https:/.../Progress+Monitoring+Webinar.mp4

Hi, and welcome to this TIER webinar.

Within this webinar, we are going to focus
on our progress monitoring module.

Today's presenters include
Dr. Erica Lembke,

who is Professor and Chair within the
Department of Special Education

at the University of Missouri,

and I am Bernette Blake,
a coordinator for the TIER Project.

As you can see, there are other
webinars that have already been hosted,

and we would love for you to take part
of viewing those webinars as well.

Within our project, there are
several modules for viewing:

the introduction module,
the leadership module,

the communities module,
behavior, mental health,

our academics module,
culturally responsive,

our screening module,

and today's module, progress monitoring,
which we will highlight,

and our decision-making module.

Each module is designed to be
implemented in its entirety

or by pathway.

Modules can last anywhere
from three to twenty hours.

Within those modules, there are pathways.

And so a pathway is an individual
presentation that is designed

to be implemented in its entirety,
or it can be condensed

or combined with other pathways.

One pathway can last anywhere from
twenty minutes to three hours.

Within our progress monitoring module,
we have eight different pathways:

the importance of progress monitoring,
selection of measures,

measures within reading,
measures within writing,

which we will focus on today,

measures within mathematics,
measures within behavior,

managing and graphing data,
and finally our goal-setting pathway.

With that being said, Dr. Erica Lembke,
please share your screen

and give us a bit more information
about progress monitoring

within the area of writing.

- ...about progress monitoring in writing.

Certainly this is an important
area of need,

and so I hope some of this information
will provide you some good resources

as you work on writing progress monitoring
with your students.

So first we're going to talk through
some of the basic steps

in progress monitoring in writing,

and I'm going to talk about these steps
in terms of DBI or data-based instruction.

We're going to talk through each
of these steps briefly,

but these are the basic steps
that you would utilize

as you implement progress monitoring
in writing with your students.

To be honest, these are steps that you
would use for any subject area,

but of course we're focusing
particularly on writing.

You can also find more
information about these steps

from the National Center
on Intensive Intervention

at intensiveintervention.org.

So first of all, a teacher would establish
a present level of performance

for their students.

Typically we think of that as a screening
or benchmarking point.

The teacher then sets an ambitious
long-term goal

for each of his or her students,
using established norms that are available

from the measures that have been utilized.

In this case, we're thinking about those
established norms that would be available

for writing curriculum-based measures.

The teacher then implements a current
validated intervention program.

We want to make sure that we're
implementing something

that's evidence-based, and the teacher
collects frequent progress monitoring data

for each student.

We would suggest "frequent" being
at least weekly progress monitoring data.

Typically these measures in writing
are about three minutes in length,

so the teacher would choose one
three-minute measure

to give weekly to each student.

Then, probably the most important
piece is to start to look at that data,

the instructional specialist,
the teacher looks at that data,

and compares data that has been
collected to the goal line

to determine whether the student
is responding to intervention.

There are some decision-making rules
that are established and put into place

to examine this data and to determine
whether that student is actually

being responsive to the intervention
that's being provided.

We know that a lot of students,
even with evidence-based intervention,

still aren't responsive.

And so we want to make sure
we fine-tune that instructional strategy,

that instructional platform for them
so that we do elicit the best response.

The teacher looks at that data
to generate a hypothesis.

The teacher at this point
may need to collect additional

diagnostic information
to identify certain skills

that might need to be capitalized on,

certain information that might
need to be repeated.

It could be that there are
behavioral concerns,

or we need to add some type of
behavioral supports to the intervention.

But basically the teacher is generating
a hypothesis about how to make a change

in instruction, continue the instruction,
or even to intensify instruction.

And once that decision is made,
then the teacher actually modifies

or adapts the intervention
using that diagnostic data.

Finally, step eight is just
to continue that cycle,

moving through, collecting
progress monitoring data,

looking at that data, and then
continuing to determine responsiveness.

In this way, the teacher is very nimble,
if you will, in looking at data,

making decisions, and sort of
continuing to be actively involved

in that student's instructional routine,

so that along the way we don't lose
sight of what the goal that we've set

for that student, and whether that
student is on-track to meet that goal.

So, today—I'm sorry,
we'll go back real quick.

