Welcome back to the smarter literacy podcast asked where we make research based instruction easy or at least a little easier.
And I am so glad that you are here today because we are diving into one of the biggest questions I hear from educators all the time.
We are collecting so much data, but how do we actually use that data to drive our instruction? Now, if you've ever wondered that, you are certainly not alone.
It often feels like we are collecting so much information.
We feel like we have all of these different data points.
We're trying to organize all of that, but we're not entirely sure where we go from there.
I think whether you are a general education classroom teacher or you're in that intervention or especially in that special education setting, you have so much information that you are trying to aggregate and pull together and really just figure out what to do with all of that.
So if you've ever felt buried in data reports, or you've wondered, okay, what do I do with this? Again, you are not alone.
Data can feel really overwhelming but it really doesn't have to.
And I think that's one of the biggest things that I've learned in my time working with students and looking at data and analyzing data is that We can really do a lot with data, but we can also get into a really hairy place with data too.
Sometimes we start to feel like data is a measure of ourselves and our efficacy as educators.
And I think that's one of the biggest things that we want to be clear about is that that is not the purpose of data.
And really, when you have data that you can be looking at as just an objective measure of what's working and what's not, you can do so much with it.
So we're gonna talk today about having a really clear process that you can follow so that that data can really just become a tool to help drive your instruction and to help your students make the progress that you know is possible for them.
So today, I'm gonna walk through our seven step process that we use to drive our instructional decisions from the data that we have for our students.
Without further ado, we're gonna go ahead and jump right in.
So the first step, step one is to screen.
So step one is screening.
This is where we're gonna start with universal screening data.
So this is really that wide angle lens.
Where we are going to have a big picture, quick, efficient look at where our students are at.
And ideally, this is done with all students.
So the goal here isn't to diagnose or really think about the specific reading difficulties and whether they exist.
It's really just to flag who is potentially at risk and who do we need to take a closer look at? So if you're in a school setting, perhaps your school is using something like I Ready or Star Acadiance, aimsweb, there's tons of different universal screening tools.
And so hopefully, ideally, if you are, again, in a school setting, you have access to one of those assessments or data that's coming in from one of those assessments.
And that is designed to be a benchmark measure.
So again, it's simply there to flag who might be at risk.
This is just our starting point, and this is gonna give us really good information again about who do we need to take a deeper look at.
We certainly can't be doing full assessments or testing protocols on all the students.
There's just not time for that.
And so these are assessments that most schools have in place that you can be using to determine again, who are we going to take that deeper look at? And if you are in a private setting or, again, if you're in intervention or special education, hopefully you have access to that data.
You can be asking for that data or looking for that data to see where students are at.
Again, this is a really helpful tool.
To be considering as part of a student's overall set of data.
Right? So we wanna be careful to not only use universal screening data.
The next step or step two is to observe.
And this is going to be really important because sometimes we know that those universal screeners can miss things.
Right? So we have some students who are able to compensate They're able to do really well.
Even though when we listen to them read, we feel like, something's not quite right here.
It sounds like they are skipping words or reading's really disfluent or it's slow.
And labored, and it just doesn't sound like fluent reading that would be appropriate for the grade level that the student is at.
So that's one reason we want to observe.
And we wanna do this for all students, not just students who potentially flagged.
We wanna make sure that we are listening to all of our students read because, again, some of those students wouldn't have flagged because they're compensating.
We also have potentially the other issue where students are actually not doing as well as they could have.
And this could be because of attention.
Right? They're just click, click, click, click, click, and they're just working through the assessment really quickly so that they can get to the game at the ends or so that they can be done.
So it may not always be a valid measure of their actual performance.
And so that's something to keep in mind as well is that sometimes when we are observing our students, we're actually seeing, you know what? That screening data pulled up as, you know, a massive red flag or at risk, But as I'm listening to them read, as we're engaging in reading or just, you know, in the classroom, I'm reading, and they're answering questions, and it seems like everything is good.
That's definitely data that you wanna keep in mind as well.
So, again, recap.
