NWEA Tree

As a pod, Team Spruce began the year charting student growth in our classrooms. We knew that students would be taking the NWEA tests three times over the course of the year. Each student is given growth targets for each test and has their scores charted over time. In order to make the process more visual for the students themselves- the Spruce tree was developed. 


In my class each student who started the year was represented with one Spruce pine bunch. When they took the test this past fall, students who made growth since the spring test in second grade were given one more pine bunch per test. There are three tests- Math, Reading, and Language. That means each student had the opportunity to earn 3 bunches. As a class we earned 20 pine bunches this fall. This was good, but not great. 


We just finished taking the NWEA tests again this winter and the growth was more than doubled, almost tripled even. We earned 55 pine bunches between the three tests this time! Almost the entire class made growth on the Math and Reading tests and we have discussed strategies for making our Language scores go up just as much for the spring NWEA tests where as this winter we had about half the student growth. For more specific break downs of the tree please check out our wooden post signs in the picture to the left. 

NWEA tree with fall student growth versus NWEA tree
with fall and winter student growth.