By: Rachel Brown, Ph.D., NCSP
As the school year winds down, teachers will be working on final “report cards” about their students’ progress. FastBridge Learning has two reports that can be helpful for teachers as they complete the final report cards for the year. The Progress Report and the Student-at-a-Glance Report provide details about student performance during the school year that complements traditional report card information.
Progress Reports
The FastBridge Progress Report is a graph that displays an individual student’s scores from weekly to monthly progress assessments. This report can be shared with parents during the school year at parent-teacher conferences and can be sent home at the end of the school year with the final report card. Here is an example of a Progress Report.
The above report shows a third grader who started out reading just above 100 words correctly per minute (WRC). A goal of 150 WRC was set for this student and the above data indicate that it was reached and exceeded on some occasions. In this case, the parents will likely be pleased to see the student’s data, but might wonder about some of the details of the report. When sharing the Progress Monitoring Report with parents, it is important to help them be able to understand the information it contains. FastBridge Learning has a downloadable parent letter about the Progress Report that can be sent home with an individual student’s report. The downloadable letter is found in the Downloads section of the FastBridge website.
The Progress Monitoring version of the Parent Letter includes two pages. The first page explains about how progress monitoring is conducted. The second page includes an annotated Progress Report with descriptions of each part.
This section of the letter is designed to help parents understand the information included in the Progress Report.
In some cases, students will not make the gains hoped for or expected. In such cases, it is important that teachers are prepared to explain the Progress Report details and suggest steps that might help the student meet the learning goals. Here is an example of a student whose growth did not meet the learning goal.
Some families will be more open and able to provide summer enrichment for students than others. Although family circumstances differ, it is important that all parents have the opportunity to learn their child’s learning progress for each school year.
Student-at-a-Glance Report
Another FastBridge Learning report that can be helpful for parents is the Student-at-a-Glance Report. This report summarizes a student’s performance on all screening and progress assessments to date. Here is an example:
This report includes both screening and progress monitoring data. This report could be very helpful for parents seeking to understand both how well a child performed compared to others as well as what growth has been made from year-to-year. The above example depicts a student with scores at risk in the prior school year but who made important progress with intervention during the current school year.
FastBridge Learning provides reports that teachers can use in conjunction with end-of-year report cards to help parents understand student growth over the school year. The Progress Report shows student growth on progress measures and the Student-at-a-Glance Report shows a student’s screening and progress scores in one place. These reports can be used alongside other information for parents about how their children did in the recent school year. More information about reports can be found in the FastBridge Learning Knowledge Base.
Dr. Rachel Brown is FastBridge Learning’s Senior Academic Officer. She previously served as Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Southern Maine. Her research focuses on effective academic assessment and intervention, including multi-tier systems of support, and she has authored several books on Response to Intervention and MTSS.
