Classworks Best Practices in High School

Classworks Best Practices in High School

Classworks individual learning paths have an extremely positive impact helping students catch up to their peers.

Important things to consider when using Classworks in High Schools: 

  1. Usage must be extremely purposeful. Dedicated time in the busy high school schedule must be set aside for students needing the intervention. 

  2. The person managing Classworks in the High School does not need to be a subject matter expert or certified teacher. Often para-pros, coaches, and guidance counselors effectively partner with the student to monitor effort, reassign as needed, and deliver the feedback that keeps students motivated to do their best. 

  3. Classworks individualizes and assigns the lessons, so the Classworks staff member’s role in the high schools is to motivate, reassign and celebrate success. 

Schedule

Classworks recommends a minimum of 30-minutes per week per subject for High School students. 

Classworks assumes that a high school student using Classworks is in need of intensive intervention or has an IEP. Additional time beyond 30-minutes weekly will have a significant impact. 

  • If a high school has an intervention or extension block, Classworks should be used and monitored closely during these periods. 

  • If there is no intervention block, set aside one day each week during standard Algebra or English classes for the students needing intervention to work in Classworks while other students work independently. 

  • It is important that students do not miss teacher instructional time for Classworks as Classworks is filling gaps from prior years, not supporting current coursework.

  • If students have access to technology at home, many high school students complete their required 30-60 minutes at home. The person managing Classworks for the high school should still ensure they are looking at the student data and reassigning instruction as needed when below 80%. 

Assessment results integrate with Classworks, automatically individualizing the learning for all students. That means that students will receive work on the exact skills they are ready to learn, often well-below grade level. Keep in mind: 

  1. Many students will receive skills to work on that are far below the coursework they are being exposed to in their regular high school classes. This is because these are skills that the assessment identified as needs work. It is important to support and encourage students as they build a foundation with these skills.

  2. Headphones are extremely important at the high school level so students can experience success with the computer without the distraction of their peers seeing the skills being mastered. 

  3. Teacher involvement and encouragement for high school students is even more important than at the younger grades. It is important to continually monitor and reassign lessons where students are scoring less than 80%. 

  4. If the student is involved in extracurricular activities, encourage, for example, their coach or the band director to ask them how their Classworks lessons are coming along. Weaving their Classworks achievement into other aspects of their school experience will help students to take their work seriously and motivate them to do their best. 

Student Visibility into Their own Progress

Student's have visibility into academic screening three times a year, weekly progress monitoring, and they see their scores on the skills they master as part of their individualized learning. This insight into their own progress is especially important to keep high school students motivated and engaged in their own progress. Students also have one opportunity to redo an activity when they score less than 80% on an activity. 

Teachers Play a Key Role as Well

Monitor: 

  • Intentional monitoring of student progress and reassigning instructional assignments as needed to meet the 80% target.  

  • Use the filters on the Individual Learning section of the website to prioritize students for support. 

  • Review the “Individual Learning Standards Mastery Report” to identify common areas of need across groups of students and adjust instruction as needed based on this data.

Conference: 

  • Discuss student performance, set expectations for success. These can be less than 30 second conversations! 

Motivate: 

  • Include Classworks performance within already existing school-wide behavioral structures.

  • Establish student-set achievement goals within Classworks and celebrate when those goals are attained.


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