All about iReady: From Homeschooling to Improving Test Scores
How can you improve iReady test scores? First off we are not employed by iReady nor do we receive compensation from them. We simply believe in creating the right strategies for children and parents to succeed in all environments they find themselves in.
What does it mean to have a digital classroom in this day and age? The classic debate on the effectiveness of educators in this modern age where information is widely available online continues to take stakeholders’ attention. That is why several companies have raced toward the development of programs and softwares that aim to help both students and educators meet the demands of 21st-century learners.
We cannot totally get rid of educators in the classroom, so the learning process remains to be collaborative. These companies want to provide a seamless transition between learning, and assessment that could potentially bring the learners to a higher degree of enjoyable learning. The challenge is to help learners learn without imposing pressure on them. They also want to show how to maintain the relevance of the teachers in this automated learning process. How does one make learning engaging and fun? That is exactly what iReady is all about.
iReady is a Promising Program That Can Be a Valuable Learning Resource for Children
iReady is a promising program that focuses on mathematics and reading progress. The program tailors individual and targeted instruction depending on the needs of the learner. How do they do this? The program developers term it as “data-driven classrooms,” where the accuracy of their data is seen as credible. They use this data to monitor everyone’s progress and gauge the areas where teachers need to direct their attention. The students are also being grouped based on their instruction needs.
iReady also advocates for more teaching opportunities, rather than giving students excessive evaluations or exams. The testing is reduced with the help of what they call adaptive diagnosis, where the testing phase is made fun for the students. This way, average learners are challenged and gifted students are stimulated–with enough turnaround time for accomplishing the tests.
The diagnosis then feeds ideas to the educators about what next steps or strategies to take to continuously evolve learning inside the classroom. What a great example of collaboration between the teachers and the program! The students can move at their own pace and be responsible for their own learning with the aid of the program and the teacher in the classroom. The program is a great source of reference and knowledge that students can play with.
Fair Perspective on iReady
The program’s success draws both traditional educators and homeschooling parents alike. Many parents craved the kind of instruction their children could potentially get with the availability of the program in the school or learning system where their children are subscribed to, while some still say that iReady only brought stress to their children because of the kind of tests given by the program to their children. The opinions of the naysayers matter the same way what actual educators have to say about the program.
Many of them had moments of confusion when the program rolled out for the first time. Like any other program, it takes some time to get the hang of it. Once they managed to fully understand how the program works, they said it was an amazing experience for both them and their learners. Understanding how the program works and how to best use it to improve our children’s and learners’ knowledge is important to gain success in getting into the program.
Is iReady Bad?
Despite the skeptical opinions of some, for parents of traditional schoolers, they see iReady as an effective supplementary strategy to advance their children’s learning. On the other hand, homeschooling parents think that iReady is a great way for them to be involved in their children’s learning with the aid of the available resources from the program that makes learning easier.
This perfectly fits the ideology of homeschooling. The pacing of the lessons is adjusted to the learning styles and pace of the learners. The targeted instruction provides a win-win scenario for both the children and the parents in a homeschool set-up. With the way the program addresses the learning gaps and enrichment needs of the learners, the teachers and parent-teachers are then empowered to take on an integral part of the students’ learning.
Is iReady a waste of time?
iReady is not a waste of time. It is one of many great resources that children and parents can use to improve the overall learning experience. Think of it like life, in life sometimes it is very hard to control or predict the situations you will be in, but no matter the circumstance, you must learn to thrive in those situations. iReady is a learning tool that teaches kids a certain methodology, and giving children a diverse learning environment only helps the child in the long run.
Homeschooling children is indeed challenging. Some parents who use iReady for their child’s learning were given two options from which to choose. When they avail of the program, the first option is to have the family or parents supervise their children after undergoing training sessions. The program developers ensure the parent-teachers understand what’s at stake and how everything works before letting them take the lead. They also have protocols to follow to ensure maximum success.
A Positive Perspective is the First Step
While homeschooling focuses on assisted learning, iReady encourages parents to make their children responsible for their own learning. They were discouraged from helping their children study when using the program resources. They were also taught how to interpret the data from the diagnostics to cater to the needs of their children.
The second option–that of which most parent-teachers are not fond of–is to use video conferencing software, where an actual teacher monitors and teaches the homeschooler. This may be convenient, as educators have actual training on teaching, but that contradicts the virtue of homeschooling. No matter what the family chooses, iReady believes that the participation and commitment of the family are necessary to successfully gauge their students at home.
iReady and Learning Recommendations from an Education Specialist
Kyle Swartz is an Education Specialist for Innovation Education Management (IEM), which serves several high-performing charter schools like South Sutter Charter School, Ocean Grover Charter School, and Sky Mountain Charter School. These three serve a large percentage of California Homeschoolers and Distance Learning participants.
