Dear Friends,

Several weeks ago, our principal met with our Team Leaders where a request was made by the teachers to create some type of monitoring tool to record the progress of our students on the math indicators.

Bonny Chambers, our wonderful Magnet Coordinator, developed the structure for this Monitoring Tool and designed it so that one could import student data from and export data to our SIMs download. Our purpose for creating this monitoring tool was two-fold:

1. To monitor the progress of students on the indicators
2. To inform parents of the student progress in mathematics.

We then built the monitoring tool by using Excel to record the indicators by content standard for grades 3 — 5 . Monitoring sheets that already have student names are printed for each Content Standard for each math teacher. Whenever teachers move on to a new math unit, we hand them these documents with the specific indicator columns grayed in that relate to that unit. The teachers instantly know which indicators to target for that unit of instruction, and can see both "where they’ve been" and "where they are going."

It made most sense to have teachers use the following coding to record the progress of the students;
I = introduced
P = progressing
S = satisfactory

Sound familiar? Yes, we do still give some ISM tests however we also are creating our own assessments that target the new indicators. At the end of a unit, teachers turn over the assessment grids to our ISM person who uses the correlation guide from the Math Office as a guide as she works hard to correlate the indicators with ISM and gives our students "credit" for "matching" ISM objectives.

Our teachers are very happy because they really only have to handle 6 pieces of paper and can see the breadth of indicators in a particular content standard. They can also demonstrate the progress students are making in mastering the indicators and are able to use these to make decisions about small group instruction.

At Pine Crest we only have Head Start, and Grades 3 — 5 so do not have all indicators recorded. At this time we are working on inputting the indicators for grades 2 and grade 6.

At the end of a marking period, Bonny will be able to import the data back into File Maker Pro and generate reports which will be sent to parents informing them of the progress students are making on specific indicators.

We are all working hard to transition into using the new blueprints and framework. These monitoring tools assessment tools are really helping us stay focused on teaching and assessing the indicators. You are free to use any of these monitoring tools.

Bonny Chambers — Magnet Coordinator - Pine Crest E.S.
Danielle Sultan — Staff Development Teacher - Pine Crest E.S.