Monday, October 23, 2017

Progress Monitoring Assessment Window Extended Through Tuesday

I received word on Friday that the final day for PMA 1 has been extended until Tuesday, October 24. For schools that still have students yet to take PMA, this extra two days provides an unexpected opportunity. Remember, PMA is given in K-8th grade. There is no PMA for Algebra 1, Geometry, etc.

For students who have started the first PMA

Here is an important point to understand about PMA. When the PMA period ends, it a student has not yet begun PMA, he or she is out of luck. However, if the student has started PMA, the program allows that student to finish even after the PMA period is over.

What that means is that the critical thing is to have any student who has not started PMA to get at least one question answered by Tuesday. Then, you can finish...hopefully very soon.

Why the whole thing should be a non-issue

Many of you are going to be saying, "PMA 1? Didn't we do that over a month ago?"

Yes, you did...or at least most did. Since PMA is automatically served up to students when they log in, the program takes care of that requirement for you.

PMA takes about 30 minutes for Reading and 30 minutes for Math. The only way for a student not to have completed PMA would be for the student to have used Stride less than an hour cumulatively between September 4 and now.

In many classrooms, PMA started September 4 and students had completed it by September 5. The design of the grant is for Stride to be use extensively.

The next PMA starts November 6.

Best practice

Best practice is to look at the PMA windows and within the school set a fairly narrow window during which your school will administer PMA. For schools which use the program daily, this part takes care of itself.

Since a student must complete PMA before doing any other work in the program, a student who has not completed PMA would not get a teacher-made Quiz Builders, the Stride Adaptive engines, or questions geared to teacher-selected standards. So, doing PMA early allows teachers to give feedback and make decisions about instructions based on overall performance on various standards.

If your students are still doing PMA 1,here is a suggested plan:

  • Schedule time to complete PMA 1 What gets scheduled gets done.
  • As soon as the last students completes PMA 1, look at the Class PMA Report. Examine the standards you have taught but yet students performed poorly. Decide which ones you may want to reteach between now and November 6. 
  • Let students know how they performed on PMA 1. The Class PMA Report gives you this information.
  • When you complete PMA 2, look especially at the standards you retaught to see what improvement was made.