Motivational Ideas

I received this feature in an email from LTS. It highlights ideas one elementary school has implemented to motivate Stride use. Your school could be the next one featured.

Benignus Elementary is Bananas for Stride 

 Brrrrrr-ing on the Winter Frenzy at Benignus Elementary!

Nothing beats the winter fun of a good old-fashioned snowball fight!  Benignus Elementary in Spring, TX (Klein ISD)  knows this to be true. That’s why for their “Winter Frenzy” school-wide Stride contest, the Top 100 students got to toss some snow on February 20!

Students were a bit confused at first, since there was no snow on the ground. However, Benignus staff used chilled, felt balls for “snowballs.” According to Holly Mason, Assistant Principal at Benignus Elementary, “The kids loved it! It was so much fun!”

      

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Learning Fun All Year Long

Benignus has been extremely creative with their school-wide Stride contests this year. In November, they held a “Turkey Trot” contest, with the top primary and secondary class winners each receiving spirit sticks and winning a spotlight on the school-wide video announcements.

Over winter break, Benignus students competed in the “Snowflake Showdown.” This time, the winning class got to host the school-wide video announcements from their classroom, and topped off their victory with a popcorn party.

We look forward to finding out what contests they will run this spring! Thank you for sharing these great contest ideas!

Weekly Incentives Motivate Students

Weekly incentives are also very successful at Benignus Elementary. On the “Stride Wall” pictured here, the Reading Specialist highlights the top class from each grade level for the week (based on Stride Reading performance).

 “Stride is hands-down the most user friendly program I have ever encountered.  The designers seem to have taken the time to see every possible challenge or question encountered by teachers.  They have created a program that fits seamlessly into our curriculum and classrooms.  Students learn while having fun, and teachers can administer prescriptive lessons or glean priceless data.” - Dede Dietzman, 1st grade Teacher, Benignus Elementary

Getting Ready for STAAR Testing

What are your strategies for using Stride to help prepare for the STAAR tests this year?

Holly Mason, M.Ed., Assistant Principal at Benignus Elementary, reports:

“As testing has gotten closer, teachers are writing TEKS-aligned quizzes and assessments. Based on in-class formative and summative assessments, teachers are also assigning specific skills in Stride to spiral back to and assist with TEKS/skill mastery.”

We Welcome Your School’s Contributions.

The everyday strides that your students and teachers are making in the classroom are the very reason Stride exists! Your ideas and achievements help us build a better program. 

PMA 3 Ends February 10

The third Progress Monitoring Assessment ends February 10.

You have the ability to run a report on PMA for both the school and the classroom level.

Running the PMA Report at the School Level:

1. Use the school administrative login to access Stride Academy.
2. Click the "Reports" tab.
3. Click the blue "Generate Real-Time Reports" button.
4. Click "View Reports."
5. From the list of reports which appears, click "School PMA Report."
6. The defaults on the next screen should be OK as is.
7. Click the red "Apply" button.

You will notice that the graph is the first page of almost two-dozen pages of data. You can click through those graphs and tables to see data for each class and data for each grade level.

My recommendation would be to share with any given teacher the data for that teacher's class and the average for the grade level as a whole. That way, each teacher gets an idea where he or stands in relationship to the rest of the pack without ranking teachers. Richard Defoor addresses this point in his PLC seminars.



Running the PMA Report at the Classroom Level:

1. Use your KCC code and password to access Stride Academy.
2. Click the "Reports" tab.
3. Click the blue "Generate Real-Time Reports" button.
4. Click "View Reports."
5. From the list of reports which appears, click "Class PMA Report."
6. The defaults on the next screen should be OK as is.
7. Click the red "Apply" button.

The resulting graph will look much the same as the school graph displayed above. Clicking through the remaining pages will reveal data on each student.