Dramatic Academic Growth
Dramatic Academic Growth
Introduction
I ensure dramatic academic growth in my students in the way that custom goals using state and national standards are forumulated early on, worked on, adjusted, and executed towards until completion. At the beggining of each year I design custome goals for my students, specifically with writing and work with other specialists to ensure the writing standards are simutanously growing parellel skills in the area of math and reading. Data like the Hand Writing Without Tears Print Tool is an assessment method that utlizes quantitive data to measure handwriting. Keyboarding Without Tears and Reading Plus are also mechnanisms I use to personally assess dramatic growth. However, there are also methods to measure qualititive growth in my students which can be measured my observing their overall work quality, executive functioning skills, and social emotional growth at the end of each semester and summarizing said growth using personalized goal charts. The dramatic academic gains at the end of each year can be measured both with qualitative and quantitive data and holistically highlight the door opening oppurtunities of well tracked transformational teaching. Dramatic levels of academic growth are achieved and due to a rigorous curriculum with measurable results.
Quantitative (The Print Tool/KWT/Typing.com)
SPED Writing Specialist Quantitive Assessment Tools
The Print Tool
Keyboarding Without Tears
Typing.com
The Print Tool
The Print Tool is a way to measure student handwriting progression from symbols to profecient 5th grade level print and cursive work. I give my students the assessment at the begginging of the year to gauge what level of instruction I should provide. Once assessed goals are created and different methods of instruction are utlized such as Handwriting Without Tears, Buidling Writers, and Writer's Workshop activities. Student's often exhibit over a year and a halfs worth of growth within a year of their orignal assessment results.
Print Tool.pptx
The first three images bellow show dramatic academic growth with the student passing the grade level expectations starting at below the passing score of 63% and ending above 80%. This means the rigorous writing program allowed the student to achieve proficiency in writing within less that a year. A second student was also and set of images bellow provides both a quantitative and qualitive assessment of their writing and demonstrates how the assessments works with higher level skills such as lower case. Student two began with 67% proficiency in lower case letter formation and completed with near mastery at over 90%. This measured quantitively but takes quality of work into account using the dynamic print tool.
Student 1 Above
Student 2 Above
Keyboarding Without Tears
Keyboarding Without Tears is an excellent way for students to both build their knowledge in regards to the many facets of writing. The program can be tailored to assist with instruction on rudimentary level tasks such as letter formation and can be increased in terms of difficulty to hit higher level skills such as proper sentence structure and subject verb agreement. I use the program to supplement my students' writing growth and track thier progress throughout the year while simutanously implementing activities that ensure their dramatic academic growth such as Robinson Exercises and American Sign Language, to ensure the finger dexterity that leads to dramatic typing and writing growth by the end of the year.
Keyboarding Without Tears.pptx
Typing.com
The typing.com program adds an additional avenue where students can work strictly on their words per minute typing speed (thus removing the grammar, spelling, and letter formation insturction of the kwt program). The typing.com program is useful in the way that it provides clear data points to the specific skill of keyboarding and is utilized when students achieve mastery over the fundmentals so the dramatic writing growth achieved can be further extended through high interest drills that measures and shares the students speed and accuracy growth with both me and the students' families.
Typing.com presentation.pptx
Typing.com is a quantative assessment tool and instructional program that leads to dramatic academic growth. To find the wpm the the following equation is used by the program and demonstrated with 3 focus students bellow: "Simply count all typed entries and divide by five to get the number of words typed. To give an example, if you typed 200 characters in 1 minute, your net wpm typing speed would be (200 characters / 5) / 1 min = 40 WPM. If you typed 200 characters in 30 seconds your net speed would be (200/5) / 0.5 = 80 WPM."
“Typing Equations - SpeedTypingOnline.” Speed Typing Online, www.speedtypingonline.com/typing-equations.
Student 1 Student 2 Student 3
All students wpm+qualative data equation
Qualitative
Gus Goals 2020 copy.docxRyan Goals 2019-2020 .docxCustom Goals
Custom goals are created for every student after preliminary assesssments. After assessments and review of the students record custome goals are created and then monitored to ensure dramatic growth in terms of quality as well as quantity. Said close monitoring and tri-yearly goal setting meetings combine to create a potent system where the student makes dramatic strides in terms of quality of work, social emotiona growth, and executive functioning skills.
Programs such as Reading Plus and Fastforward Also Increase Quality Reading Comprehension and Quality Writing Output through phonological and phonemeic awareness excercieses. Both methods of instruction are sometimes implemented when a student arrives in need of such an intervention and (in the past) has been hooked on to their intervention with me. The quality and quantitive reading growth works to supplement thier writing growth working in a symbiotic relationship with the above interevention strategies.
Past Examples and Analysis Found Bellow
Reading Plus Data Analysis.docx
Dramatic growth both quantivie and qualitive is ensured through a diverse method of instruciton. While social emotional curriculum, executive functioning skills, and custom writing goals ensures qualtity, a plethora of programs such as kwt, the print tool, typing.com, and at times others are utlizes to provides substantiated data of dramatic growth. Together this results in a dramatic increase overall output from my students with thier custome plans and methods of instruction hand picked to make frequently over a year and a half of acadmic growth within two semesters.
