Review Progress at School-Child

Summary of Recommendation and Evidence

Population	Recommendation	Grade (What's This?)
Screening of both Genders	This screening is recommended for children.	B

Overview

Progress monitoring can give you and your child's teacher information that can help your child learn more and learn faster, and help you make better decisions about the type of instruction that will work best with your child.

In other words, student progress monitoring is not another way of assigning a number to your child; it is a way of helping the child learn and the teacher teach.

Encourage the Child to Read

Helping the child become a reader is the single most important thing that you can do to help the child to succeed in school—and in life.

Tips to help the child become a Reader

Start early- When your child is still a baby, reading aloud to him should become part of your daily routine. As your child grows older, you should be able to tell if he wants you to read for longer periods. When your child begins to read, ask him to read to you from books or magazines that he enjoys.
Make sure that your home has lots of reading materials that are appropriate for your child. Keep books, magazines and newspapers in the house. Reading materials don’t have to be new or expensive.
Show that you value reading. Let your child see you reading for pleasure as well as for performing your routine activities as an adult—reading letters and recipes, directions and instructions, newspapers, computer screens and so forth.
Get help for your child if he has a reading problem. When a child is having reading difficulties, the reason might be simple to understand and deal with. If you think that your child needs extra help, ask his teachers about special services, such as after-school or summer reading programs.

Nothing is more important than your support for your child as he/she goes through school. Make sure she gets any extra help she needs as soon as possible and always encourage her and praise her efforts.

What information should a parent receive from the school?

If a teacher, or a school, decides to implement student progress monitoring, you may receive a letter describing the program and how the teacher will be working with your child, or it may be discussed at your child's IEP meeting. After that, you should receive regular feedback from the teacher on how well your child is doing, perhaps with a copy of the graph itself and information on instructional changes. If you do not receive the graph and instructional information, ask for it.

How can Teachers promote Children's Learning

Encourage the Child to Use the Library

Libraries are places of learning and discovery for everyone. Helping the child find out about libraries will set him on the road to being an independent learner. Here are some suggestions for how to help:

Introduce the child to the library as early as possible.
Let the child know that she must follow the library’s rules of behavior. Libraries want children to use their materials and services. However, they generally have rules such as the following that a child needs to know and obey:

Library materials must be handled carefully.
Materials that are borrowed must be returned on time. A child needs to learn how long she can keep materials and what the fine will be for materials that are returned late.
All library users need to be considerate of each other. Shouting, running and being disruptive are not appropriate library behaviors.

Encourage Active Learning

Children need active learning as well as quiet learning such as reading and doing homework. Active learning involves asking and answering questions, solving problems and exploring interests. Active learning also can take place when the child plays sports, spends time with friends, acts in a school play, plays a musical instrument or visits museums and bookstores.

How does student progress monitoring help Teachers?

Student progress monitoring helps teachers evaluate how effective their instruction is, either for individual students or for the entire class. You are probably already familiar with the goals and objectives that must be included in the Individualized Education Plan (IEP) for each child who receives special education services.

A teacher who uses progress monitoring works with the goals in the IEP, and the state standards for the child's grade level, to develop goals that can be measured and tracked, and that can be used to divide what the child is expected to learn by the end of the year into shorter, measurable steps. Once the teacher sets the goals and begins instruction, then he or she measures the child's progress toward meeting the goals each week. All the tests have the same level of difficulty, so the weekly tests can reflect the child's rate of progress accurately. With each test, the teacher compares how much the child is expected to have learned to the child's actual rate of learning.

If the child is meeting or exceeding the expectation, the teacher continues to teach the child in the same way. If the child's performance on the measurement does not meet the expectation, then the teacher changes the teaching. The teacher might change the method being used, the amount of instructional time, the grouping arrangement (for example, individual instruction versus small-group instruction), or some other aspect of teaching.

After each weekly measurement, the teacher notes the child's performance level and compares it to previous measurements and to expected rates of learning. The teacher tracks the measurements on a graph as a way of showing the success of both the teacher and the student.