I believe that it is very important to track the progress of student learning over time, to allow me to see areas in which my students have improved acheievement or areas that still need to be worked on. Further more, I believe it is equally important to allow students to become aware of their own accomplishments so that they are able to self-assess and create individual goals for themselves. 

 

One of the ways I accomplished this in my langauge arts class was through essay writing. The students at the start of the year wrote a personal essay that was graded with very high expectations in mind. This allowed the students to clearly see the areas in which they needed to improve and to become aware of what the expectations were for that grade level. I gave each student a clear goal to work on. Later on in the year, as we repeated the writing process, students were able to view their own progress by reading the first essay and comparing it to more current work. 

 

Another way that student progress was recorded was through what I called "Fact Fridays." Every Friday in math students would begin with a timed warm-up of math facts. I recorded student progress with these math scores each week to see areas of improvement. Below is a copy of a form I used to record that progress.