Visual Trackers

One of the most meaningful things that I do in my classroom is create a visual tracker for students to see their growth. I set a big goal for my kids and tell them that we're going to strive to grow 1.5 years in reading growth. We talk about how we can make this happen and what they need to do to help themselves become better readers and scholars. These past two years I've had visual trackers to show reading growth. This tends to take up a large amount of room and with my super itty bitty room (seriously- so small. I get jealous looking at everyone else's pictures of their rooms!) I haven't had them track their math growth. I know it can easily be done individually, just haven't come up with a system to do it yet.

The first picture shows my ESL kiddo's tracker and the progress they made at the end of the year. There were road signs along the road that indicated how much they'd grown, the last one being 1.5 years of growth. As you can see, not everyone met the big goal but everyone grew at least a year and our average was 1.25 years of growth. I'll take it.

The reason why I love this system so much is because of motivation. When students are off task, I redirect them to our tracker and talk about how making poor choices will make them not grow as much. When everyone else is moving up, they want to as well. It can be a little tricky explaining this to first graders, but for the most part I think they understood.

This past year teaching first grade I had an around the world theme and their hot air balloons went up as they grew. This is what our tracker looked like at the end of the year. I love first grade because of the tremendous amount of growth you see! With my super hero theme this year they'll all have a cape and will take off as they grow. : )

What are some ways that you track your students growth?


*Update* Here is a picture of our tracker with the super hero theme. This was the end of the year. My students rocked it this year!