My school district, like many across the country uses the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) and Text Reading and Comprehension (TRC) assessments to measure elementary students’ reading abilities. These are a series of probes that evaluate skills indicators such as word fluency, retelling, synthesis, inferring, etc.—all of which are critical skills of proficient readers.
This system of assessment is completely digital (except for a hard copy of the short texts from which students read). It’s very convenient for a teacher to pull out an iPhone or iPad, log into the software provider’s mClass app and be ready to gather such essential data on students. Of course everything is synced to an online system.
I’m able to log in and see how my students (currently fifth graders) performed all the way back in first grade. Access to this data is extremely helpful when I plan for individual instruction. I’m able to see how my students progressed and struggled not only over the course of days and weeks, but months and years. This knowledge helps me cater to my students even better.
Just as seeing this progression is absolutely necessary for literacy teachers, it’s just as important for mathematics teachers. All would agree that math skills build off each other year after year. If a crucial skill hasn’t been gained, then students are essentially at a standstill until they’ve mastered this particular ability.
Why then, is there not a way to easily track long-term which math skills students have mastered? With a nearly nationwide shift to the Common Core State Standards, teachers are even more accountable, and skills are aligned even tighter and form an almost perfect staircase where one higher skill closely matches the prerequisite skills from one grade level below.
Planning for math (which in my opinion is much more difficult for students to succeed in than literacy) would be tons more effective if there were access to software, which allows us to see several data points displayed consistently for one student. With software similar to the mClass app, mathematics educators nationwide can begin to serve their students even better.
E. M. Jones
Fifth Grade Teacher
Bancroft Elementary School