Collection | Assessment and Data Collection Strategies for Educators

Presenters: Sally Barton-Arwood, Alexandra Da Fonte, & Kimberly Paulsen

Time: 40 minutes

Data-driven decisions are essential for effective instructional planning for students special needs. This session will outline key steps in the development and implementation of data collection systems. Examples and tips on how to design and implement effective data collection system will be discussed.

Participants will be able to:

1. Outline the five steps to development of data collection systems.
2. Describe the process of skill identification and criteria of mastery.
3. Describe the various data collection method and their purpose.
4. Identify ways to integrate a data collection system in classroom.

Presenters: Eliza Liable & Amy M. Peterson

Time: 19 minutes

Fidelity is often a negative term in schools, but it is critical for effective data-based decision making for students with intensive needs. This session will recharacterize fidelity by highlighting considerations for monitoring assessments and intervention implementation, discuss how fidelity data are used with student progress data to make decisions about student responsiveness, and provide easy to use tools.

Participants will be able to:

1. Identify the critical components of fidelity.
2. Understand the role of fidelity data within data-based decision making and data-based individualization.
3. Locate tools and resources they can use in practice to monitor implementation.

Presenter: Tessie Bailey

Time: 55 minutes

Are your team meetings ineffective or inefficient? Are you tasked with leading intervention team meetings, but not sure how? The session will demonstrate how you can use free, customizable teaming tools available through the National Center on Intensive Intervention (NCII). Lesson learned from previous implementers will be shared.

Participants will be able to:

1. Use standardized tools to facilitate an initial and follow-up intervention meeting.
2. Apply valid decision-making strategies to determining student responsiveness, need for more intensive intervention, or referral for specialized services.
3. Apply lessons learned from previous local implementers to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of intervention team meetings.  

Presenters: Carlin Conner, Jill Allor, & Francesca Jones

Time: 60 minutes

This presentation will discuss a tool used to measure literacy engagement and reading comprehension of students with disabilities, the Systematic Observation of Language and Reading (SOLR). The SOLR can be used by practitioners to track growth and inform instruction for struggling readers, including those with Intellectual Disability (ID) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Literacy progress will be discussed in terms of seven constructs 1) language development, 2) abstract thinking, 3) elaboration, 4) print, 5) engagement, 6) fluency and prosody, and 7) off task/refusal behaviors. Most of the presentation will involve demonstrating how to use this observation tool in the classroom.

Participants will be able to:

1. Learn how to use a new measure for assessing reading comprehension that is inclusive of students with disabilities, the SOLR.
2. Learn how to use the results from the SOLR to inform instruction in their classroom through video observations of students with disabilities engaging in book reading activities.

Presenters: Christine Espin & Jessica Toste

Time: 41 minutes

For students with persistent academic challenges, it is essential that teachers monitor progress and use the data to inform instructional decision making, yet teachers have difficulties doing so. In this session, we explore obstacles to data-based decision-making, discussing the complexities of human decision making in general.

Presenter: Shawn Datchuk

Time: 58 minutes

When asked to compose a paragraph, do your students struggle with writing fluency: the skill of transcribing and generating text at a brisk pace? If so, they may benefit from progress monitoring and targeted, supplemental writing intervention. In this session, you'll learn how to progress monitor by administering written expression CBM probes and scoring them for several variations of correct writing sequences. For intervention, you'll learn the basics of delivering direct instruction and fluency practice to improve sentence-writing fluency and self-regulated strategy development for discourse-writing fluency.

Participants will be able to:

1. Describe the components of progress monitoring and intervention for writing fluency.
2. Apply the components to create their plans for assessment and intervention.
3. Practice administering assessment and delivering supplemental lessons.