Blog
Data Driven Instruction with Naiku
Premier educators such as Dr. Paul Bambrick-Santoyo (Driven By Data 2.0: A Practical Guide to Improve Instruction) and Dr. John Hattie (Visible Learning) promote the use of data in enhancing instruction and student learning. In this linked white paper, Dr. Adisack Nhouyvanisvong discusses these techniques and showcases how to implement them using Naiku.
Use ACT Quick Checks for Progress Monitoring
Naiku provides over 50 ACT Quick Checks for teachers to use for student progress monitoring in all ACT test subjects. ACT Quick Checks are short, topic-focused, formative assessments; typically 6-12 questions in length. Each Quick Check contains questions from a single topic, such as Math-Functions, so teachers can use to easily monitor progress between benchmark assessments. There are multiple Quick Checks for each topic area so teachers may continue to monitor progress through the year. These ready-to-use assessments are available in all school site subscriptions within the ACT Practice Tests … Read More
Naiku increases ACT prep support
Naiku now offers teachers additional resources for ACT prep to use with their students; resources include 15 officially released, timed ACT section tests, dozens of smaller, sub-section progress check formative assessments, and an ACT curriculum map loaded with ACT section and subsection standards associated with instructional resources. Through Naiku teachers can administer these assessments to their class, school, or district and quickly measure and view student performance by ACT standard. Progress checks can be used to quickly assess student proficiency on specific areas, and students can use the instructional resources … Read More
6 Ways Naiku supports AVID in schools
AVID – Advancement Via Individual Determination – is a non-profit that helps thousands of schools shift to a more equitable and student-centered approach. Naiku is a student-centric assessment solution that helps turn assessment into a learning experience where students are more engaged and take more ownership over their own learning. This article highlights 6 ways that teachers can use Naiku in an AVID school.
Naiku Spotlight: Grandville HS Takes PSAT Practice Test on Naiku
Grandville High School, located on the southwest side of Grand Rapids, Michigan, has been using Naiku since the start of this school year. In addition to their regular classroom assessments, Principal Chris Vanderslice wanted to look for ways to gather meaningful data to better prepare his students for the state mandated PSAT test. He also wanted to create opportunities for his 9th and 10th grade students to practice before they took the PSAT. With just over 2,000 students in the high school, giving a practice test to all students is … Read More
Naiku as an Instructional Improvement System
Readers of this blog and users of Naiku know the power of Naiku’s assessment platform. But did you know that Naiku is a comprehensive tool that can serve as your Instructional Improvement System (IIS)? If you previously used Thinkgate and are looking for a next generation Instructional Improvement System, take a close look at Naiku. A good IIS needs to include the following 6 components. Let’s take a look at how Naiku meets these needs. Standards and Curriculum An IIS should include educational content aligned to Common Core State Standards, state standards, … Read More
Dr. Todd Beach featured in SmartBlog on Education
Dr. Todd Beach, District Curriculum Lead at ISD 196, discusses in the SmartBlog on Education post “Using next generation assessments to personalize learning, drive instruction”, how the district has used next generation assessment practice to obtain standards based student achievement data to drive instruction and personalize learning. We’re proud that ISD 196 and Dr. Beach use Naiku to accomplish this!
Keeping Students Motivated
Welcome back to this week’s edition of Naiku’s Coach’s Corner It is that time of year when standardized testing is looming or may have already passed for some. I have found that after standardized testing has passed, students become more chatty and restless. Much like teachers, students can feel the year coming to an end. With the school year shortly coming to a conclusion, as teachers, we have two big challenges ahead of us: keeping students motivated and making sure we successfully cover all of our standards or learning targets … Read More
Naiku Quick Tip: Importing .txt Files
Did you know that you can import your assessments as a .txt file? A quick and easy way to create a test in Naiku is to import it from a .txt file. If you use Quia, you can export those tests out as text files. Then you can import those into Naiku. Alternatively, you can simply create a new test in this text format and import it into Naiku. Each item type has a unique two letter code that is used to create a .txt file. These codes are as follows: … Read More
Importance of Formative Assessment
Welcome back to this week’s edition of Naiku’s Coach’s Corner. This week, I want to discuss the importance of incorporating formative assessments into your classroom assessment practice. Formative assessment is a great way to measure a student’s performance during instruction, and usually occurs regularly throughout the instruction process. When we assess student learning for formative purposes, there may be no final mark on a student’s paper or summative grade in our grade book. Rather, formative assessment can serve as practice for our students, much like a meaningful homework assignment does. And the … Read More