We're gonna start with step one, which is screening, and that's where you're using that universal screening data to really get a good picture of, alright, who are we gonna need to take a closer look at, but then also that step two, where we are observing and really thinking about, you know, what does the reading actually sound like? Typically, what we like to do for that observing or that observation step is to just use an oral reading fluency probe An oral reading fluency probe is a great way to, again, have a moment for students to read aloud to you where you can follow along and just see what that sounds like.
Usually, what we would recommend is pulling a grade level pass So it doesn't matter what it is.
You can pull any passage at all.
And you're gonna have students read for one minute.
And as they're reading for that one minute, you're gonna follow along with them and be marking, you know, how many errors did they make? How many repetitions? How many word substitutions? All of this just in that one minute.
And then when the one minute is over, you can have them stop.
You can count the number of words that they read in that one minute, and then also count the errors that were made in that one minute.
Then what you can do is you can take the total number of words that they read in the minute and subtract the errors, and that's how you get what we call the correct words per minute.
And that can be a really good measure where we can actually take a look at norms based off of grade level standards, we would recommend Hasbrock and Tindall.
They have a updated set from 2017, which is still really good data to be able to compare our students where they should be at that point in the academic year.
So anyway, great measure.
Super simple.
Again, it takes one minute so you can certainly do this even if you are in tier one as a general education classroom teacher to see where my students at, And if you are not a classroom teacher, if you're in intervention or special education or private practice, you can absolutely still use this as a great tool just to see where are we at? What's a starting point? We measure our students' correct words per minute and their percent accuracy on passages every single time we work with them.
We find it to be a very helpful data point to see if we're moving in the right direction.
Alright.
So step three is going to be then to start to identify.
So identify as step three.
And this is where we are going to really be focused on the students who showed up as at risk.
So either their universal screening data in step one came up with a red flag, or their oral reading fluency gave us pause, and we wanted to take a deeper look based off of what we saw there.
That's the number of students that we're going to be following through with these next steps.
So steps three through seven are really going to be for the students who showed up as at risk.
And that step three, like I mentioned, is to identify the cause.
So if we know that students are not reading at grade level or their fluency is not quite where we want it to be, something in the observation was popping up as an area of difficulty for the student.
We need to think about what's causing that difficulty.
Now, we like to think about the simple view of reading.
It's such a helpful framework when we want to think about identifying the root cause.
So really, what we're doing is we're asking, is this primarily a word recognition issue? So they're having a hard time sounding out words and that's creating difficulty for them? Or is it a language comprehension issue? Now sometimes the universal screening data will help to point some of that out, but not always.
So we always wanna be careful of how we are interpreting and looking at that universal screening data.
And so that's why we want to start to identify the root cause and start to think about that a little bit deeper with some additional data.
Now, again, if we're thinking is this primarily a word recognition issue These are gonna be students who struggle with accuracy.
Their decoding is not necessarily there.
This is, again, usually that word recognition gap.
If it's a language comprehension issue, this would be where you have students who can read the words but they're struggling to understand.
And so even though they read the text effectively, they weren't able to answer questions.
They didn't necessarily have the vocabulary that they needed.
And so that would be that comprehension gap.
And so what we're doing here is we're moving away from They're not reading at grade level, there's a problem to what's causing the problem.
Because once we can get to that step, then we can start to think about what type of instructions do we need to provide to be able to close the gap for that particular student.
So, again, your universal screening data may be able to help you out with that a little bit.
You could also look at your observation data to see if that could help you out a little bit as well, where students misreading words, substituting words for other words, adding prefixes or suffixes, maybe swapping out small function words, so a or the for and of, mixing up some of those might be an indication of a word recognition difficulty, Whereas, if you have a student with a comprehension difficulty, you might notice this more in that universal screening data because you have comprehension questions that are coming right off of those particular reading passages, and so you really wanna take a look at that.
You can also be thinking about how students are doing when you're asking questions in class and things like that.
So just be aware that that's part of that identify is really just looking at, alright, do I have information at this point? To be able to help me identify the cause of the difficulty.
Then what we're gonna do is we can actually start to dig deeper.
