12 Self Monitoring
Definition: The exercise and practice of students evaluating their own knowledge, skills, or performance in a particular area for the sake of reporting and improving on their progress.
Rationale: While external assessment by a teacher can be helpful to increase success, internal assessment by the student themselves can increase motivation and willingness to make improvement efforts. Not only is this strategy helpful in skill improvement, it is a lifelong learning tool that promotes student independence and autonomy.
Ways to Support Students:
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- Select a skill or topic that the student is familiar with and has had some success in.
- Provide a data sheet for student to mark their progress- in the initial uses, model how to complete the data sheet and provide support as needed.
- In the early stages it can be helpful for both the teacher and the student to collect data and compare it to improve accuracy
- Celebrate student successes along the way- both in their improvement in the skill or topic and their improvement in collecting data.
Case Study
Student: Grade 6 student
Content: Math class- completing 5-step math problem
Problem: Student has been having difficulty completing each of the 5 steps of the math problems
Solution: Teacher creates a task analysis at the top of the student’s math worksheet. After a few times of modeling and practice, the student completes each step of the problem and marks it complete on the task analysis. At the end of the worksheet, the student writes his step completion accuracy.
Professional Resources:
- Description, benefits, and examples of self-monitoring from the IRIS center: https://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/module/sr/cresource/q2/p04/
- Research based how to guide on using self- monitoring for behavioural and academic skills: https://publications.ici.umn.edu/impact/18-2/using-self-monitoring-strategies-to-address-behavior-and-academic-issues
- Intensive Intervention guide on self-monitoring from the NCLII: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED628226.pdf
- Instructional presentation on self-monitoring from the Kentucky Department of Education: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_GCP6E7OHU
