Using CBM to Drive IEPs in Written Expression

Assessing writing can be a difficult/complicated task for teachers.

Proficient writing includes many skill; spelling, usage, punctuation, capitalization, sentence structure, ideationsummarization, and critical thinking.

Teachers must understand each student's deficits and prioritize these for IEP objectives.

CBM or Curriculum-based measurement can be used a solution to this.

"CBM is a fluency-based evaluation approach intended to give teachers a means to monitor a student's progress within the curriculum, encouraging immediate instructional adjustment when necessary."

CBM Characteristics

• direct
• reliable
• simple
• efficient
• inexpensiveeasy-to-understand

It is important to use CBM because it is a reliable tool for instruction but also helps track the student's progress successfully. Exactly what an IEP is called for.

There is a multitude of measures for CBM

Skills Deficit : Measure

• Fluency: TWW
• Spelling: WSC, CWS, CWS-IWS
• Punctuation: CPM, CWS, CWS-IWS
• Grammer/Usage: CWS, CWS-IWS
• Word Choice/Vocabualary: Number of different words

One can use CBMs to write current levels of performance with IEPs and then later revisit it to use t for tracking progress.

A great aspect of using CBMs to track progress is that it can encourage family involvement in IEP process report, especially when the data is clearly graphically organzied.

An enormous advantage to using CBMs is the is the visual display of information tracking the student's progress.

The student's performance in relation to the aimline allows teachers to understand if their instructional methods are effective or not.

Teachers should be collecting CBM data at the least, samples should be collected and scored
when it is time to send home IEP progress reports. However, more effective teachers will collect samples and score them much more frequently.

How this can relate to my future career is pretty straight forward. I have learned from every piece of this article. I will be using CBM in my future classroom to assess my student's progress and current level of performance. I will use this for many of my students with IEPs and probably even for my students with 504 plans.