Kyle provided some three insightful recommendations for homeschoolers and parents to draw from:
1.) Don’t rely solely on I-ready. It is as an assessment tool that has lessons built in to help students progress to the next level. Parents and children should use various resources in the education of your student and use I-ready as the “cherry on top” of their education sundae (a nice treat at the end of the day). I would give them 1 hour at the end of every school day to try and knock out 2-3 lessons.
2.) The more they use it, the more they will be equipped to do well on the Diagnostic tests and Growth Monitoring Tests. I am not saying to do ten lessons a day, but them spending time on I-ready is not going to hurt them. i.e., There is no such thing as too much. If they enjoy it and are learning from it, continue to use it. It couldn’t hurt. KEEP IN MIND that when it says “mid one or late 2,” those are the grade-level concepts they are currently working on. If they are getting 100% on everything in 1st grade, then they are more advanced than the lessons are allowing them to show right now.
3.) Don’t look at the “TOTAL SCORE”. This is just an arbitrary number that does not represent what your student does or does not know. The true learning takes place in the lessons and will show up on the growth monitoring and diagnostic tests. If they are passing the lessons with 85% or more, then they understand what they are being taught.
4 Mental perspectives to help students have better iReady scores
But how does a student get a high score in iReady? What strategies can one use to improve a score or to maintain an already impressive one? In any standardized testing, having a good mindset always sets one up for success. This mindset conditions you to think that success starts at the very beginning of your learning journey. Every effort will pile up to help launch you for success. Start strong by taking this journey seriously and committing yourself to growth. Here are some things to remember when gearing up for successful scores.
- Expect to encounter difficult lessons and questions. When faced with questions you don’t know the answer to, it is best to relax and think that this is normal. Try your best to answer the question by reading carefully, using context clues, or the process of deductions. It would help if you read lessons and questions aloud. Even if you can’t answer the question, don’t be too hard on yourself. There’s always a chance to improve as the lessons change depending on your answers to the questions.
- Commit to giving a good performance. Commitment, followed by the right mindset, spells success for anyone who puts their mind into something. Having the right attitude reinforces good reception of lessons and therefore directly affects your test scores. List your goals and what steps you must take to achieve those goals.
- Encourage parental support. The support of parents is important in success. You may ask them to prepare test targeted instructional strategies. They may even give you homework to test out your knowledge and expertise on a given topic. Their support could greatly motivate you to do good on your tests.
- Closely monitor how well you perform. When you look at your work or scores, you may have an idea of what to focus on, what strategies work for you, which lessons yield good results, and many more. This will allow you to reflect on your performance and plan out future plans to help you out.
With the help of programs like iReady, success could be guaranteed if you know what you’re dealing with. Success comes from understanding what programs you are a part of and how those programs work. It is good to take advantage of the automated interpretation of your work and progress and use the data to help yourself improve.
21 Ways to improve iReady Test Scores
Many people dread tests. Some students and parents alike think that assessments are so burdensome that they create stress.
This is especially true if the student feels like the teacher does not want to consider the learning needs of students and forgets to take responsibility for their learning.
For most standardized tests, test scores become part of the student grades. Having a high score in these assessments is crucial to the overall performance or ranking of a child. Also, tests have been criticized due to the classroom interaction time they take that could have been spent on other learning activities inside the classroom.
Perspective on Complaints of iReady
Apart from the complaints of people about tests in general, they still have good effects on the learners. Tests are ways for the teachers to gauge the learning process of the students. They could easily depend on the data gathered after every assessment and device ways to better teach topics that prove to be difficult for the learners. Teachers could make adjustments to how lessons flow.
This instills a growth mindset to the learners when their scores greatly improve with the help of teachers who actually gauge their strategies in the classroom. The focus then shifts from assessments to the learning experiences.
So how does one yield better scores during assessments? Here are 21 ways to improve assessments that give you a strategy on how to handle assessments and make you realize how each strategy improves learning and teaching. These are things that both the teacher or the learners could do.
21 ways to improve on Assessment test
3-2-1 takeaways:
After every lesson, practice the 3-2-1 method. This works by listing down three things that you’ve learned, two things that you want to explore more, and one question that you have in mind. This way, the learner could monitor the progress and make learning and review more meaningful.
Circle talks:
This works when in a group. A topic is to be assigned to the group of students and each member of the “circle” takes turns in explaining what they know and what they think about the given topic. This could be a source of information for everyone and could open the perspective of the members in the circle.
Cue cards:
Cue cards work like question and answer portion. Cards must be prepared and each card contains a random question about a topic. Each time a card is drawn, the student must answer the question according to what he knows and what he remembers from the discussions.
Go by sections:
Learning everything could be overwhelming and traumatizing. Make the learning process easier by sectioning or listing down subtopics and studying them one by one. Start from a section first before going for the whole thing! This could provide a more focused learning strategy.
