Costa Rica provides a naturally rich learning environment for you and your family. As a parent, choosing how to incorporate education in your children’s lives can be challenging, and not all education approaches and settings are created equal. Whether choosing to unschool your child, provide them with a traditional education, or somewhere in-between, progress monitoring helps educators better understand what skills your child readily knows, what skills they need to review, and what skills they have yet to be introduced to. But first, what is progress monitoring?
What is Progress Monitoring?
In the traditional sense, progress monitoring is when educators assess students’ academic performance on a regular basis to make informed educational decisions. Progress monitoring can be anything from a weekly quiz/test to a daily verbal discussion on a given topic to a monthly writing assignment.
At Jungle Academy, we consider progress monitoring any assessment, formal or informal, that helps us to increase student achievement and growth through informed decision-making. In other words, we need to know where your child is academically in order to provide them the best possible educational experience while they are in our care.
What will progress monitoring look like at Jungle Academy?
Progress monitoring will help us answer questions like: Is the approach we are doing working? Should we be doing something differently? What areas do we need to revisit to help the learning process? How can we better help this child? Where are the child’s learning gaps?
We have to assess in order to inform. We have to make sure we are doing our job to the best of our ability-and that requires knowing where to begin.
At Jungle Academy, we will be assessing each child in reading and math at the beginning of the cycle using the highly-regarded IXL program. These diagnostics will act as a formal, objective view of where your child is at based on US educational standards. The IXL platform will supplement instruction to provide practice in areas unique to your child’s needs. It is not meant to replace our established educational approach, but to add to it. All our students are coming from different places academically and globally, and IXL is an excellent tool to tailor educational needs accordingly. In addition to IXL we are going to be creating an on-line portfolio that can be easily accessed by parents. With the addition of these two components, Jungle Academy will better be able to serve your child’s educational needs.
The word “assessment” is sometimes perceived as a dirty word in the realm of education, for good reason. Schools can over assess students or modify curriculum to “teach to the test”. That is not our intention. We have to assess in order to inform. We have to know where your child is at academically in order to provide a strong education. We have to make sure we are doing our job to the best of our ability-and that requires knowing where to begin.
Progress monitoring helps us help your kids
The bottom line…
Progress monitoring helps us help your kids. It also allows children to take ownership of their learning process by showing them where they stand academically. At Jungle Academy, we have the same goals as you: to provide each child with a stellar education. The bottom line is that through regular assessments, we will be better able to serve your child’s individual needs. IXL is just one component that we will utilize to help set your child up for success.
We welcome Lowell as our educational consultant and we look forward to introducing her in a future post.