Encouraging Students to Own Their Academic Growth

At Barbara Morgan STEM Academy, a K–5 school in Meridian, Idaho, one of their hallmark approaches to developing independent learners is to ask students to track their progress and monitor their academic growth from a very young age. In Kim Miller’s second-grade class, students spend time on a weekly basis adding data to their learning binders—simple three-ring folios organized into sections. In them, students use colored pencils to record test scores, graph their progress, set goals, and revisit those goals regularly. 

The class also tunes in to habits of mind, like stamina, and celebrates their accomplishments together. By normalizing transparency and focusing on growth, Miller creates a classroom culture where students feel excited about keeping tabs on their effort and outcomes. “When they can track their own progress, they have more ownership in it,” says Miller. “They’re not just taking a random test to get a score for somebody else. It now belongs to them instead of all the grownups in their world.”

The work that Miller’s young students are doing in the learning binders develops important habits and executive function skills—and helps them cultivate a growth mindset as they progress through the grade levels. “We do some wonderful goal setting and data collection at the K–1 level here, so that by the time they are in fourth and fifth grade, their goal setting is very complex and rigorous,” says Miller. 

According to Barbara Morgan STEM Academy’s principal, Katie Mittleider, “It’s exciting to see kids talking about their growth, talking about where they’re trying to get, and really understanding what that means and why they’re learning it.”

For more ideas about how to support students as they track their progress and learning goals, read Amanda Adams’s article for Edutopia, “How to Use Microtracking to Promote Student Autonomy.”