Teachers now have a new effective tool for the challenge of teaching grammar. Vantage Learning has joined its innovative assessment platform, SPMS® (Student Progress Monitoring System) with its award winning instructional and data management resources in MY Access! through the MY Editor Modules. The command of mechanics and conventions is important for clear and engaging communication, and Vantage Learning can help teachers and students understand how MY Editor serves an aid to improve writing. By focusing on each grammar category and rule, MY Editor feedback provides the opportunity for students to think about suggestions that the grammar engine provides and consider and choose the appropriate correction. As such, MY Editor is part of a larger suite of complete solutions resources offered by Vantage.

To practice style, grammar, usage, and mechanics consider how the MY Editor Modules can help students. These tests provide additional practice for students for all of the MY Editor categories and rules and help teachers remediate the writing process. Each preloaded test (a pre and post test for the 2 grade levels) includes 24 questions for middle school and high school levels, and the tests are scaffolded at each rule level (Developing, Proficient, Advanced Proficient.) The levels that are tested will be familiar to MY Access! users because they are the same options available for setting up MY Editor feedback in MY Access!® And the rule types are also the same as those flagged by MY Editor. The test questions are authentic, composed of writing by MY Access! users, and reflect the most common errors made by students based on data from millions of submissions. Some rule types are tested at both the high school and middle school levels, but you will notice that the level of sophistication for each question will differ for the grade levels because of the questions are based on real writing from high school and middle school MY Access! submissions.

As students test, you both will be able to see results immediately in an ease to read score report that includes the correct answer and a link to instructional resources (via iSEEK) that include power points, worksheets and grammar guides with examples based on the rule type being tested. Other reports will allow teachers and administrators to keep track of student progress as well as view individual test item results so they may better inform instruction by focusing their lessons on areas that are problematic for students.

The reports not only indicate which questions and therefore rules were incorrectly answered, but what incorrect responses were most common so teachers can better understand where a student may have specific difficulty. For enrichment or remediation for the class or individuals, teachers or administrators are able to post pre and post test materials such as directions or homework assignments. In the post test materials section, we provide a Question Answer Guide for each test which explains the incorrect and correct answers, rule and examples. These test guides can be used for whole group or individual test review. And like MY Access!, reporting features allow teachers to pinpoint instruction more effectively as you see results by item, student, or rule type.

In upcoming posts, we will suggest instructional uses for the tests. We welcome your feedback or questions about the MY Editor Module. You can post your comments below.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 6th, 2009 at 2:00 pm and is filed under Because Writing Matters, Lesson Plans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.