Using Data

Janelle Hurkett is working on collecting and evaluating data for her 6^th grade reading students.  She makes instructional decisions based on the multiple reading assessments that students participate in throughout the year.  This data is important and complex.  

She contacted her Technology Integration Coach, CJ McDonald about working on a way to visualize the data in an efficient and effective way.  After some extra Microsoft training, CJ made a draft Excel document to organize and visualize the data that Janelle was looking for.  She decided that this document could also be used to inform and communicate to parents.  In order to do that there would be a sheet with every student’s information on it while each student also had an individual sheet.  This sheet would show that growth over time in four areas: fluency, accuracy, vocabulary and comprehension. 

After a couple more tweaks, the pair got the document ready to go.  Janelle used the document with a mid-term parent meeting with success.  Now the only things left are data entry, a quick tutorial video to show Janelle and her colleagues how to continue to work with the document, lots of teacher evaluation and reporting of reading data…which can be done with a click of the button. 

This is a screenshot of a sample document made to communicate this project; no names or data are real.

This type of partnership represents an interaction that is occurring in the district with an effort to collect and analyze student data in a more efficient and effective way.  Teachers will begin working with their TICs and their Instructional Strategists to collect data and create a visualization to evaluate and report.