How Data Tracking for Students can Increase Acadience Reading Scores

Data tracking for students in Acadience Reading can help students’ scores improve, as well as their reading capabilities. Acadience Reading is a benchmark assessment that is widely used to determine students that may be at risk for reading difficulties. Those who use it know how much pressure can be put on students to reach the benchmark and personal pathway goals. A little extra motivation can help students improve drastically. 

Need more help with motivation and student engagement? Download my FREE Student Engagement Guide by dropping your name and email below. 

Understanding Acadience Reading Benchmark Goals

Before we being to track student data and growth, we first need to understand the Acadience Reading benchmark scores. Oftentimes, we use these scores as a measure of mastery, but that is not actually how this assessment is intended to work. Acadience Learning states, “Acadience Reading helps teachers identify children at risk for reading difficulties and determine the skills to target for instructional support.”

The Acadience Reading assessment is a universal screener. It screens students to identify who needs extra support. It is built to help determine where student needs are and where intervention needs to happen. 

Dive Deep Into Student Data

It is one thing to have student data. It is a completely different thing to know what that student data means. Look deep inside your student data to determine the needs of your students. Analyze each subtest for your students. Doing this will help you know the intervention that each student is in need of. 

Truly understanding your student data helps you form groups and interventions that are targeted to the students in those groups. You can learn more about personalized literacy groups in this post.

Progress Monitoring

Progress monitoring is used to determine the effectiveness of interventions. After an intervention cycle has been completed, teachers should be giving a progress monitoring assessment to the students in the intervention. If student progress monitoring data does not show students growing in their skills, it’s time to change up the intervention. 

Why Data Tracking for Students Works

Data should drive what you do as a teacher. It should drive instruction and determine the changes and differentiation that need to happen in your classroom. Now think about this. If data drives your instruction, couldn’t it drive how your student chooses to learn as well?

Tracking Student Data Builds Understanding

We talked about how important it is for teachers to understand the Acadience Reading benchmark scores. It is just as important for students to understand their own scores on both the benchmark and progress monitoring assessments. When students have an understanding of their data, they know where they are, where they want to go, and they make a plan to get there.

Motivation Increases with Data Tracking For Students

Think about the students in your class. I would dare bet that there is at least one student in every class that has very little motivation to become a better reader. In a lot of cases, reading is hard for these students. They feel defeated when they read. It is frustrating. These students often shut down because all they have felt is failure. 

Now, imagine this same student visually seeing the growth they are making. They can see an upward trend. Do you know what that does for them? It gives them confidence. It shows them that the work they are putting in is making a difference. That little bit of confidence builds motivation. 

Motivation doesn’t only increase in struggling students, though. Higher achieving students also like to see the growth they are making. The act of a student physically filling in their data tracking sheets helps them internalize the growth they have made and make a plan for their future progress. 

Setting Up a Student Data Tracker

Setting up a student data tracker can be quick and simple using my Acadience Reading Data Tracking For Students resource. First, decide how you will be storing these student data trackers. You can use a simple folder with 3 prongs like these or you can store them in small 3-ring binders. 

Once you have chosen how you will be storing the student data trackers, it is time to select the tracking sheets that your students will need to track their own Acadience Reading data. In the Acadience Reading trackers, you will find trackers for each of the subtests for every grade level. For each of these sheets, there are two options. The first option is black and white. The second option is in color with the Acadience Reading end-of-year benchmark goals marked in coordinating colors on the tracker. These goals are placed for both you and your students to gauge their progress toward the end-of-year benchmark goals throughout the year.

Place the tracking sheets that you chose into a folder for each student. I like to order them in the order the assessments are populated in Acadience Reading. This makes sense to my brain, but you can order them inside the folder however you would like. 

Using a Student Data Tracker in Your Classroom

Hear me out here. You might be thinking about the amount of time that tracking student data will take. And, you are right! It does take time, but not as much as you may think. The best system I have found takes only 30 seconds to one minute for students to complete their data trackers. 

Here is how it works.

1. Progress monitor your students consistently. This gives you valuable information about where your students are, while also allowing your students to see their growth and continue moving toward their goals.
2. Mark your student’s score on their data tracker with a small line. This ensures that your student’s progress monitoring charts are correct, while also saving valuable time.
3. Have your student color in their graph or graphs on their own. This can be done while they are still with you, or they can go back to their desk and fill in their trackers.
4. Repeat with each of your students. 

The small amount of time that it takes for students to fill out data trackers is worth the return. Students find motivation in seeing their growth visually. It also emphasizes where the most improvement needs to happen and what they need to do to reach their goals. 

More Acadience Resources

Data tracking for students doesn’t have to end at Acadience Reading. You can do the exact same thing with Acadience Math. I created a resource for Acadience Math with a student data tracking template for each of the subtests in the assessment for grades K-6. You can find those trackers here.

If you are still in need of new ideas to motivate and engage your students, drop your name and email below. I will send you my Student Engagement Guide for Elementary Teachers, so you can start implementing one or more of these 20 strategies in your classroom today.