Progress Monitoring Starts January 9

The third Progress Monitoring period begins Monday, January 9th. It runs through February 10th. Of course, no teachers should ever have to worry about when the PMA period ends. Many students will have completed PMA by the end of the first week. Progress Monitoring takes only about 30 minutes per subject to complete.

As a teacher, you can always look at the Class Roster to see who has completed PMA. A capital "M" means that student has completed PMA in math. A lower-case "m" means the student has begun the PMA. When you see "MR" (or "MRS" for grade levels that have science) up and down the page, you are finished.

At the administrative level, the default screen you see when logging in shows you the progress each class is making towards completing PMA.

A capital letter means all students have completed PMA in that subject. A lower-case letter means there is more to do. In parentheses, you see how many students are in progress followed by how many students have completed PMA in that subject. When you see all capital letters up and down the page, your school has completed progress monitoring.

When we get well into the PMA period and many students have not completed it, it tells us one thing...that class is not using the program. Since Stride automatically serves up PMA questions until PMA is complete, if a student has not completed PMA, he or she has also not done any other work in the program during school hours.

If you do not already have it on the calendar, the final PMA for this school year is March 6th through April 7th.

PMA Ends December 2

The second Progress Monitoring Assessment ends December 2.

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.

How are You Using the Stride Shop?

At Pleasant Valley Elementary School, Jaden earned enough points in Stride to buy from the Stride Shop. He chose to read to his little brother's kindergarten class.

Jaden's choice demonstrates that incentives don't necessarily have to cost the school money. It also shows that an incentive doesn't always have to be tangible.

Our students are of different ages, come from different backgrounds and have different interests. We can offer a variety of incentives and let technology, such as the Stride Shop, handle the recordkeeping.

What incentives work for you? Feel free to share a comment. What works for you just may work for someone else.

Technology-Enhanced Items

Having viewed many webinars, I know first-hand they can range from from real yawners to true gems. The one from this past Thursday was the latter.

Stride Academy is rolling out "Technology Enhanced Items." These items go beyond A, B, C, D multiple-choice questions. You need to know about them because your students will be seeing them.

To learn more about the concept, you can view  short video and also download a PowerPoint presentation which provides an explanation and screen shots. To access these resources:

1. While you are logged into Stride, click on Help & Advice in the menu.
2. Click the link to "Log-in to customer support gallery." (Just below the link is the password you will need.)
3. Scroll down to the section marked "Quick-Start Guides" (section D).
4. Look for "Technology-Enhanced Item Types PowerPoint Presentation."

PMA Starts November 7

If you teach students in the K-8 range, the second Progress Monitoring Assessment begins November 7. When students log in, they automatically begin PMA questions just by clicking on the big coin. Each subject area requires around 30-45 minutes.

Don't worry if a student does not finish in one sitting. When the student logs in next time, PMA questions resume. Another good feature is that when students go home, PMA pauses. Students may use Stride Academy, but they receive the regular Stride Adaptive Engine questions. That way, students are under your supervision during PMA.

Your help is needed to be sure all students complete PMA by December 2.

First PMA Ends Friday

The Progress Monitoring Assessment period ends Friday. For many classes, you have completed PMA quite a while ago. Your students are benefitting from the Stride Adaptive Engine and you are able to use Quiz Builder.

If your class has not completed PMA, please schedule time to finish this week.

The next Progress Monitoring Assessment begins November 7th. It's always best to tackle PMA on the front end of the window,

11 New Email Subscribers. Are Your Colleagues Subscribed?

If you are seeing this post in your email, great!

When there is timely information about Stride, you won't be left out. In the last few days, 11 additional teachers signed up for these email updates.

But what about the many teachers who haven't signed up for these updates? You could help them out. Ask your colleagues if they got this blog post in their email.

If they say "no," ask them to go to MotivatedData.blogspot.com. In the sidebar, they will see a spot to add their email address.