Tag: Growth Oriented

Sophia Thomas, teacher, shares how data from online assessments helps her make faster and efficient decisions about supporting students.

Transcript: Sophia Thomas: the fact that there is this immediate feedback that kids get. Without this model I could not do that with the effectiveness that’s happening. It would take me a day or two just to grade, exit, take it by hand or grade formative assessments by hand and figure out that the whole class is struggling with this thing. Now I can look at the data and I can see they’re all struggling with are fractions on the number line? This is something I can do as a whole group.

Sophia Thomas, teacher, explains how she and students use diagnostics to make sure students don’t waste time on topics they’ve mastered.

Transcript: Sophia Thomas: When students start, I give a diagnostic. The algebra teacher gives a diagnostic. Sometimes they just weren’t focused on the day they were doing the MAP test or whatever. We try to figure it out from very early through our diagnostic that this kid really doesn’t need this class. That happens. The way the diagnostic works is when they take it there are certain assignments they can skip based on their performance on the diagnostic. If you’re proving that you already mastered this stuff, there’s no need for you to go spend time doing that. So, you get to skip that. It just speeds up how you’re moving on the dashboard. The kids that are higher are really just pushing themselves and benefiting in a big way.

This a sample Unit To Do list, which a student fills out after completing a diagnostic assessment.

Overview of diagnostic, as well as reflection, analysis, and student action.

LPS initially built and tested their Academic Numeracy course in Google Sheets, and many of those practices have been captured as Blended and Personalized Learning Strategies. LPS has worked with Gooru to create Navigate Math, a free tool any school can use. These screencasts cover strategies that can be applied through both Google Sheets and Navigate Math, though the latter is used in screencasts for demonstration purposes.

Navigate Math provides teachers with dashboards where they can see student progress. Sophia Thomas, teacher, shares how she uses this dashboard during class to monitor where each student is in their progress against objectives and units.

Transcript: Sophia Thomas: I use a teacher dash that has the information embedded by units. I can see how many students are still in unit three versus how many are in unit four. Who is in unit five? Who is ready to move on based on their percent completion? I can also see how students are doing on specific assessments. There’s that data if I want to check out the assessment on equivalent fractions for all the kids who are in unit three. How are they doing on that quiz? I can do that as well. The planner that I was talking about gives me a sense of who’s doing what? My homework list also gives me an idea. That’s not embedded in the teacher dashboard. That’s just an additional thing that I came up with. It also gives me a sense of what they are doing outside of school at this point in time. It’s just a combination of all those things. All of that is actually online. It’s embedded in the teacher dashboard.

Students select a “to-do” at the beginning of each session, which shows up on the teacher dashboard. Sophia Thomas, teacher, explains how she monitors progress using this tool.

Transcript: Sophia Thomas: Once they hit to-do, it puts it on my teacher dashboard. I can see who has done it and who has not. I can call people out. If people actually didn’t decide to put it on the to-do list but they want to work anyhow. I let them know it’s important for me to have a sense of what’s going on with them, where they’re at. That’s important information for me. I can use my planner to say I noticed you have not set up your to-do list yet. I need to know what you’re working on. Go ahead and do that for me.