Inquiry Plan (part 3)

Now that I have progress monitored all of my students, I have been looking at their assessments and brainstorming ideas and strategies to use for instruction. Also, just returned from the CEC conference in Louisville, KY. This conference focuses on student with special needs and helps special educators learn more about how to better meet the needs of these students. I attended two different sessions about how to improve instruction for students with special needs in math.
I worked out perfectly, since i had just finished assessing all my students on their math IEP goals, I knew where my students were at and what they need to move forward in their math skills. Both of the session focused on how to help students focus on learning and create a more hands on approach to learning math. I have learned about a new multiplication strategy to teach to my 4th and 5th grade students that is more creative and hands on. I have also learned more about teaching math to students with special needs in a more exploratory way to help them learn by creating and doing. This will give them the opportunity to work together and learn about how and why instead of only doing what I (the teacher) says to do.
I am very excited to get back into my classroom after this holiday break and use some of the strategies learned that focus on the needs of my students based on the data i have collected from this project. I will be videoing my 4th grade group based on the assessments given and focusing on skills they need using new methods of teaching I learned at the CEC conference.

Inquiry Plan (part 2)

This past week I have been working on giving my progress monitoring assessments to students. They have taken a ton of time to complete. I tried to work on they one day during the math groups of each grade level and they ended up taking a lot longer than expected. The give the students all IEP accommodations for testing was very time consuming. First grade and kindergarten took the longest. Kindergarten and first grade needed scribes, readers, manipulatives and one on one testing. First grade is my largest group (seven students. Most of them were asked to write numbers to 100 and this took the most time.
I am looking forward to using this information to plan instruction for my students and see what their next progress monitoring assessments conclude.

Inquiry Plan (part 1)

This week I focused on creating all of the teacher made assessment tools for progress monitoring, based on students math IEP goals. This took a very long time :) I finally have them all ready and Monday I am going to try and test all 27 students individually. I plan on giving the assessment tool to progress monitor weekly during the implementation of the inquiry plan for this class and then bi-weekly to continue assessment.
This week I also gave the Voyager Math post module test for module one and the pre module test for module two in 4th grade. All students in the 4th grade intervention group improved their knowledge from the pre module one assessment by at least 33%. I am ver excited with these scores. Two of the students in this group will be retaught the portions of the module they scored poorly on. Next week I plan to give the post module assessment for module one and the pre module assessment for module two for second grade.
I am very excited about the data I have already collected. It has helped me to plan instruction for next week, to reteach and focus on the missing skills. I am also very excited to see the data from the assessment tools I have created and use the information for planning instruction.