Personalize learning objectives to suit your student's needs. Use information from data such as benchmark testing to help you set mini objectives and learning tasks for a student throughout the year. Give him smaller, more attainable goals to increase his academic confidence and enable him to perform increasingly more difficult instructional tasks. For instance, you can use a student's scores on a standardized writing test to give him a plan for his writing that is geared to fit his specific skill set.
Tailor homework and classroom assignments to assist in learning. Teach using a variety of methods that incorporate visual, audial, cognitive and kinesthetic materials into your plans, and keep track of which students do best during these specific lessons. Use the strengths of students by giving them class work or homework that will fuse with their learning styles.
Help students learn from their own data. Return tests to them to correct or grade on their own while you go over the answers, or have them examine and grade their student portfolio quarterly throughout the year.
Collaborate with colleagues to help set learning goals using combined available test scores and other data as a baseline for teaching a specific grade level. Set goals for learning as a team to help achieve successful learning outcomes. Comparing data from students at the same grade level in different classrooms will enable you to determine if you are meeting grade-level goals and give you new ideas for meeting learning objectives.
Create specialized tests based on previous assessments. Give pretests before a lesson to determine prior knowledge, and then give the same test following the lesson to analyze student learning. This method works best when some time has lapsed in between tests so students do not learn to memorize material. You might also collect writing samples and read them back to the class as a whole and have the entire class help you to grade the samples based on a number scale. Do not give out student names when using this method. Have them point out specific strengths and weaknesses of the samples, but ensure the feedback remains as positive as possible.