Mapping Growth with Parents

Earlier this year, we shared the story about the launch of piloting MAP Growth as a new diagnostic tool at Montcrest. Since that story was shared, students in Grades 1 to 8 have engaged in the first cycle of testing. A group of families were curious to learn more, so we planned an MPA speaker series session. Lisa McMeans, Director of Student Success, and I took time to respond to questions submitted ahead of time. This blog represents the responses to these questions.

Why MAP?

Montcrest has two Strategic Commitments: To Empower Personalized Learning AND Foster an Inclusive Community. Over the past two years, these commitments have helped strengthen The Montcrest Learning Ecosystem through the articulation of Learning Principles and Practices and Statement of Commitment to Equity and Inclusion.

This work relates to Why MAP as we strive to,

Be data informed in our understanding of individual student needs for support and challenge.

• What data do we already gather and use?
• How well does it support the understanding of individual learner profiles?
• What other tools are out there?

Articulate the red threads that run through the school.

• Common diagnostic tools.
• Consistent use of data to inform individual and collective learning goals.

What are MAP Growth and MAP Fluency?

MAP stands for Measuring Achievement Progress. MAP Growth is a digital adaptive testing tool that can evaluate learners’ progress in Math, Reading, and Language Usage, including conceptual understanding and skill. It consists of 40–44 questions. MAP Fluency focuses on reading fluency and decoding. It includes the option for regular benchmarking check-ins and a Dyslexia screener. While international, it is customized to our provincial context and aligned with the Ontario curriculum.

How is Montcrest using MAP?

In the pilot year, all Grades 1 to 8 students will engage in at least two assessment sessions for Reading and Math. In Grades 3–8, students also engage in a session on language usage, which includes grammar. Students in SK will engage with MAP Growth at least once this year. In the coming months, Students in SK to Grade 5 will also begin using MAP Fluency.

What does MAP Growth look like from the learner’s perspective?

In practice, the learners’ experiences look different across the school. Some grades will have whole class sessions. The space is quiet and respectful for all. In some grades or situations, individuals or small groups move to another space for the session. In other situations, teachers have committed to a fixed amount of time to engage in some questions and complete an assessment over a few sessions. A test consists of 40–44 questions. The test is not timed, so students are able to work at their own pace. Questions can not be skipped, so students are encouraged to approach challenging or unfamiliar questions by eliminating responses that don’t seem possible and making their best guess to progress to the next question.

The difference in how we approach the testing session reflects our belief that knowing and understanding learners is essential for creating the conditions for optimal learning.

Each child’s experience is unique. As an adaptive tool, MAP takes learners on a journey to determine their personal best. This means what is on the screen for one child will differ from the child next to them. MAP Growth begins with a question at each student’s grade level and adapts based on the child’s responses to questions. Unlike a traditional assessment, we anticipate students to get many questions wrong as the tool tries to find their personal best.

During the session, the Student Resources from MAP were shared to give an opportunity to see what questions are like. The image below is a sample Math question. This allowed parents to experience the range and structure of questions. These are only a sample of the thousands of questions students may meet in MAP Growth.

A disclaimer: If you visit the resource, the practice questions are US-centric, so please be aware that some of these questions would not be in the Ontario version we use in practice.

• The purpose of MAP is to understand student growth over time and align what we see in class and in other assessment tools.
• We can use whole-school data to decide what is working (e.g., resources like My Math Path and UFLI).
• MAP testing is a diagnostic tool for teachers. It helps set goals with learners and communicate student learning with families. It is also for leaders to help make decisions.
• A diagnostic tool is a way to observe what learners understand and are able to do.
• Diagnostic tools help teachers plan for learning as they understand where students are and where they need to go. These tools help us differentiate learning.

• Aligning MAP data with other observations and assessments means we best understand each child fully across more than one context or learning experience.
• The data from MAP indicates who is ready to learn similar skills or conceptual understandings or intentionally create mixed-ability groups.
• Insights from MAP assessments will be used in Parent/Teacher conversations and Reports sharing current abilities and next steps.

• No, it does not replace the role of Phych Ed Assessment.
• We provide accommodations based on student needs. This includes but is not limited to the identified accommodations on IEPs.
• MAP has built-in accessibility features (e.g. text-to-speech, line reader, answer eliminator). Many of these features are available to all students while others are options that can be ‘turned on’ for individual students.

• Piloting means we are exploring to see if this Diagnostic tool meets our needs. We may or may not continue beyond the initial year.
• Presuming we go beyond one year, we will move into the second year with increased clarity on the process of testing and increase our understanding of how the data may help us plan for learning. This would give further insight into growth over time.

• All Language Arts and Math teachers have engaged in multiple professional learning experiences. We are all learning to play with the tool to best understand the data and have the support of a MAP Account Manager when we have questions.
• MAP does not typically provide parent sessions. There are parent resources on their website, but these tend to be very US-centric, where the purpose of testing is different from that of Montcrest.

At the close of the session, we asked the parents in attendance what they now knew that they didn’t before and what they were curious to learn more about. As readers of this blog, we ask you to reflect on the same questions and reach out if you have questions we can help with!