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The Effort Categories – an overview
The Ready Category
Am I Ready? An effort score of “Ready” is given to students that arrive on time, have their supplies, and are quietly listening when you begin class. Absences and Tardies can also be tracked.
If you decide Ready scoring will include “bell” work, it’s better for the students to understand that they earn their Ready pts – not that they are spotted 10 points and then lose points if they don’t meet expectations. With this in mind, wait until “bell” time is nearly up, score students who do not deserve full credit and then use the “Score all Students” button to score everyone else as “Ready.”
The Participation Category
Am I Participating? Student names are listed randomly and you can view them either in “Card” or “List” view. Regular use of this category will equalize student participation opportunities, improve individual and class focus, and help students gain confidence.
SUGGESTION: to help students feel more at ease, use the “talk to your neighbor” technique before calling on several students. Spread the spotlight by saying “Jane, what did you and your neighbor come up with?”
With the Participation category, you are scoring attentiveness not whether or not students can answer questions correctly. For students who do not have an answer or a guess, request that they repeat the question to show they were paying attention – “I don’t know what else is needed for photosynthesis” – is a high score because the student is proving they were paying attention.
The Participation category may be used to select students to answer questions, repeat directions, give an opinion, read aloud, etc. Some students have anxiety about reading in front of their peers. Tell your students to let you know if they want to be skipped for Participation/reading.
From chapter ten of Teach Like a Champion – the goal when reading aloud in class is to have one student as the primary reader and the remaining students as secondary readers. The primary reader should be changed often and unpredictably. The transition from one primary reader to the next should be done with a minimum of words. “Thank you, next is Jordan.” See more tips on this topic at our Teacher Help Center.
The On Task Category
Am I On Task? The ability of students to focus and stay on task is an important skill to reinforce. When explaining a learning task, link student effort scoring to one or more expectations. “In deciding your effort score for today’s lab, I will be watching to see if you a) work well with your group, b) enter the correct data in your data table including units, c) stay at your lab station, d) clean up the lab area.”
The Behavior Category
Am I Behaving? Using the scoring app to score disruptive behavior
SUGGESTION: change the point value to reflect the number of days you’re scoring (1 day = 10 points, … 5 days = 50 points).
The Recognition Category
The Recognition category of the scoring app is used to recognize individual students for “…recent strong effort in meeting or exceeding expectations in both behavior and learning.” Most students enjoy receiving recognition in front of their peers.
From the teacher dashboard: (1) teachers create buyback offerings that (2) appear on student portals. When students redeem a buyback
