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Track a Student's Progress Against Goals and Grade Norms

Learn how to read a student's Performance Trend chart in ReadingFluency.app, compare the student with a roster group's goals or their grade's oral reading fluency norms, choose a time window, and read the weekly rate of improvement.

A student's profile is where you follow one reader over time. Its Performance Trend chart plots the WCPM and accuracy of every reading, and it can compare the student with a roster group and its goals, or with the oral reading fluency norms for the student's grade.

Before you start

  • Assign readings to the student. The profile shows only assessments assigned to that student.
  • For grade norms, set the student's grade. Grade norms cover Grades 1–6. See Set each student's grade.
  • For goals, give a group goals. Add the student to a roster group with goal checkpoints. See Set goals for a roster group.

Open the student's profile

  1. Go to Students, or use the Dashboard roster.
  2. Click the student's card.
  3. Read the tiles at the top: Total readings, Avg WCPM, and Avg Accuracy.

Read the Performance Trend chart

The chart plots WCPM and accuracy over time. Each has its own axis, so the two lines are not on the same scale.

  • Hover over a dot to see the date, the passage, the WCPM, and the accuracy. Click the dot to open that reading's report.
  • A hollow dot is a reading that does not count toward norms, such as a practiced passage. To change that, see Leave a reading out of the comparisons.
  • Use the pills under the chart to focus on one layer. Hover over a pill to highlight its layer, click it to keep the highlight (Reset pins clears it), and click the check in a pill to hide that layer.

Compare with a group or with grade norms

Use Compare with at the top right of the chart.

  • A roster group (any group the student is in): the shaded band is the middle half of the group's latest readings, and the line is the group's median. The chips above the chart show the student's rank in the group, such as "1st of 16 in Group A by latest rate", the group median, and the next goal. The group's goals show as diamonds on their dates.
  • Grade norms, such as Grade 3 norms: the Hasbrouck & Tindal (2017) norms for each season. The darker band is the 25th–75th percentile, the lighter band the 10th–90th, and the line the median. There are no Grade 1 fall norms. This choice appears only when the student has a grade from 1 to 6, and each reading is compared with the grade the student was in on that date.

The chart opens on the first group with goals. If no group has goals, it opens on grade norms.

To see the norms table for every grade and season, open ORF Norms by Grade.

Choose a time window

Use Time to choose which readings the chart shows: All readings, This school year, 3 months, 1 month, or Custom, where you pick a start date and an end date. The rate of improvement uses the same window. The profile remembers your choice on this device.

Read the rate of improvement

The Rate of improvement panel shows how fast the student's WCPM is growing, such as +2.4 WCPM/wk. It is the trend line through all the counted readings in the time window, not just the change from the first reading to the last. Hover over the panel to highlight the dashed WCPM trend line on the chart.

The panel needs at least 2 counted readings, at least a week apart. Until then it says what is missing.

When a group's goal is still ahead, the panel also shows the weekly growth the student needs to reach it, such as "Needs +0.9/wk to reach 100 by Jan 29", with an On pace or Behind pace badge.

Reports uses the same rate of improvement in its student summary table, so the two always agree.

Read the trend, not one point. A single low reading is not a reason to change instruction. For more on this, see How to interpret ORF scores without overreacting.

Export the student's progress

  1. Open the ⋮ menu at the top of the profile.
  2. Choose Export progress.
  3. Pick a PDF, an image, or a CSV.

The PDF and image show the chart with every layer and its legend, the time window's dates, and the rate of improvement. The CSV lists the student's readings with their Accuracy (%) and WCPM.

Next tutorial

To look at a whole roster or intervention group at once: Analyze reading fluency reports.