K-W-L:
This is somehow similar to the 3-2-1 method only that the answers are to be written in a table. Each column contains a header that says ‘what I know about the topic,” “what I want to know,” and “what I learned.” This is a good way to look at a topic and decide whether or not learning took place.
Learn what works:
Evaluating strategies and sticking to the ones that work is a good thing. When the learner identifies his or her strength, that could be used to his or her own advantage. Is the learner good with memorizations? Is he a visual learner? Does it help if he writes down lessons? The list could go on and on but sticking to what works, could greatly improve student scores.
Learning logs:
Logs work like a journal. Each learning session, the student writes an entry to the learning log and talk about what lesson he or she learned for the day. This reinforces the repetition process of learning and could become a meaningful way a learner remembers the lessons as well.
Lecture notes:
In most cases, the information could best be retained if the learner actually wrote the information down on a paper. They say that writing lectures activate the visual learner’s interests and make the information easier to be remembered.
Mini quizzes:
Setting up 10-item quizzes at the end of each learning section could help the student retain knowledge. By asking the questions the learner starts to think about the lesson and he actually remembers the information easier because the critical thinking aspect gets activated especially when questions are rephrased.
Mnemonic devices or acronyms:
Recitation becomes easier when the information or details are turned into mnemonics or acronyms. This is fun and stimulating all at the same time! Do you want to learn about basic mathematical operations? You got PEMDAS to thank for! Make a mnemonic for PEMDAS and you will surely never forget what it is all about!
Open-ended questions:
Avoiding yes or no questions greatly stimulate a student’s brain. By asking what, when, where, how, or even why, the student is given an opportunity to explain and reason out why, or how something works. Being a critical thinker requires higher-order thinking skills that could be achieved by asking open-ended questions. The association skill is also honed by these.
Paraphrasing and summarizing:
Remembering lessons verbatim does not work all the time. Summarizing or paraphrasing ensures that the learner does not only memorize information but also understands such information. No matter how information is reworded, the student could identify what is it that is being talked about.
Peer evaluation:
Asking for people’s help and comments brings an aspect of realization on the side of the learner. Asking for honest opinions about a student’s performance from a peer is important. By asking how one performs or asking a peer to check another student’s understanding, the learning process becomes more effective.
Read aloud:
This has many advantages. For one, when a student reads aloud, he or she could easily identify if the sentence he or she is reading is a question, a statement, or anything else. The key to understanding is how a sentence is constructed and what it meant. Also, for most, reading aloud is a strategy for remembering details easier.
Reflection strategies:
Writing a reflection after every lesson makes the student analyze the topic even better. This activates some questions that need to be addressed to be able to understand a topic better. This also allows for a child’s train of thoughts to flow in the paper.
Replenish!
It is okay to rest from time to time. Taking breaks during reviews and lessons help the student refocus and feel energized. Drinking water or perhaps eating could boost one’s motivation too.
Rest:
Like replenishing the body, having nap times or moments of silence helps the student regroup his or her thoughts. This also resets the body and the mind so the learner feels more refreshed to take on any lesson.
Study groups:
Having a group that supports your interests to study helps. This way, the members could quiz each other out, ask questions, set up mini-lectures, and many more. This group could also be a source of strategies for learning and retaining knowledge.
Think-pair-share:
Finding a partner and verbally expressing what you think about a topic proves to be beneficial. It’s like having a conversation with someone about the lesson and each takes turns in stating what they think about the said topic.
Use of analogies:
Analogy prompts are powerful ways to improve higher-order and critical thinking skills of students. The process of association, analyzation, and reflection gets to be activated during this process.
Varied teaching strategies:
Experimenting teaching strategies help add flavor to the learning process. When things get stiff, incorporating a new strategy could help change the learning mood. While humans are creatures of habits, when it comes to learning, spicing things up and being creative greatly helps one improve his or her performance.
We must remember that the ultimate end goal is learning. For students, they must look at assessments as a springboard to becoming better learners. For teachers, they should look at assessments as opportunities monitor the growth of their learners.
This is also an indicator of the learners’ nature of learning and could reveal the difficult aspects or lessons so the teachers could adjust their strategies. Empowering both the learners and the teachers about assessment knowledge could become a powerful way to improve the entire learning experience.
Great Education Links
Innovation Education Management
Is iReady dangerous?
That is a highly ambiguous term in referencing iReady. iReady is simply a learning assessment tool that you can use with a various other online learning platforms such as Khan Academy, Mathletics, ABC Mouse and others. Use iReady as a tool in the suite of online learning platforms. Your child will come well rounded and better off having experience different learning methods.
Is iReady a waste of time?
iReady is not a waste of time but rather time well spent on a different learning platform. Like life students must be able to adapt and learn in different environment.
What is iReady?
The i-Ready Assessment Platform is an adaptive assessment that changes its questions to meet your child or student's needs.