Doing Your OWN Research in Your Intervention
Hi there! How’s it going?
If you’ve been with us for a while, you know how much we love data. We love it as much as we do because we know how important it is to best understand our students, and support them in the most effective way. And, we want you to love it just as much as we do!
One of our favorite things to do in our clinic is to find new ways to effectively and comprehensively track student data, as we believe in the importance of regularly checking in on student progress. We always want to make sure we’re checking in on each area of our student’s learning to make sure they are making progress in their learning, and know what to change if we aren’t seeing the progress we had hoped for. These checkpoints can be as frequent as each day, each week, each month, or whatever frequency works best for you in your setting.
As interventionists, we often hear…
…about the importance of “research-based” intervention. We are here to remind you that YOUR OWN research is a part of this!
By tracking data for each student, you are researching what is working, what isn’t, and understanding better how to adapt and fit their needs.
Each student is different, and each student deserves instruction that is suited to their learning needs. But, sometimes it can be overwhelming to think about which items to track. We get it. We’ve been there too. It can be hard to know what to do with your data once you have it. And it can be hard to know what data to track in the first place.
We see you, we hear you, and we’re here for you! If you are wondering what data you should be tracking, >>click here.<<
Tracking Data in Your Literacy Intervention Lessons
When tracking data, a common misconception is thinking that all you’re doing is tracking numbers.
If you don’t have a place to consistently keep track of student data, then it can definitely seem like you’re just tracking numbers. Once you have the numbers, it’s important to look at them from week to week, or session to session, to see how those numbers are changing.
When you look at how the numbers are changing over time, you’re not just tracking numbers…
…you’re tracking science.
Thinking about tracking science can seem a bit complicated or scary, we understand that. But it doesn’t need to be! You are qualified and competent to take control of your student’s learning by looking at the science and supporting their specific areas of need. It can be as easy as writing down student scores in a spreadsheet to observe whether those scores are improving, staying stagnant, or declining from session to session. Once you have that information, you can see which specific areas need to be explicitly targeted for a student to fill in all of the holes and gaps in their learning.
We use this data in our private practice every single day! Each day, we track how many trials a student got correct and how many they were provided, for each part of the lesson. Over time, we are looking at how the student’s scores (the percentage they are getting correct) are changing over time. We use our lesson data to drive instruction for the following session. If we notice a lower score, we target that area specifically to make sure we are filling in all of the holes and gaps for a specific student! Every six months, we use standardized assessments to look at how a student is doing relative to their peers at their age, and how that child is progressing over time.
We are also excited to announce that we are using this information to drive our own clinical research project! In this research project, we are looking at student data and how it changes over time to ensure that explicit and systematic instruction is truly helping to fill in the holes and gaps for each student. We are so excited about this project, and cannot wait to share more information with you all so soon!
We believe in the importance of tracking the science of data. We believe that it is not just numbers. And we hope that you will join us in tracking your student’s data, and see for yourself how easy it is to do!
If you are curious about learning more about doing research in your intervention so that you know exactly what’s working and how to best support your students, join us in our FREE workshop, How to Create SOR-Aligned Goals & Track Data.
In this free training, you will learn how to use the data you already have to set appropriate goals, uncover the key to setting up your lessons to make data tracking easy and learn how to manage & organize your data. Plus, you’ll get a free data-tracking template!