are a few reasons why I love ESGI and would recommend it to any primary teacher.

Happy Teaching!