Skills Benchmark Best Practices

NoRedInk Skills Benchmarks are designed to give teachers across a school or district the data they need to meaningfully drive instruction throughout the academic year.

If your team has decided to leverage NoRedInk Skills Benchmarks, check out the following best practices to learn how to best utilize a Skills Benchmark with your students!

Administration Best Practices

While teachers are often familiar with using benchmarks to measure student growth, there are a few best practices that NoRedInk has seen teachers employ that help the process run smoothly!

1. Find the time: Typically, administrators create a 2 to 3-week window for the Benchmark to be administered and completed. Plan to administer your Benchmark early in that window so any absent students can make up the work before the window closes. 
2. Familiarize students with NoRedInk: Before you administer your Benchmark, have students log in. Consider assigning a Fluency and Fun Quick Write to help students get comfortable with the site.
3. Set expectations with students: Many students experience anxiety when approaching content they might not know. Before students begin the Benchmark, let them know that the assignment is meant to help you learn more about their areas of strength and growth so you can support them throughout the year. 

Responding to Benchmark Data

Benchmarks are designed to include a variety of high-priority topics that include standards-aligned writing skills. When reviewing Benchmark data, you'll be able to evaluate the following:

• Class-wide averages allow you to see how students did overall on the Benchmark.
• Topic-specific data allows you to see how students did on individual topics. This data will be the most useful as you plan for your instruction.

After choosing a specific topic to review, you'll be able to see which students fall into each of the four proficiency bands. This information can help you determine how you want to approach these concepts throughout the school year.

Some questions to consider while reviewing topic-specific data:

• How might I use this data to differentiate support for my students?
• How does a student's proficiency impact how long teaching this concept might take?
• How can I use this data to group my students/assign material for future lessons?

💡 Want to learn more about how to use the data from your NoRedInk Benchmark to develop key skills in your classrooms? Check out our pre-recorded webinar!

Provide regular practice on the skills identified from the Benchmark results, rather than a short burst right before the next one.

To strengthen the targeted skills, teachers can:

1.  
   1. Use premade Lessons and Tutorials to introduce or review skills aligned to Benchmark needs.
   2. Assign consistent Practice on the targeted Benchmark skills.
      • For best results, teachers should assign at least two aligned Practices per week, spread across the available weeks between Benchmarks.
      • Teachers can locate aligned Practice Topics and Building Modules in the Assignment Library by searching for the Benchmark topics.

 

💡 Tip: Teachers can use NoRedInk's Skill-Building Modules to differentiate instruction based on students' proficiency level.

3. Optionally, assign Skill-Building Quick Writes to have students apply the skills in their writing.
4. Monitor student progress on these assignments through the Mastery tab of the Student Data page.

Additional Resources

• Learn about Skills Benchmarks
• How to Assign a Skills Benchmark