DATE:
Thursday, May 2, 2024
TO:
Elementary School Administrators
FROM:
Carolyn Gough, Administrator of Teaching and Learning
Ben Jameson, Director of Evaluation, Research and Accountability
SUBJECT:
Acadience Reading ALO Faculty Training
Beginning fall of the 2024-25 school year, the state will transition from using Amplify's mClass to Acadience Learning's ALO to administer the Acadience Reading benchmarks and progress monitoring probes. District assessment assistants will still administer the benchmarks for students in grades K-3. Grades 4-6 teachers will still be expected to administer both the benchmarks and progress monitoring probes to their classes. Testing will still take place on a touchscreen device such as a Chromebook or iPad, which means principals will need to ensure that teachers and classroom aides who administer Acadience Reading benchmarks and/or progress monitoring probes have access to a touchscreen device (see March 14th JAM memo for more information). However, the way the tester enters the data and interacts with ALO is significantly different, especially with the Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) measure (the stories).
In an effort to help your teachers transition to the new system, Evaluation, Research & Accountability will conduct a series of hybrid trainings at each of our 42 elementary schools. The in-person portion of the training will take two hours to complete. Dates and times may be selected using the ALO Faculty Training Sign-up form. Time slots will be available beginning August 12th (teachers’ first contract day of the 2024-25 school year). Because not every measure applies to every grade level teacher, the two-hour time slot will be divided into three sections:
- LNF, FSF, PSF, and NWF - 60 minutes with grades K-2 teachers
- Accessing the reporting interface - 15 minutes with grades K-6 teachers
- ORF and Maze - 45 minutes with grades 1-6 teachers
During the two-hour in-person training, we will not have enough time to practice each measure to the degree necessary to ensure that teachers are able to accurately assess their students. Teachers may desire more opportunities to practice interacting with the new system. To fulfill this need, teachers will be given access to a Canvas course that will facilitate additional practice for the measures that apply to each grade level (i.e., a kindergarten teacher would receive additional practice opportunities for LNF, FSF, PSF and NWF while a 4th grade teacher would receive additional practice opportunities for ORF). Each teacher may determine their own timeline for completing the Canvas course, which will depend on when they expect to complete beginning-of-year benchmark testing (for grades 4-6 students) and/or when they plan to begin progress monitoring. While the Canvas course is optional for teachers, it is strongly encouraged that all teachers make use of the additional practice opportunities.
If desired, principals may arrange to have classroom aides who administer benchmarks and/or progress monitoring probes attend the faculty training as well. It will be up to principals to arrange for pay outside of contract hours for classroom assistants. Additional training opportunities specifically for ESPs will be offered later this fall.
For questions about ALO and the hybrid faculty training, please contact Ben Jameson in Evaluation, Research & Accountability.
