So many great new features! With more coming (be sure to check back)!
This modules gives you some information about how the feature works and some instructions. Most sections also have a link to some place in the Academy where you can learn more.
Live Data Points in your Educator Console
Your Educator Console shows up-to-date information on what your students are playing. Refresh the screen to see what's happening at this minute. A quick glance at the Current Level Tries lets you know how students are doing.
Remember! Have a lot of tries isn't necessarily bad -- if students are good stuck, a quick check-in is all that's needed. If the student is getting frustrated and is bad stuck, it's time for you to do some facilitating, have the student go back a level or two, or maybe take a break. Learn more at How and When to Help.
Turning Off the Journey
First, a note: You may be thinking about changing the grade-level Journey of your students and grouping them in separate classes. Of course you need to do what's in the best interests of the student, but changing the grade-level Journey may not be the best solution. In addition to the learning loss research that encourages keeping students at their grade level, we have some interesting data from over 700 4th graders. Fewer than 25% of these fourth graders were at grade-level but they all played 4th grade ST Math games. The data showed that all of the students, even those more than 3 years behind (per IReady), were able to successfully pass all the Objectives -- it just took the lower achieving students more tries. ST Math's low floor makes the content accessible and the carefully designed progressions allow students to rebuild or strengthen their schemas and make sense of math (see The Science of ST Math).
There are three options for Journey Access:
- Turned On - the student is able to click on the map and play their grade-level Journey.
- Turned off when assignments available - if there are Assignments, the Journey will not be available. When the student completes all their Assignments, they will be able to click on the map and play their Journey.
- Off - the Journey is not available. If a student has Assignments, they can play them. If they don't have Assignments, the student will only be able to play from their History (click the clock). Those puzzles will not count for their puzzle total or percent progress.
Remember that if a student is in multiple classes (see below or Focus On: Creating and Managing Classes), changing their Journey settings changes it for all the classes they're in.
Here's how it looks:
- On the Objectives tab, click Manage Journey Access.
- To change the entire class's setting, click the dropdown and choose the setting you want.
- Confirm the change by clicking Assign to All.
- You'll see the confirmation of your changes.
- There are two ways to change the Journey settings for an individual student. One is on the class's Objective tab like before. Click the Individual Learners tab. Change the settings for each student individually and click Save.
- The other way to change a student's Journey setting is on the student's page. Click the Objectives tab.
- Click the Journey Access dropdown and change the setting.
Teachers in Rostered Schools Can Create Classes
If your school sends ST Math a roster of students, you can now create "staff-managed" classes and add any students who are in your school's roster to your class.
There are a lot of great reasons to use staff-managed classes. Learn all about those reasons, more about managing them and deleting classes and students, and slideshows showing each step at Focus On: Creating and Managing Classes.
Open up your Educator Console and follow the steps:
- On your My Classes screen (Home), click the Add button.
- Name your class and choose the grade level.
- Click Create.
- From your My Classes page, click on the class you just created.
- Click the Add button.
- Search for all the students by name or MIND ID and, if there are duplicate names, be sure you choose the correct one. If students are not on the school's roster, you won't be able to add them. Contact your school office to make sure they're on the roster sent to ST Math.
- Click Add to Class.
- Your students will be added to your class.
- You'll see your new class on your My Classes page. NOTE: The small unlocked lock indicates that this class was created by you. You can't edit or delete your roster-created classes but you can edit and delete as well as add and delete students in classes you create.
Customizable Educator Console
Now with a quick click of a button, you can choose which metrics to see and in what order. Click the Change Table View button and you'll be able to reorder the metrics and hide whatever you don't care about right now.
Don't forget to scroll down and Save your changes!
At any time you can go back to this page and change your settings. The settings you choose on your My Classes page will not affect the settings of your class pages. However, the settings you choose on any of your classes will be seen on all your classes.
You can learn more about the new features of the Console at the Using Your Console module in Essentials Course 2, Monitoring Data unit.
Embedded Support
Throughout your Educator Console, you'll see little question marks. Click them and helpful information will pop-up.
Dropdown Navigation
Whenever you see a caron (like this ^ but upside down), you can click it and move laterally.
So if you're on a student's page, click their name at the top of the page and go right to another student. It works for classes, too, and for admins, it works for teachers and even schools.
Multiple Ways to Assign Objectives
Assigning an Objective to the Class from the Class Objectives tab, Assignments Sub-Tab
Click the Add button in the Class Assignments section
You can choose the grade level and all (click the top box) or just selected Objectives. Scroll down and choose if you want them added to the bottom of the list or the top (default). Click Assign Selected.
Back on your Assignments sub-tab, you can reorder or delete Assignments. You can also set the Allow student choice toggle to allow students to play any of the assigned Objectives (toggle on) or require them to complete them in order (toggle off - default).
Because of the carefully designed progressions, we recommend you leave the toggle off.
Assigning an Objective from Curriculum > All Learning Objectives
Navigate to All Learning Objectives from the Curriculum dropdown at the top of every page in your Educator Console.
Navigate to the Objective you want to assign.
Click Assign This Objective.
And then choose which class you want and whether to assign it to the entire class or select individual students.
Curriculum Updates
Our goals is that ST Math and the Journey in particular maximize learning and engagement. We accomplish that by prioritizing topics of major focus and spiraling the curriculum. We are constantly analyzing the data and getting feedback and, as a result, make changes to the curriculum. Here are some of the changes we've made for the 21-22 school year:
- New Games: 13 new games were designed and leveled into the ST Math syllabi for 3rd-5th grade. Want to play them? See below!
- Objective Reordering: The ST Math Syllabi for K6 has undergone a major objective resequencing.
- Objective Removal: Multiple objectives from the K5 syllabi were removed.
- ‘LI’ to ‘Symbolic’: ‘Symbolic’ is now used in place of ‘LI’ within our game and objective names.
- Repeating Objectives: When an objective appears in multiple grades, the grade is used to distinguish it as a separate occurrence. For example, ‘Focus Building’ is in TK but ‘Focus Building (PreK)’ is the PreK instance of the same objective.
- Assessment and Quiz Updates: A number of updates were made to the quizzes, and we reinstated the MSS 'Post-Test' diagnostic.
- Objective Descriptions: A number of updates were made to the objective descriptions.
- Field Reported Bugs: A number of field reported bugs were addressed.
| Grade and Objective Name | Game Name |
|---|---|
Equivalent Fractions | |
Arctic Volume Addition and Subtraction Arctic Volume Multiplication and Division | |
Comparison Bridge Estimation Comparison Bridge Comparison Bridge Symbolic | |
Pattern Machine Pattern Machine Advanced | |
Equivalent Fractions | |
Measuring Angles | |
Pattern Machine Pattern Machine Rule |