Are you looking for ways to utilize beginning of year assessments with teachers? A data dive is the perfect way to help build connections to students current performance levels, how to best use beginning of year assessment data, and plan instruction based on students needs.
Planning & Prep
There’s a lot to consider when planning and preparing for a data dive at the beginning of the school year. At the start of every school year I work with my administrators to set up our vision and establish how teachers will navigate their benchmark assessments through the year. There are a few questions to consider to help build your vision:
- Do you want to build a data wall?
- If we are building a data wall, do we want it to be physical, digital, or a combination of both?
- What assessments do you want to use?
- How often do you want teachers to update their data?
- How will this data connect to PLCs?
- Where will the data be posted?
Planning & Prep
If you are planning for a physical data wall, I have found the following items useful in building data walls:
- 3 X 3 sticky notes
- Double sided tape
- Poster boards
- Poster markers
Target’s back to school section has the best colored sticky notes, there are packs with red, yellow, green, blue, and purple. I typically cut the 3 x 3 sticky notes into fourths and use double sided tape on the non-sticky fourths.
Poster boards are the perfect way to make a data wall moveable. You are able to hang them up in a space and move them to meeting areas as needed. I have been using poster boards for our data walls for years now and have found it’s the easiest way to make the data accessible to all. It saves time if the posters are designed ahead of time and there will be uniformity for the entire school.
We utilize Renaissance Star data as our benchmark assessment for the primary purpose of our data walls. This assessment uses scaled scores and places students in Levels 1 – 4, these levels are directly tied to our state assessment proficiencies. It’s definitely important that your data wall meets the needs of whatever assessment data you decide to utilize.
The Data Draft
Once you have established the foundations of your data wall, it’s time to work with staff on building their expertise and understanding of how this can be utilized. This school year we had a whole professional development day dedicated to data analysis and planning. In years past we haven’t been so lucky and worked with grade level teams during their plan time to build their data wall.
This year we wanted to put a fun spin on the data day. I saw a really great idea from morelockedonlearning on Instagram Reels and shared it with my principal about creating a “draft” themed data day. She loved the idea and gave me full freedom to run with it. Our big goal was to create time for staff to analyze their beginning of year assessments, build their data wall based off of their benchmark assessments, and work as a Professional Learning Community (PLC) to use their assessment data to plan for tiered instruction.
We kicked off our day by sending out an agenda to encourage staff to wear their favorite sports team and athleisure. We decorated our meeting space with football themed banners, accessories, and provided tailgate snacks to kick off the day. The ESPN theme song was playing as staff walked in and my principal and I were dressed as referees. As staff walked in they had colored sticky notes and their data walls on their designated tables. We walked through our Data Wall presentation and provided concrete examples of how to fill out their data walls as a team. We service PK3 – 5th grade teachers and they were able to complete their data wall in less than an hour.
Tips & Tricks
- Prep ahead of time: It’s important that you are well prepared leading a data dive. You may be leading several grade levels at the same time and in order to be effective, you must be well prepared. I would encourage you to start prepping two weeks in advance. If anything were to come up (ex: can’t find sticky notes) then you are able to adapt.
- Provide examples: Like Brene Brown says, being clear is kind. I am a firm believer that providing concrete examples makes completing work with a whole staff smoother. I like to make sure I provide visual examples of anything we introduce to staff that way there is a clear understanding of the outcomes. If you want the sticky notes to be filled out in a specific way, provide an example of exactly how you’d like them to be filled out. If you are asking teams to design or build their own walls, provide an example of exactly how you’d like for them to turn out. Having a reference makes fielding questions and supporting teams a lot easier!
- Be intentional with the data: If you plan to have data walls in your school, make sure you are being intentional in how you use them. The staff at my school know that we are going to update them three times yearly and use our common formative data during PLC conversations to little checks for understanding on their grade level standards. This work directly impacts students’ performance towards their benchmark assessments.
- Confidentiality is key: I know that data walls can be a controversial topic. I believe that if done correctly, data walls can be a powerful tool in increasing student performance. If you are going to have a data wall in your room, make sure that the information remains private. Our data wall is in the coaches room which is an “adult only room”. I make sure that students and parents are not in the classroom or if they are, the data gets taken down. Wherever you may have your data, make sure you keep it in a place that can respect students’ privacy.
