Our school uses Data Teams. We get together with a team of teachers. We develop pre-tests and post-tests. After we administer the pre-tests, we look at the results and choose instructional strategies and set SMART goals. After the post-test, we look at the results to see if we met our goals and to make decision about interventions.
It sounds simple, but it’s powerful.
It’s really easy to just follow a curriculum. It can be fun to find exciting resources for our classrooms. It’s easy to give a test and enter it in your grade book.
The power comes when everything you are doing in your class has a purpose. When you use pretests to make decisions about teaching. You might find you don’t need to spend as much time on a topic as you thought. You might find they understand part of it but not all of it.
A few years back, Kristin Anderson from The Leadership and Learning Center came and trained our leadership team in Data Teams. Last year, she came back and we spent several days learning to train our staff in Data Teams and Decision Making for Results. This week, she visited again.
This time we had the opportunity to sit with our whole upper grade team and work out the kinks. (The lower grade team got to do the same thing.)
If you haven’t heard of Data Teams or of The Leadership and Learning Center, I encourage you to check out their website.
I was very excited to see that Kristin brought me some books I won last time she was out.
Wow, it sounds like you are doing a GREAT job! It's easy to just test students, record a grade, and move on to the next topic. But TRUE teaching comes from using those assessments to plan instruction.
Congrats! I enjoyed your post… thanks for sharing, I will be looking in to it.
:0) Melissa
More Time 2 Teach
LOVE this post Mercedes! I am so proud of you – you are doing a FABULOUS JOB!
Cheers!
Kristin Anderson