Today we're really going to focus
on that progress monitoring piece

in writing, as we move to the next slides.

So you heard me just a minute ago
mention CBM a couple of times.

And CBM, or curriculum-based measurement
are really simple, efficient procedures

that we utilize with students to provide
what we call global indicators.

Sometimes we call them general
outcome measures

or overall academic indicators.

These are global indicators
of student performance and progress.

You can use them as indicators of
student performance in terms of screening,

or in terms of student progress
for progress monitoring.

And we can use them in
a variety of core areas—

math, reading, writing,
even science and social studies.

There are some key characteristics
of CBM measures

that make them helpful to teachers
that are useful in that

teachers can be confident
in the information.

Some of those characteristics
include that the measures

are reliable and valid.

We sometimes call these characteristics
psychometric qualities.

So we're looking at things like,
are they sensitive to change?

Will they elicit the same
performance over time?

The measures also were created
to be simple and efficient to give,

they're very straightforward,
they're time-efficient.

As I mentioned, most of the writing
measures are three minutes in length.

These measures are meant
to be easy to understand

and inexpensive to deliver to students.

So as we're thinking about the data that's
collected as part of DBI in writing,

CBM plays a very pivotal role in
what teachers are using

to create those pictures
of student performance and progress.

So you might be wondering
how CBM is different

from other writing assessments.

There are other types of writing
assessments that are given,

including things that are⁠—look
more like rubrics,

or holistic ratings of writing.

A CBM can supplement some of those
informal diagnostics.

It provides additional
quantitative information.

It provides information that's
perhaps a little bit different,

a little more specific and
a little more objective, perhaps

than some of the writing assessments
that you've utilized in the past.

CBM, as we've mentioned before,
can be given frequently.

Typically we give it⁠—we suggest
to give it weekly to students

to measure their progress.

And it is relatively easy
to administer and score.

You would be able to look at
the administration directions

and administer it right away.

The scoring is⁠—there are some resources
for scoring that you could utilize

to learn how to score those.

And as teachers score more
and more writing assessments,

they get to be very quick
at doing that,

very efficient in their scoring.

CBM writing measures measure writing
in very small increments of time,

and so we can actually capture
student progress on a weekly basis.

A lot of our students who are struggling,
they need us to be checking in with them

on a more frequent basis.

We can't wait until the end of the quarter
or the end of the semester.

We really need to be
checking in more often.

And so a CBM allows us to be checking in
with those students on a frequent basis.

And perhaps most importantly,
when we look at graph CBM data,

it helps signal to the teacher when
there are additional needs

instructionally for the student.

There might be intervention
changes that are needed,

there might be additional
diagnostic tools that are needed

to help signal skill deficits.

So CBM helps report that process.

There are three basic writing tasks
that are part of CBM:

word dictation, picture word,
and story prompt.

These three tasks are, as you see here,
designated for students who are writing

or working at a word level in writing,
at the sentence level,

or the passage level.

And so you can sort of think about
some of the students with whom you work

and the level at which those students
are currently writing,

and then that would help you match
what particular CBM⁠—(audio cuts out)

And I'll do an example of
how some of these CBM measures

for beginning and later writers
would align with grade levels,

and then with the scoring methods
that you would utilize.

So the three measures
that I spoke about previously

were word dictation, picture
word, and story prompt.

Here we provide the level at which
this measure would be provided,

the approximate grade level or the grade
level that the student is achieving at,

and then how we would
score these measures.

It's really important to note that when
we're thinking about students,

for instance, who are at the word level,

these might be students who are
our very beginning writers,

so it could be students who are
in those youngest grades.

But it also could be students
who are older

who are still achieving
at those grade levels.

So you could have a fifth grader,
a sixth grader, even a student who's older

who's still working at
a first or second grade level,

and really learning how to do some
of those handwriting and spelling tasks

that are at that word level.

So, really important to note,
as you consider the task for the student,

you want to consider both their
grade level, but also if they're older,

you may want to consider
the level at which they're achieving.

Their instructional level, if you will.

And then over in the right-hand side,

you see some different types of scoring
methods that we have developed

for each of the measures.

