Skip to content

Student Progress Tracking Cycle

Run the Student Progress Tracking Cycle MicroSim fullscreen

About This MicroSim

Progress tracking fails in clubs for one reason: it is treated as a form to fill in rather than a habit to repeat. This cycle is the habit.

The stage that carries the most weight is Record, and specifically when it happens -- before the session ends, while the mentor is still in the room. A skill recorded on the drive home is recorded from memory, and a skill recorded next week is not recorded at all.

Review is the stage that makes the whole thing worth doing, because it is usually a different mentor reading the row. Club volunteers rotate. A record that only makes sense to the person who wrote it is a private note, not a tracking system.

Adjust closes the loop by turning the record into a decision: which challenge card this student gets next. Without it the sheet is an archive.

How to Use

  • Hover a stage to preview it; click to pin the details.
  • Follow the return arrow from Adjust back to Observe -- the cycle runs once per student per session, not once per term.

Lesson Plan

Bloom level: Understand (L2) -- explain

Learning objective: The learner explains what happens at each stage of the ongoing progress-tracking cycle.

Before the sim (5 min). Ask a mentor to name, without looking, what the student they sat with last week has already mastered. The hesitation is the case for the cycle.

With the sim (10 min). Walk the four stages and dwell on the timing of Record. Then ask who the audience for the record is -- the answer "a different mentor next week" changes how people write.

After the sim (15 min). Run one real cycle: observe a student, record before the session ends, and have a second mentor use the row to pick the next card.

Check for understanding. Ask: "What is the difference between this sheet and a gradebook?" A gradebook records the past; this record chooses the next task.

Embedding This MicroSim

Paste this into any page of the book, adjusting the relative path to docs/sims/ for the page's depth:

<iframe src="../../sims/progress-tracking-cycle/main.html" width="100%" height="402" scrolling="no"></iframe>

Specification

The full specification below is extracted from Chapter 24: Tracking Student Data and Managing Club Communication.

Type: workflow
**sim-id:** progress-tracking-cycle<br/>
**Library:** Mermaid<br/>
**Status:** Specified
**Template:** https://github.com/dmccreary/reading-for-kindergarten/tree/main/docs/sims/reading-progress-path

Purpose: Show the repeating cycle a mentor follows to keep a student's tracked progress current, so the practice reads as an ongoing habit rather than a one-time form to fill out.

Bloom Taxonomy: Understand (L2)
Bloom Taxonomy Verb: explain

Learning objective: The learner explains what happens at each stage of the ongoing progress-tracking cycle.

Steps (circular flowchart):
1. "Observe" -- click reveals "A mentor watches a student work through a challenge card or kit during a session."
2. "Record" -- click reveals "The mentor marks the completed skill or badge in the tracking sheet before the session ends."
3. "Review" -- click reveals "Before the next session, a mentor -- often a different one -- reviews the student's row to see what's already mastered."
4. "Adjust" -- click reveals "The mentor picks the next appropriate challenge card based on what the record shows, then the cycle repeats at 'Observe.'"

Interactivity requirement (satisfied): every node has a Mermaid `click` directive tied to an infobox showing its revealed text.

Color coding: Four evenly spaced colors around the cycle, with an arrow from "Adjust" back to "Observe" to make the repeating nature visible.

Implementation: Mermaid flowchart (`graph LR` arranged to suggest a loop, with an explicit arrow from the last node back to the first) rendered in main.html with `click NodeId call showInfo("NodeId")` directives for every node.

References