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My Technology Use: Student Goal Setting on MAP: April 15, 2018

As a school and district, we have utilized MAP all year and I feel as though I know a lot about my students and their growth, but we began to wonder "Do our students know a lot about their own personal growth?"  My team and I decided to spend time with each individual student to set personal goals for MAP performance before taking the spring MAP assessment. 

We started the goal setting process, by first showing our students the growth that they had made as an entire grade level on MAP in reading and math.  Our students were so excited to see the graphs on the MAP website and to notice that they had made more growth than MAP had projected them to.  Their confidence was soaring and it was so exciting to celebrate with them!  We then used MAP to pull up individual student reports showing where each student had performed in the fall and winter and where they are projected to perform in the spring.  We took the time to sit down with each student and show them the scores and allow them to see the graph of their own growth.  Allowing the students to see this visual was crucial to their own understanding of their growth and many of them had great questions to help them understand it even more.  The students then each set their own goal when sitting with us and using the graph as a visual. We then let them design their own growth goal sheet to tape to their desk as a reminder of their goal when taking the MAP assessment.  I am so excited to see their positive attitudes toward their growth and their motivation to continue growing. 

I know that we often can be discouraged when utilizing standardized assessments, however, this time I am thankful for MAP allowing us to share student success in such a visual way for both our students and parents.  I am also thankful that even if our students are not on grade level, it does not just identify them as "novice," but instead still shows them their growth! This is so important as we constantly try to focus on our students' growth. 

Comments

  1. UnknownApril 18, 2018 at 3:55 PM

    Setting personal goals with my students has also been very helpful on the MAP assessments. They are more easily able to remember their goal, and for some, it is closer for them to achieve. Good luck!

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  2. Danielle TerryApril 22, 2018 at 1:56 PM

    Hi Ali!
    I am a huge fan of MAP honestly. The pros of MAP are that it shows the individual grade level each student is performing at instead of just stating they are Novice, Apprentice, Proficient, or Distinguished. It can also predict a student's performance on KPREP and give you specific information about where a student is performing on a specific standard, which is great for planning small groups. A con of MAP testing is that it can be so overwhelming at first. There are so many reports and so much information that it is filled with. We still haven't looked through everything that it has to offer yet, but are instead trying to slowly become more and more comfortable with it! I hope that your school finds success with it.

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