These scoring methods include
things like words written,

so the number of words written
in the three-minute task that's given,

number of words spelled correctly,

and then you'll see on both of⁠—
on all of the different types of measures,

there are also scoring
of correct sequences⁠—

either correct letter sequences,
or correct word sequences.

This is a much more specific way
to look at writing performance,

to actually take into account
spelling, handwriting, tense,

grammar, punctuation.

And so these sequences is a much more
fine-tuned way to score these measures.

And for our teachers who we have
worked with on a lot of our projects,

we actually recommend that they score
using either correct letter sequences

or correct word sequences.

If you would like more information
about scoring sequences,

you can go to earlywritingproject.org

or you can search on YouTube
for Early Writing Project.

We've posted some videos that have samples
of how you would score these measures.

All of the measures that we've created
and the intervention materials

that are a part of some of the
other modules we're working on

all align with the simple view of writing.

This is work that Virginia Berninger
and her colleagues conducted

and many others have followed up on.

It addresses—this simple view addresses
some of these key components of writing,

including transcription, which is that
very basic foundational level of writing,

translating sounds, words,
sentences into print.

This would be the level at which students
would be working on handwriting,

spelling, mechanics.

So some of you may have students
who are at that transcription level.

It could be that students are at
the text generation level.

This is the next level, where students
actually are creating or generating ideas,

they're thinking more about
word choice, genre, text structure.

They're writing simple sentences,

and then eventually turning those
sentences into short paragraphs.

It could be that you have students also

who are struggling with
self-regulation in writing.

Self-regulation we describe as what
writers do to meet their goals.

Sometimes students are having
difficulty with things like setting goals,

self-monitoring,
revising, self-evaluating.

They might be having these difficulties
in other content areas as well,

but the body of literature on
self-regulation in writing is really deep.

In particular, there's a strategy called
self-regulated strategy development,

or SRSD.

It's a really important component
in self-regulation.

And so all of these pieces comprise
that simple view of writing.

And we know that all of these
pieces, as students learn them,

they are constrained by the attention
and—(audio cuts out)

—memory that the student
brings to the task.

So we consider these pieces as we
engage with these students in writing.

This is how the different CBMs
or curriculum-based measurements

align with that simple view of writing.

So you can see at the transcription
level, we're thinking really about

word dictation measures,
at the text generation level

it could be either picture, word,
or story prompt measures,

and we have the different
scoring techniques outlined here.

For self-regulation, we don't have
specific CBMs for that;

that's more of a diagnostic type
of tool that you would look at

to determine what other types of
self-regulation strategies are needed.

But certainly the CBMs in writing

align very nicely with this
simple view of writing.

So you might be thinking about
working with students

and how you can sort of keep
everything organized

and efficient to look at, as you work
with a variety of students on these tasks.

One of the things that
you'll want to consider

is how you can keep their
weekly data organized.

You can have just a two-pocket folder,
you could have the measures

that they're going to be working on
on one side,

you could have the measures that they've
already completed on the other side.

If you're using an electronic graph, so
some type of Excel document for instance

for graphing, you would try to score
and enter that data as quickly as you can.

We do have some teachers who
three-hole punch the students' samples,

writing samples that they've completed,
their CBMs, and keep them in a folder

that has a three-ring binder.

It could be also that you scan
and just save those electronically.

So it sort of depends on whether you'd
like to keep those in paper version,

or you want to keep those electronically.

But think about some sort of system
that you want to use—(audio cuts out)

Think about also even a little
plastic box for instance

that has hanging folders,

and you can put each student's
folder in that box as well.

So just to wrap up, progress
monitoring in DBI

is a really important component,

arguably perhaps one of the most
important components

for our students at risk, our students
who have disabilities.

We talked a little bit today
about what CBMs are,

but then we talked more specifically
about CBM writing tasks.

Finally we discussed how those
CBM tasks are mapped

to that simple view of writing,

and how that can help capture
what student skill deficits

are existing for each of our
students who are at risk.

We finally wrapped up
talking just a little bit about

how to keep all of those
materials organized.

- Thank you, Dr. Lembke, for that
great overview of your pathway

of progress monitoring within writing.

We all appreciate you
viewing this webinar,

and we hope that you come back
to view future webinars.

Thank you for your time.