The 3 Most Common Mistakes in Data Tracking

So data tracking is one of those necessary evils for all interventionists, special educators, speech-language pathologists, and teachers…we all can commiserate together.

But it’s one of those things that is just absolutely critical to determining whether or not students are growing and making progress in their intervention setting. We see students who are struggling to read and write, have gaps, and we need to make sure those gaps are in fact closing.

So on top of all the other things we are managing in our intervention setting, from behavior management to lesson introduction and skill targeting (check out our blog here all about skill targeting), we need to be tracking and monitoring data during our sessions.

So here are the three biggest mistakes we often see when supporting special education teams and interventionists…and no judgment here because we’ve #beenthere

1. Not taking data or having no clear system

So we totally understand this, we are juggling all the things that need to get done in a session and it’s easy to think we will just jot down some notes after the sessions are done. But let’s be honest, it’s just not going to happen if we don’t take data in the session.

We all have the best intentions, we think we will remember but with everything we have going on - we just won’t. Sometimes, if I don’t have a data tracking sheet…I won’t be able to remember something literally minutes after the session is over!

If you have multiple students you are trying to juggle you have to have a system in place. Even if you don’t have multiple students you need to have a system in place.

Having a clear system of what you track and how you track it allows you to be effective even when you are less organized or prepared than you had hoped.

If you have a system and realize you forgot your data tracking sheet, it’s no big deal because you can in a pinch write everything out on a scratch piece of paper. But if you don’t have a system in place…that is just not happening!

2. Having all of your students on different systems so you never have a sense of calm

We get it - students have different goals. But…we need ONE system, ONE process for all of them. The numbers you are tracking might look different for each student but the way in which you are tracking data needs to look the same. Best case scenario you have a group that’s really well aligned and are all working on the same skills in which case it’s nice and easy. Your data tracking can look something like this:

Even with different skill targets, the data-tracking system is still the same.

And the last mistake, which we’ve made over and over by the way:

3. Not having a clear organization system so by the time you need to report on data you can't actually find it.

We’ve ALL BEEN HERE…don’t pretend you haven’t at least once gotten to your session, sat down, and realized you didn’t have a data tracking sheet that you needed to collect the data that would help you continue to refine your instruction and intervention. So then, you grabbed a sticky note, wrote down everything you could capture from the session, and by the time you needed to complete your reporting, you couldn’t find it.

Once and for all, let’s put an end to this madness!

Grab this FREE Data-Tracking System…

…so that you have an EASY way to track AND analyze your data. Never again will you have to worry about analyzing numbers in your head because this system makes it easy. We have even included our Literacy Goal Bank so that you have specific goals you can track for each of your students.

For more information about data-tracking in your structured literacy lessons, check out the first blog in our data-tracking series, How to Determine Which Data Needs to be Tracked by >>clicking here.<< Then, be sure to grab our free Data Tracking System. This tool will help make data tracking easy and help you keep your session data organized.