Math Benchmark Assessment

Time is running out to assign the Math Benchmark Assessment. This assessment must be assigned before February 1st. If your kids can't take it before that time, it will still be available if you get it assigned before February 1st. 

Take a look further down this page to find the instructions on how to assign this assessment. If you have any problems, contact your project leader for assistance.

Have you checked the reports lately?

Both of Skills Iowa's programs, Assessment Center and Skills Tutor have full suites of reports that allow teachers and administrators to know where students have strengths and weaknesses in their academic progress. Using the programs without using the reports gives your students an opportunity to discover where they have success, but if you don't know that as well, the process is incomplete. Remember, it's Assess, Analyze, Act. The reports are the Analyze part of Skills Iowa.

Search this blog for Reports, and you will find several articles about how to use the reports that are included in each program. You can also contact your project leader if you need more help.

Bad Weather Plans

Recently, we have been experiencing some inclement weather that has prevented school from proceeding as usual. At these times, you might want to encourage your kids to work on Skills Iowa.

Students can always work independently on the Practice Quizzes and Skills Resources in Assessment Center, or, they can work on Skills Tutor lessons if you have assigned lessons to them. Remind them that these resources are always available. If you have questions about using the Practice Quizzes or the Skill Resources, contact your project leader.

Short Cut to a Student Performance Report

If you are looking for a fast way to get a look at how an individual student is doing on one or more assessments, here is a fast way to do it.

Log in to Assessment Center. Click on the class you want to use. On the main page for that class, there is a list on the right hand side. Click on the name of the student you would like to get information on. Next, there will be a list of assessments you have given that student. Check the assessments you would like to have shown in the report, and then click on the "Show Report" button below the list of assessments.

What will result is a break down of the student's performance on the skills tested.

It's a quick way to take a look at how one of your kids is doing.

Skills Iowa and ELL Students

Can Skills Iowa help with ELL students?

The short answer is: maybe. If you have high school level Spanish speaking students who struggle with English, some of the high school level lessons will speak portions of the lessons in Spanish. To do this, you must log in to Skills Tutor directly rather than using the link from Assessment Center. To do this, go to: www.myskillstutor.com  or click the link in Assessment Center for Skills Tutor, and once there, click the "Log Out" command on the left.

In either case, you will now need a site ID to log in to your school's site. If you don't have this, your project leader can provide it for you. Just send an email request for that information if you need it. You will also need to click the box below the log-in info which states: Play audio in Spanish (when it is available). 

If you have elementary level  Spanish speaking students who are just learning English, you might find the Beginning Language Arts and Beginning Math lessons helpful. These lessons can be accessed just as you would any other other Skills Tutor lesson, but before clicking on the start button, the student should click on the link which states: Esuche el audio en Español. The lesson then will have the audio in Spanish and the text in English.

Please let your project leader know if you have any questions about using Skills Tutor with your ELL students.

Time for some review...

It's easy to assume that the people who have been trained have an understanding of the Skills Iowa programs, but the training happens pretty fast, and it happens at a time of the year that you have a lot on your mind. So, with that in mind, let's review the purposes of each of our programs.

Assessment Center

Assessment Center is a program which is used to create multiple choice assessments which can be taken online or offline. When taken online, these assessments are graded automatically and the results are broken down by performance in each of the skills. The reports can show you how a class is doing on a given skill or set of skills or you can look at individual students to see where there are gaps in understanding. The testing can be done at any grade level from 3rd through 12th in Reading (ELA), Language Arts or Math. When this program is used for formative assessment, student achievement can be raised dramatically when coupled with judicial usage of the reports and an eye toward remediation. Multiple assessments can be made over the same subjects.

Skills Tutor

Skills Tutor contains pretests, interactive tutorial lessons, quizzes, posttests and problem solving lessons in reading comprehension, math, language arts, science, information skills, workforce readiness skills and vocabulary. There is only one lesson per skill at a given grade level. The lessons are divided into general performance levels. Level LL is for a lower level third grade reader and is only used in Reading Comprehension. The other levels are A: 3rd/4th grade, B: 5th/6th grade, C: 7th/8th grade and lessons such as Reading with no level behind them which are created for high school level students. Additionally, at the elementary level, Beginning Language Arts and Beginning Math are offered for struggling students.

There is a full set of reports that allow teachers and administrators to monitor student performance from an entire school view to the view of an individual student.

Skills Iowa

Skills Iowa is the name of the project. Each school is assigned to a project leader who does the training and support for that school. Typically, each school has a refresher training or an initial training at the beginning of the school year, and then follow up training sessions are offered to schools as they need them. The project leaders are also available to answer questions about the use of the programs and to help the schools and their teachers in utilizing the programs. 

Skills Iowa suggests using the Assess, Analyze, Act model. Teachers can Assess in Assessment Center, Analyze there with the reports and Act using Skills Tutor.

Questions

If you have questions, please contact your project leader or Susie Olesen, the project director.

January Math Benchmark Tests are Available

It's January, and as promised, the second math benchmark is ready for you to administer to your kids. To find it, you must log in to Assessment Center and choose the class in which you want to administer the test. Once you are there, click on the Assessments link. By default, the new page will have a search window available for you. Enter the words Skills Iowa and click the search button (note: hitting return or enter will not do the same thing). Your search should result in an assessment named: Skills Iowa Grade X Math Test 2.  If the assessment does not show up for you, you may have to check the settings in "Class Details". If you do not have the math level for that class set in the last set of settings on that page, the assessment will not be available. You can add it to the settings, and then save your settings and search again.

This assessment is a good mid year check up and can be compared to the beginning benchmark assessment if you administered it. You can also use this one to compare to the assessment that will be offered in May.

Let us know if you need help.

Do you have any questions?

This blog has tried to answer a lot of the questions that come up when our project leaders visit schools, answer phone calls and read emails. If you have questions that haven't been answered, and you think the answers would be good for everyone, why not hit the comment button and ask away. We'll try to come up with the right answer to each and every question.

Let us know. 

Welcome back!

Happy New Year!

Welcome back from a well deserved break.  Hopefully, you are rested up and ready for school. 

If you are pondering how to get things started, you may want to think of some review assessments in Assessment Center that will get kids thinking about skills that have already been covered in the year. It only takes a few minutes for you to put this assessment together and only a few minutes to look at reports that can give you a great deal of information about which skills your students have mastered, and which skills still need some work.

You can also set up activities in Skills Tutor to address those skills that individual students need to review. Just click the desired activities, assign them and let the kids know they are there.

If you have forgotten how to get these activities going, check out the Skills Iowa website at www.skillsiowa.org. There are quick reference guides there that will take you through the process for both programs. If you need more help, contact your project leader. We'll be glad to help.