Three Ways to Make Student Growth Visible Across the Year

A Backstory: When our kids we little, we–like many families–started marking their height on the inside of their closet doorframes. We didn’t do it on a regular schedule or in any special way; we just grabbed a Sharpie periodically, drew a line over the top of their head, and added the date. In the moment, it didn’t seem like a big deal, but over time it grew into a visible way to see something that’s often invisible: growth.

Why This Matters: Growth is a mysterious thing, and it’s often easy to miss if you aren’t looking for it. But it matters, especially to the ones who are growing. Our family discussed repainting our daughter’s room this summer, and she was adamantly against it because she didn’t want to lose her closet growth chart. When it comes to writing, growth is sometimes even more difficult to see. There are so many directions and ways to grow as a writer, and it’s easy to get so consumed by the process of growing students that we forget to show them how (and how much) they have grown.

Here’s a Secret: If we want to show students their growth, we have to be intentional. And a big part of that intentionality happens with the systems we set up in our classrooms during the first few weeks of the school year. It isn’t difficult and certainly isn’t very time-consuming; we just need a vision and a plan to get the ball rolling.

Behind the Scenes: There are several easy systems you can put into place to make growth evident to students this year. Here are just a few ideas:

• Use the same rubric, scoring guide, learning progression, or proficiency scale across the year. No, not just copies of the same one. Use the exact same document. I recommend printing it on cardstock (I used to copy a universal rubric on 11×17 cardstock and fold it into a file folder for student writing) for durability. Then select a different pen color for each writing piece, make sure to add the date and title of the piece in that color at the top each time you’re assessing, and mark up the rubric using that color only.
  • The Outcome: It might not look like anything special at first, but by the middle of the year you will have a clear record of where the student began the year and how they have grown over time. This is an excellent tool to share with students in a reflective conversation. It also serves as a concrete way to show families how a student has grown during conference conversations. In addition, it’s a great aid for planning personalized instruction that builds on the momentum of growth or targets areas in which a student has not been making progress.
• Set up a consistent system for dating and organizing work. I’ve realized too many times in hindsight that there’s no system for figuring out when students wrote a particular piece. Physical papers get all jumbled up, thrown away, or lost; Google drives become the wild west of partially written pieces. Get ahead of the game this year and establish a system from day 1 that organizes student writing. For our young writers who draft on paper, add a date stamp to your writing center and set up a filing system for keeping their most important pieces of work. For older writers who create digital content, set up a system for dating and organization. My own writing in my Two Writing Teachers drive is organized by date and title for ease of access (example: this post lives in my TWT folder with the title “2024.08.23 Setting Up Growth).
  • The Outcome: Once work is organized chronologically, kids can put old pieces of writing beside newer ones and see the difference. Where have they shown improvement? What can they do in the spring that they couldn’t do earlier in the year? This system must be set up early in the year, though–if you’ve ever tried to go backward to date and organize work, it’s a futile effort.
• Set intentional and regular times aside for reflection. It’s easy to keep pushing forward, especially when we have pacing guides and a million standards and units and lessons to teach. But incorporating time into our workshop to intentionally guide students to reflect will pay off exponentially in the long run. This could look like a formal reflection once per quarter or trimester (I used to… but now… is a great structure for student reflection), but it could also be taking 10 minutes at the end of each unit for students to name a way they showed growth or even 5 minutes every Friday for them to share a way they knew they grew that week.
  • The Outcome: When time is dedicated to looking for growth, the message is clearly sent to students that growth is important. By providing the time and space and purpose, kids learn to look for their own growth, set goals, and reflect more regularly on how they are making progress. 

The Bottom Line:

Young writers show tremendous growth each year, but sometimes lack the tools or the skills to see it. This year, be intentional about putting systems and routines into place that not only make this growth visible but also allow your students to push themselves in new directions.