Progress Made by Young Writers, or Looking at Data

Since the start of the year, I have been tracking data regarding my students’ progress on open response questions. It’s a little convoluted because of our standards-based reporting, but there is a rubric that I developed and use all year, with a “grade” of M (meeting expectations), P (progressing towards expectations), B (beginning to show expectations), and N (not meeting expectations). I shared some mid-year data here before, and I guess I should state: the data here is only one tool that I use, and it does not address how I work individually with my students as writers, who do more than take open response assessments for me.

Anyway, here is what the data looked like in September, when very few were meeting the expectations of sixth grade. Most students, in fact, were in that progressing range, which is natural.

Here are the results of an open response from two weeks ago. Notice the large shift in categories. I also notice that I still have a chunk of kids in the lower categories, and not much time left.

Peace (in the data),
Kevin