Quantile® Teacher Assistant Supports Differentiated Math Instruction

  

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Our friends at MetaMetrics, who last month gave us an article on Quantile^® Knowledge Clusters, here describe the value of the Quantile Teacher Assistant in planning out math instruction.

The Quantile^® Teacher Assistant utilizes The Quantile Framework for Mathematics to provide teachers with a practical tool for differentiating mathematics instruction. The Quantile Teacher Assistant has information about the QTaxons associated with teachers’ own state standards. More than 23 state standards and the Common Core State Standards have been aligned with the Quantile Framework, and new states are added each month. Teachers can use their state standards to access the knowledge clusters and the free resources that are associated with each skill. 

With the Quantile Teacher Assistant, teachers first identify the state, grade and standard they plan to teach. Based on this information, a three-tiered page of the QTaxons related to that standard is presented, with the focus QTaxon(s) listed in the middle column. Surrounding the focus QTaxon(s) are prerequisite QTaxons in the left column, supplemental QTaxons below the focus QTaxon(s), and impending QTaxons in the right column:

• The focus QTaxon(s) describes measurable skills connected with the chosen standard that are in the learning frontier of a student. The student is prepared for instruction in the skills associated with the focus QTaxon(s).
• Prerequisite QTaxons represent skills that must be learned before the student can fully understand the focus QTaxon skills. Prerequisite QTaxons can be used to identify extra support for students who are not at the level of the focus QTaxon(s).
• Supplemental QTaxons describe topics that will support or enrich the skills associated with the focus QTaxon(s).
• Impending QTaxons represent skills that extend beyond the focus QTaxon(s) and can be used to provide a challenge and breadth to students who have already received instruction and experienced success with the focus QTaxon(s). 

By clicking on “(More)” after each QTaxon description, a teacher can access additional teaching resources for each QTaxon, such as activities and worksheets, web-based games and instructional videos, and key vocabulary words.

An additional feature of the Quantile Teacher Assistant is the ability to use the Quantile measures of students in a class to identify their likely success with an identified set of QTaxons. On the QTaxon display directly above the focus QTaxon is a bar with two sliders. The sliders can be moved to the left or right to capture the range of students’ Quantile measures. This range determines the color of the QTaxon boxes. Yellow/orange boxes identify the QTaxons that are within the range of the students’ Quantile measures. Green boxes identify the QTaxons that represent the skills that are below the students’ Quantile range and describe skills they can likely use in problem-solving situations. Red boxes identify the QTaxons that are above the Quantile measures of the students’ ability levels. These skills will be great enrichment to challenge the learners who can move forward through instruction quickly. 

The Quantile Teacher Assistant takes the guesswork out of differentiating instruction in today’s diverse mathematics classrooms. By using the Quantile Teacher Assistant, teachers no longer need to search the internet for resources to ensure they reach all learners. The Quantile Teacher Assistant provides teachers with multi-leveled assistance for teaching the entire math curriculum with numerous resources that include lesson plans, worksheets, video tutorials, demonstration tools and worksheets.

Photo credit: http://qta.quantiles.com