Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) Lab at Utah State University

Now that you have a plan in place, it is important that you monitor progress. There are a number of ways to do this.

If you are familiar with Excel or another spreadsheet you can enter your data into a worksheet and create a chart. Students often like the visual image of their progress. Many of the bright or gifted students also like the math and technology of using spreadsheets and charts.

If you print out one of the tools provided you can place it in a location that is easily viewed, such as a wall or the refrigerator.

If you use a tool that is kept in a student binder or planner you should check it regularly, preferably each day.

A large poster board with a chart of progress can be used. If you are using a weekly organizer to monitor progress, tally the results for each week.

The information you collect from your monitoring process will be an important factor in reflectionlick here to edit.

Help your child develop self-monitoring skills because they are an essential piece of becoming self-regulated.  We need to collect data to know if our plan is working and when we need to make adjustments.  Start at a level appropriate to your child's capabilities.  Some children can be very diligent about self-monitoring with very little coaching or support for the process.  Other children require a great deal of external structure (that is, you and/or the teachers providing frequent reminders and cues) until they are able to provide their own internal structure for self-monitoring.  As they develop self-monitoring skills, the idea is to have them take on more and more of the responsibility as their skills and efficacy develop.

Sometimes, students need more external structure than expected for their age.  Frequently students in middle school do not have the organizatonal skills or the self-monitoring skills to get their work done, turned in, or organized.  Some of these students never had to develop organizational or self-monitoring skills when they were younger because they were bright enough to get good grades without them.  Whatever the age, you must start with where the child is in regards to self-regulation skills, not where we think they should be.  Wherever we start, the ong-term goal is to move them to more and more independent capability of self-monitoring.

Below you will find several monitoring charts that you can use to monitor progress during the implementation of your plan. It is important that we not only record information about our performance but also about the process, too. Note that each of the examples below has space set aside for recording performance and process data.

What is process data? Process data is information about the steps that you took to enable success during that performance. For example, recording what strategies you used to study for a test would be process data (e.g., made flash cards, read notes). Your process data will depend on your plan and goal but by recording both of these types of goals it will allow you to make some important decisions later: (1) Did we implement the plan as we said we would? (2) Do we see a relationship between certain processes and better outcomes? (e.g., look at that! Each time that I iced my knee before running my half mile time really decreased!!)