On Track and On Target {with Tickled Pink in Primary}

At my old school we did Dibels assessments 3 times a year. In Kindergarten, students are tested on beginning sounds, nonsense words, letters, and phoneme segmentation. At the beginning of the year, I would progress monitor my RTI students on letter to help track their progress. I created some Letter Naming Fluency assessments similar format to the DIBELS assessment, so students would learn the format of the test as well. 

You show students the “master copy” of the assessments, and you refer to the ”student packets”. Students will try to name as many letters as possible within one minute. Students just need to say the letter name, not “uppercase A, lowercase d”. They loved trying to see how many they can name before the timer ran out. I typically don't show students the timer so they don't get distracted by it, but I wanted to include it in this picture to show you how I assess them.

I used the same sheet as the students so I could mark out the ones they miss and record their answers. I then kept a graph of each student's progress. This helped me see if they were making progress or hitting a plateau. I let my students graph their results, so they were aware of their progress as well. These assessment and recording sheets are included in my RTI Letter Bundle which has 5 different activities to help students master their letters.

At another school I worked at, they used NWEA assessments 3 times a year. These were computer based tests that gave us benchmark goals and set goals for each students. There is a general benchmark goal for each point of the year. The test results also set a goal for each student based on how they did on the test and how much growth they should make. This way your high achieving students have to make as much growth as your lower students. The test also adapts to your student's skill level and ask harder or easier questions, depending on how they are doing. 

I color coded how my students did on the test. Red would be my RTI students that were really struggling, yellow for students just a little bit behind, green for students on target, and blue for students that are 10 points or more above the benchmark. 

You can grab this NWEA recording sheet for FREE here. It will open in Powerpoint so you can add your own student's names, scores, and benchmark goals. You will receive a sheet for the beginning, middle, and end of the year.