What’s New at NWEA: Skills Pointer
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The document outlines NWEA's Skills Pointer as a solution to help educators identify and address gaps in student learning between MAP assessments. It emphasizes the tool's ability to provide individualized learning paths, detailed progress monitoring, and targeted instructional strategies. Skills Pointer aims to enhance differentiated instruction and improve foundational skills among students, ultimately guiding teachers in effectively addressing specific educational needs.
What’s New at NWEA: Skills Pointer
- 1. What’s New at NWEA? FUSION June 2012
- 2. Our Partners Need More Evidence of Student Learning Our partners use MAP to answer important questions about their students’ learning: Is every child growing? Where will they be at the end of the school year? Many partners have expressed a need for more student data between MAP assessments. They want to know: Where are my students now? What progress are we making? What skills are they missing?
- 4. Why Skills Pointer? • “I know some of my kids are behind – some are behind as much as four grades in some subjects.” • “How can I identify which of my students are falling behind?” • “How can I determine exactly what skills they are missing?” Most teachers don’t have time or ability to answer these questions – many haven’t taught what their kids are missing – or they may not have taught it for years.
- 5. Skills Pointer’s Unique Value • Rapidly expand teacher’s capacity to differentiate instruction • Quickly identifies gaps in student understanding with assessments that are skills-based, utilizing unique back and forward mapping • Delivers hundreds of tutorials and practice activities aligned to both the state standards and Common Core • Instantly monitors progress for individual students, entire classes or subject areas, school or district and provides simple, informative reports detail that detail each student’s skills mastery
- 6. Foundational Skills Foundational Skills are acquired at each grade level
- 7. What is Skills Pointer? Features unique skills-mapped, vertically adaptive assessment methodology Contributes to improved individualized instruction: Identifies foundational skill gaps for all students Creates a customized Individual Learning Path for every child, providing detailed learning objectives to help students track their progress — a roadmap to inform IEP development Presents immediate intervention objectives to bolster teachers’ individualized instructional strategies Addresses students’ specific instructional needs with targeted English and Spanish-language tutorials and activities mapped to state standards and Common Core
- 8. Measuring Student Growth Currently determined by: • periodic state and district assessments • local grade-level assessments
- 9. Vertical Strand Methodology “Vertical” Assessment • Determines the foundational skills a student is missing • Provides specific concept instruction at the foundation skill level
- 10. Helping All Kids Learn MAP identifies the goal- strand where students need assistance Skills Pointer provides a granular view of specific gaps and a plan for appropriate interventions tailored to each student’s individual needs
- 11. Skills Pointer and MAP • MAP helps identify the goal strand where students need assistance. • Skills Pointer drills into strand level MAP RIT scores at a more granular level. • The product suite can then identify students’ individual knowledge gaps from previous grades and determine the appropriate interventions needed to address each skill within each strand. • Answers the “What Next?” after MAP, giving deeper insight on specific gaps, missing foundational skills. • Clear guidance to get student work back on track.
- 12. Skills Pointer and MAP Fall MAP Testing MAP Class Report flags Teacher identifies Students assessed Skills Pointer creates students needing students to assess In Skills Pointer Learning Path. Teacher remediation with Skills Pointer reviews results and creates remediation plan Growth! Winter MAP Testing Student skills mastery Students tests again Student completes plan after plan complete
- 13. Skills Pointer Learn more at http://skillspointer.nwea.org
- 14. Thank You!
Editor's Notes
- #5: Before we get into the What, we need to ask WhyRaise your hand if you have been in this situationSkills Pointer aims to help you answer these questions
- #6: Skills Pointer helps teachers differentiate instructionThe application quickly identifies what skills students have masters, but more importantly, which skills students still need to learn in real timeSkills Pointer is packed with resources in both English and Spanish that are aligned to SS and CCThe tracking of skill attainment is instant, and reporting can be customized by individual students, classes, subject areas, and at the school or district level
- #7: Note: This slide has an animation: on click, disassembled puzzle graphic & “or missed” text loadBefore we answer the What question, let us remind ourselves that skills are acquired or missed at each grade levelSkills Pointer helps students get back to where they should be if they are behind in their grade level
- #8: Note: This slide has an animation: Level 1 bullets enter on click, Level 2 bullets are timed to enter automatically.SP is not about all standards/skills…it is about “gatekeeper skills” that all students need to move forward.SP uses a vertically adaptive methodology to drill down into which specific skills students have mastered and also which skills they have fallen behindSP creates Individual Learning Paths for each student, the goal is to get them back into Tier 1 and keep them from getting into Tier 3Once the Learning Path has been identified, the applications delivers targeted lesson plans to help students attain mastery in the skills they have not yet mastered i.e. at the end of a Math assessment, the application may have identified that the student has achieved mastery in 32 skills but failed 12 skills, in which case, remediation can be immediately started with the lesson plans provided by SP
- #9: While traditional testing models use a horizontal method that is effective fordetermining mastery of grade-level standards and accurately measuring student achievement over time, this model does not capture specific data around the foundational skills necessary to sustain lifelonglearning and realize academic success. MAP is the best measure of growth available to educators today. With the RIT score educators can then focus on the vertical assessment or skills identification to address the weaknesses that MAP indicates kids may have.
- #10: Skills Pointer uses a unique back-mapping or vertical strand methodology to provide teachers with a detailed view of all required prerequisite skills in any content strand. As the testing engine spirals up and down the standards, based upon students’ responses, Skills Pointer precisely identifies each student’s mastery of prerequisite skills and gives teachers insight into the foundational skills students need – and are missing.
- #11: As MAP serves as both a beginning benchmark and interim check to measure student growth, Skills Pointer identifies skills-gaps in student understanding, creates a customized learning plan for each child based on that data, and then provides lessons and activities targeted to build foundational skills (or provide enrichment for advanced learners).
- #12: So this is how SP fully complements MAPMAP gives you the general picture of where students need assistance, butSP takes a deeper dive into which specific Skills the student is missing or not yet masteredSP answers the “What’s Next” question giving teachers clear guidance in how to approach remediation in the problem areas
- #13: Here’s a potential usage scenario of MAP with Skills PointerNote that frequency of usage of Skills Pointer can be as often as every 2 weeks if teachers/administrators wish to do soTogether SP and MAP perfectly complement each other in getting the full educational positioning of each student, or groups of studentsAny questions?