Assessment with a Growth Mindset

I had my classes take the first official assessment of the year.  This assessment included all of the TEKS that we have covered so far:

I will be using the information, not just to assess with a grade, but to monitor student growth.  A few weeks ago, I held a mini-conference with each student.  We looked at the score the student achieved on their 4th grade math STAAR.  I talked with them about setting a goal of +10.  I would like my students to show a GROWTH of 10 percentage points (this equates to 6-7 additional questions correct).  My students unanimously thought this was quite reasonable!

To help them see where they could "find" those 10 extra points, we looked at the four math categories and their achievement in each category.  We did this also to determine the areas of most growth potential.

Since then, we have been making a bar graph (online) using their Countdown to STAAR spiral reviews.  This bar graph houses all of the TEKS for each of the four math categories.  Each Countdown to STAAR question also names the TEK being reviewed.  Students use this number along with whether they correctly answer the problem to create the graph.   Since each student knows their area(s) of growth, they know to monitor the bars within that category to ensure that fewer and fewer problems are answered incorrectly.  

We will be adding the same data from this assessment to their bar graphs as well, so that they can evaluate their own progress.  I am working very hard to have my students understand that making mistakes is "ok" and that we are more interested in "growing" our brain, than being the perceived perfect math student.