New Features for Back to School!
January 12, 2021
It’s that time! It’s been an unusual year but one thing that hasn’t changed -- Classworks has made some big enhancements for back to school. Many of these features are in direct response to the conversations we’ve had with our partner districts about the challenges today’s teachers face when it comes to effective interventions. Whether learning happens in classrooms or living rooms this year, Classworks is committed to lifting the burden for teachers and closing learning gaps for students.
Classworks new learning progression means that students can start working day one on their grade level instruction, even before they test. Once they take their first assessment, each student's learning progression will be adapted so they are working on exactly what they need in order to close gaps.
Progress Monitoring results now automatically inform the students learning plan on the progression. This means the progress monitoring data and the intervention units automatically assigned are very tightly coupled, providing instructional content exactly where the student is ready to learn.
This process is now completely automatic for all assessments, including the Classworks Universal Screener, Benchmark, Progress Monitoring Probes and all partner assessments like Star, MAP Growth, and more!
As part of this update, we’ve given preferential placement to skills that will be addressed on high-stakes tests. This ensures that the most important skills are covered earlier in your students’ learning progressions and mastered well-before test day.
This organization of content focuses on building a foundation of skills as well as the student’s experience while working in Classworks, making learning more enjoyable!
When clicking on the Test Data or Active ILP buttons, you’ll find a more streamlined way to look at your students’ learning path. Teachers can see important data, front and center, for the subject: overall mastery, number of skills mastered, and total time on task.
Below this is a list view of units that were recommended to the student, as well as the person or assessment that recommended them. This new layout makes it easier for teachers to toggle units on or off and reassign activities as needed. It also makes it easy to switch views between subjects, test data, badges, and student observations without closing out of the window.
In the Progress Monitoring tab, you will see a similar layout when viewing your students’ data. Additionally, the Progress Monitoring scale now matches the Universal Screener scale, allowing you to track progress of individual students relative to the whole student population. Teachers can now also see if a student’s progress is moving them towards grade-level readiness.
Classworks is making it easier to view data at the district level by introducing new reporting options for monthly data snapshots.
These visual reports show relevant data in a variety of ways: usage heat maps, Classworks usage both within the Classworks program and within Google Classroom or your LMS, and mastery scatterplots. Your C&I will help you navigate these new reports.
Universal Screener Report
We have updated the Universal Screener Report to display the Universal Screener percentile ranks in a more visible way. These ranks are extremely useful when evaluating students’ performance relative to their peers nationwide, and for determining tier placements.
Schools typically identify the students at or below the nationally normed 25th percentile as being at risk. We’ve designed our guidelines to be in line with the National Center on Intensive Intervention:
Tier I: Above 25%
Tier II - Intervention: 10 - 25%
Tier III - Urgent Intervention: Below 10%
Progress Monitoring Report
The scaled score now matches the Universal Screener scaled score, allowing you to track progress of individual students relative to the whole student population. On the opposite side of the chart, the report indicates if a student’s progress is moving them towards grade level readiness.
Progress Monitoring Reports will now include skill-specific reporting each week, giving you the ability to track student progress by specific skills, week-by-week, in their interventions.
The redesigned student observation section allows you to add comments on student behavior and performance throughout the day. These observations can be seen by all staff in Classworks, and these entries to become part of the conversation during intervention data meetings. Staff can easily add and edit observations. When appropriate, these observations can even be printed for meetings by clicking the Print button.
Dynamic grouping is traditionally a continual and time intensive process for teachers. And we think things may be even more unusual this school year.
Since Classworks has the assessment data and learning progression information already, Classworks will group students by domain using an auto-group feature.
First you will select the domain you are about to teach, then you will select ‘auto-group’. Classworks will look at each student’s assessment data, the work completed in their progression, and the work recommended in their progression to create a possible grouping for the class.
Of course, teachers have the ability to move the students as they see fit.
Teachers can also use the Print button functionality to post or list student groups in the event of a substitute teacher and utilize the notes to set group lesson expectations for the class. This can also be uploaded to your LMS so the class knows which group they are in -- wherever learning is happening.
Have questions about these updates or ready to schedule your training? Use the chat feature or connect with your C&I today!