So step four is to dig deeper.
And this is where we really wanna figure out within word recognition or within language comprehension, what is the cause of that difficulty? So which specific skills are weak? So for example, if we recognize, you know what, this is a word recognition difficulty, That might mean that we have weak phonological awareness skills.
That might mean that specific phonics patterns are missing.
That might mean that they struggle with multisyllabic reading or Again, it might be more of that fluency and that it's just not quite coming together the way that we would want it to.
And so here, again, we really need to know which specific skills are weak or which specific skills are missing.
This is really where we can start to drive our instruction in a very targeted and systematic way.
For comprehension, what that might mean is that the vocabulary is not there or that a student's ability to recognize how sentence structure comes together to create meaning is not there.
Maybe they're struggling specifically with direct recall or they struggle with cause and effect or inferences and predictions.
So again, it's not just their comprehension's not good.
Which specific skills are they lacking? Because those are the specific skills that we want to target in our instruction.
So this is where additional probes or assessments can be super valuable because this is where we really need to narrow down the skill set so that we can really target that instruction instead of staying really broad.
If we know it's a word recognition difficulty, but we don't know which types of patterns or where that word recognition difficulty breaks down.
It's hard to make sure that we are as a efficient and effective as possible in our teaching.
Then step five is where we summarize.
So at this point, we're gonna summarize the data.
We are going to take everything that we have and put it in one place.
And I know This sounds so simple, but it is a game changer because instead of looking at 20 different data points, you're bringing it all together into one clear story about the student.
So the way that we do this is we'll say, alright, Here's the universal screening data that we have.
Did this indicate that they were at risk? Yes or no? Here's our oral reading fluency assessment.
Did that indicate that they were at risk? Yes or no? If we got yes on either of those, then we can move down and say, okay.
Did we recognize that this was a word recognition difficulty or a language comprehension difficulty? Basically, we're just circling yes.
No.
Yes.
No.
And it's almost like a decision tree, but the thing that's helpful is that it helps others follow your decision making process with you.
So if you are a general education teacher and you are working to explain this to parents of your students, or you're making a referral into intervention or special education, you can really put that together in a way that makes it clear that this is the thought process that we were following through.
And it just makes it easier for you to kind of think about your own thinking as well, which can also be super helpful.
Alright.
So then we can move into step six.
So step six is all about grouping and setting goals.
So once you have those summaries, you can start to notice patterns across your students.
So maybe you have five students that all struggle with multisyllabic words or three students that all need vocabulary support.
And really what that does is that creates a natural small group for instruction right there.
Then what you can do from that point is you can set measurable goals for that group.
So instead of saying something kind of vague, like, this is my reading group, we can have very specific goals of in this group, the goal is to increase oral reading fluency from 40 to 70 words per minute for each of my students, or we're going to work to demonstrate 90% accuracy with Valatine decoding.
And so those clear goals, again, are gonna help keep your instruction really targeted, and then it will help you to be able to track progress, which is our last step in a very meaningful way.
So natural segue.
That brings us into step seven, which is where we want to monitor progress.
This is your feedback loop.
So this is where you can start to figure out is what I'm doing working.
And honestly, this does not have to be complicated at all.
You could have a weekly oral reading fluency probe.
Like I talked about at the beginning, we do this all the time with our students.
Every single week we work with our students, we do a one minute oral reading fluency probe.
And again, it's a great way to see.
Are they taking the skills? Are they taking the strategies? Are they applying it? And it can be done in one minute.
So even if you have a group of students that you need to be able to support, you can pull each of them for one minute.
And be able to look at their data specifically.
You can also look at a quick comprehension check.
So if you're doing a running record and you're looking at that oral reading fluency data, You can then at the end ask them questions about what they read.
This is where you wanna be thinking about some of the vocabulary words.
You wanna be thinking about, do they have direct recall from the information that they read? Can they sequence the information appropriately? Can they generate a main idea? Can they make connections to the text? Can we look at cause effect or compare and contrast? Can we make inferences and predictions? And can we analyze what it is that we're reading? And so when we're looking at comprehension again, we're trying to be very clear about each of those different points and each of those different skills across the continuum of our comprehension process.
