Education Department Release

The Education Department is pleased to announce the following to the system.

Workout Book SAT Basic Skills:

This Workout Book was designed specifically for students preparing to take the SAT.  We’ve created “Workout Book SAT Basic Skills” to address the four content categories on the test: Heart of Algebra, Problem Solving and Data Analysis, Passport to Advanced Math, and Additional Topics in Math. This WOB also contains the exercises from WOB 7 that are still applicable to the redesigned SAT, as well as exercises designed to help promote test taking skills and mental processing. This WOB is appropriate for any student who has taken either the SAT Basic assessment or the SAT Advanced assessment and will be available to the US, Canada, and UAE.  WOB 7 will remain available in the system for a period of time for students who currently have it assigned.

Test Prep Remapping:

We have remapped the SAT Basic, SAT Advanced, and ACT Skills, and ISEE Mid (US only) assessments to take advantage of the materials created for Algebra I A/B and Geometry Readiness.  Learning Plan sort order has also been updated for all of these assessments.  Please be advised that we have updated the ISEE Mid A assessment, where applicable, such that single assessment questions map to only one Prescriptive.  If you have students working on ISEE Mid Learning Plans, be sure to use v03 for their Post-Assessments.  Existing test prep Learning Plans will have to be regenerated to take advantage of these remappings.

Free Trial Curriculum:

Free Trial Curriculum has been updated in the US to now include a Level IX and Level Geometry.  This will allow for prospective students to come in and have a great Mathnasium experience with our curriculum at the Algebra Readiness/early Algebra I and Geometry Readiness levels.  These Free Trial curriculum documents may be found under “Business Documents” in Radius.

Current Projects:

In the coming weeks we will be releasing the Extension Assessments for Levels 5-7 to US and UAE users.  As was the case with the 1-4 release, we are targeting with these assessments the critical Geometry and Data/Statistics skills students encounter at those levels.  Canadian Users should expect Extension Assessment releases to correspond with Mathnasium Level Checkup availability.  An evaluation of the appropriateness of remapping Canadian Core assessments to these new US materials is underway.  We will also be going to test with our High School Geometry assessments/curriculum and have made significant progress toward release of foundational HMM assessments/curriculum.

Completion vs. Mastery

In addition, you may have noticed that the option to deselect “Mastery” in a student’s Learning Plan now exists in Radius.  Entering a completed date will default to this box being checked.  This will allow you to better convey to parents those topics that a student has worked on in the center, but you are not confident in their Mastery.  Keep in mind the rough benchmark for Mastery is 85% but could be impacted by such factors as length of Mastery Check, complexity of the material, and instructor observation.

In instances where you are giving a student extra practice to support what they are learning in the classroom you could deselect this box if you want to convey the topic was worked on, but Mastery was not demonstrated through successful completion of the Mastery Check.

Radius will give you the option upon deselecting “Mastery” to immediately re-add the material to a student’s Learning Plan.  It is a best practice to re-add and ensure all topics put in front of a student are completed to Mastery.

Curriculum Retirement:

As a reminder, Core 9 and its associated material will be retired in the US on March 1, 2018.  As we have done previously, we will evaluate all associated Prescriptives to determine which will remain available in the curriculum search.  All students should be transitioned off Core 9 Learning Plans and be Post-Assessed.

(End)