I am SIX weeks into my fourth year as a sixth grade science teacher! I have no idea where all of the time has gone. I have had a very interesting start to the year this year. I have taken on new leadership roles and have more students than I ever had before. This presents new obstacles but I feel that with support from my school administration and fellow teachers, I have had a pretty smooth transition! In order to navigate the large number of students in our classes this year, the sixth grade team is trying to do everything we can to encourage the students to hold themselves accountable for their actions and overall progress. The sixth grade leadership team (the 6th grade administrator, my co-team lead, and I) discussed data notebooks as a way for students to realize their potential and their role in their learning process.

The Idea

Data Notebooks are being implemented as a way for students to become more accountable for their own success and understand what they can improve on. Often, students who EARN low scores on quizzes, tests, and projects can be heard making statements such as: “The teacher gave me a low grade” or “That teacher gave me a bad grade because she doesn’t like me”. We hope that by having all of our students keep a data notebook that their ideas shift to statements like “I earned this score on my project because I did not follow the rubric carefully” or “I could have studied more for this test to have earned a higher score”. This goes hand and hand with the Growth Mindset model that we have adopted as a school this year, following the research conducted by Carol Dweck.

The Process

Our Data Notebooks consist of data tables, learning styles and multiple intelligences surveys, and reflections. They keep all of their work within a composition notebook that is housed in their homeroom classroom. We set aside homeroom time each Monday for Data Notebooks. The following steps have been completed by all of the sixth grade students:

• Learning Styles Survey- Students completed the survey individually and read material on each of the learning styles and wrote a reflection about how they could use the data from the survey to help them as a learner in general. For example, a student who had the kinesthetic learning style would learn that they do well in classes that included hands-on activities. They could become proactive in their learning by asking the teacher for a hands-on extension activity to better understand material.
• Multiple Intelligences Survey– Similar to the learning styles survey, students completed the survey on their own and researched their particular intelligence style. Again, students reflected on their data and wrote about how the information could help them as a learner.
• Data Tracking- As students receive feedback on major assignments, quizzes, and tests, they chart their data on graphs for each of their CORE subjects. The graphs that we created for our students to use are simple bar graphs where they write the name of the assignment and shade the bar up to the grade they received. This is an easy way for students to see trends within each class.
• Reflections- The most important component within the Data Notebook is the Weekly Reflection. Each week, students are asked to reflect on 2-3 assignments from the past week. They answer questions such as “What did you do well on this assignment?”, “What could you have done to improve your understanding of this concept?”, “How could you have improved your score on this assignment?” etc. This allows for students to understand areas of improvement within each of their CORE subjects and areas where they thrive. In order for students to include reflections on a variety of assignments, we also included a checklist where students must have at least 3 assignments from each of their CORE subjects per Quarter (Language Arts, Math, Social Studies, and Science) . Of those chosen assignments at least 4 must be assignments that they felt they did well on and 4 assignments that could use improvement.

The Ultimate Goal

By third quarter of this school year, we would like to use Data Notebooks as a way to easily conduct student-led conferences. We would like for students to lead meetings with their parents under teacher supervision as they discuss their progress in each class. The Data Notebooks would have the scores from each assignment tracked and their reflections written, students would then find the assignments within the Interactive Student Notebook for that particular class to share with their parent.

As a grade level, we feel this is a great way for students to become more accountable as learners and allows them to understand their own progress for themselves. I am excited to see how this aids student development throughout the school year!