That way, if we recognize, uh, they're still struggling with comprehension, but it's very specific to making connections, I can make sure that I am spending more time talking about that or doing a direct lesson on that particular skill.
So that, again, I have that very targeted, differentiated instruction to meet my students' needs.
So, again, this here is is my instruction working and do I need to adjust? Not am I a good teacher? I know I mentioned this at the very beginning, but we do wanna use data as just an objective tool to figure out what do I need to do and am I going in the right direction? So it's almost like your GPS in your car.
You just set it.
And at some point, if you accidentally made a wrong turn.
No big deal.
It will tell you to just get back on track.
There's no emotion around that, or at least there shouldn't be really.
It's just, oh, alright.
That's just data.
That's feedback.
We're gonna get back on track so that we can get where we need to go.
Instead of guessing.
So much more efficient to set your GPS in your car and know exactly how long it's gonna take to get to your destination as opposed to feeling your way there.
So Those are the steps.
So let's go ahead and recap each of those seven steps.
We start with screening.
Again, universal screening data, that's gonna be the most efficient and effective way to be able to look at that quickly.
Then you're gonna observe with something like an oral reading fluency measure.
Then you're going to identify.
So step three is to identify where we're gonna figure out if it's a word recognition or a language comprehension difficulty.
Then step four is going to be to pinpoint those specific skills.
So we're gonna start to dig deeper in step four so that we can determine if it is word recognition, which word recognition skills.
If it is language comprehension, which language comprehension skills.
Step five is all about summarizing our data in a nice clear story and narrative that we can share out for others, but also for ourselves.
And then step six is to group students based off of what it is that we're seeing there or create groups, even in our heads.
So even when we work one on one with students, we're still going through this process to really think about, alright, what group or what bucket do these students fall into so that we can create appropriate goals for that particular student or group of students.
And then finally, we monitor progress.
And that's where we're just going to be checking in on a few skills that we identified through this process that are going to make the biggest return on our time investment.
General education teachers, interventionists, special educators, private practitioners, doesn't matter.
We can all follow this same process, which is super nice.
And when you do follow this process, you're not just collecting data.
You're making decisions that actually drive your instruction.
And I think that's what we're all looking for.
We're looking for what can I do with this information to actually make it meaningful because otherwise it just feels like we're sitting here and we're assessing our kids and we're taking weeks out of instructional time? And that time is valuable as long as we're using that data effectively.
So This is our process.
This is what we do to really take that data and drive instruction with the data that we do have.
Okay.
So because we like to keep this super actionable, the one thing I want you to do today is to think about which of these seven steps you already feel confident in, and which one might be your growth area.
So just pick one step to strengthen in your practice this week, or if it feels better for you, you can just start working through that process and see if you catch a hiccup anywhere.
So think about, do I have screening data? Do I have an opportunity to observe my students? Am I able to identify word recognition versus language comprehension difficulty? Am I able to pinpoint which word recognition skills or which comprehension skills are most needed? And my grouping students and creating goals based off of that data and then moving into progress monitoring off of what you've identified there.
So Again, that's our process.
Just pick one step that you're gonna focus on to start and move forward from there.
And if you wanna go deeper into this process, we actually walk through this step by step in detail, inside of our from data to decisions spotlight PD.
And this training includes our ascend literacy needs screener, which gives you a ready to go tool for moving through all seven of those steps.
So it will actually walk you through so that you can follow that process step by step.
So we'll make sure to drop the link where you can check that out in our show notes.
And, of course, we'd love to hear how you're using data to drive instruction.
So share your story with us on social media.
Or in the community, we have our intervention insider's professional learning community for our members.
We'd love to hear how you're using your data, what your data is looking like.
We're always learning from each other.
And thank you again so much for joining me today.
And remember that data, it's not about testing more.
It's not about being a reflection of you and your efficacy of as an instructor.
It is truly just an objective data point that you can use to move your instruction in a more efficient and effective way.
Until next time.
Happy teaching.
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