How to Accommodate Special Needs/Education and Exceptional Students' Learning Needs Using USATestprep

Whether your student needs enrichment and accelerated learning or a gradual and strategic learning pace, USATestprep offers teachers and parents a variety of options to meet every student’s pace of learning.

Accommodations

• Creating Assessments
  • Build Your Own
  • Pre-Built
• Videos
• Assignments
• Printable Resources
• Site-Wide Activities

Tier 2&3 Intervention

• Tier 2 Intervention
• Tier 3 Intervention

Personalized Student Learning

• Assessment Results & Custom Remediation
• Progress Report Student Dot Rank
• Individual Reports
• Instant Self-Remediation
• Green Dot Challenge

1. Accommodations:

Testing and classroom accommodations offered by USATestprep include:

Creating Assessments

• Reduce answer choices from 4 to 3 in Step 1 (four answer choices will still be shown, but one will be eliminated)
• Select questions by DOK or difficulty level in Custom mode (Step 2)
• Create an assessment to meet the majority needs of your students. Then create a duplicate (using the Options menu on the Assessments tab) and edit the settings to accommodate specific learning needs.
  • Build Your Own
  • Pre-Built

Videos

• View transcripts for all instructional mini-lessons

Assignments

• Difficulty level for practice questions (beginner, random, and advanced)
• Three settings: multiple attempts, minimum score requirement, and retry missed items only

Printable Resources

• Larger font size options
• Increase spacing between questions
• Assessments can be printed if needed

Site-Wide Activities

• Spanish translation is available for practice questions and vocabulary -- refer to the pink "es" icon.
• Spanish translation is available for USATestprep generated tests and assessments (if allowed in the settings) -- refer to the Español link at the top of the test/assessment.
• Audio read-aloud is available for all questions, answer choices, and passages -- refer to the speaker icon. Text-to-speech may be disabled for assessments only.
• Ability to eliminate and reactive answer choices.
• Students have a highlighter tool for assessments and USATP generated tests.

• Assessments and assignments can be created at various difficulty levels. For assigned practice questions, choose between beginner, random, and advanced. For assessments, custom mode allows you to sort questions by low and high difficulty.

Download the Accommodations PDF

2. Tier 2 & Tier 3 Intervention:

USATestprep supports students who need more targeted and individualized interventions.

Tier 2 Intervention

• USATestprep's pre-built (basic mode) or custom assessments, along with our integrated item bank, provide the flexibility to administer diagnostic, formative, and summative assessments to continually measure student progress and drive instruction in the classroom.
• Class progress reports display data for individual students to represent each student's mastery level according to every standard.
• Change the date range to track when interventions were put into place and whether a student is responding to intervention
• The Remediation area provides actionable data and allows you to easily assign practice in individual areas of weakness (determined by the lowest-scoring standards per student) or areas of weakness based on the overall class's needs.

“My favorite feature is the data analysis we get with the standards. The platform takes all of the information, not just from the assessment test but from all the activities, so we get a really clear understanding of where students are struggling or need additional support.” -Connie Morris, School Psychologist at Georgia School for the Deaf

• Multiple activity assignments can be scheduled for a specific date range. All assignments are aligned to your state standards and can consist of multiple activity types, such as practice questions, vocabulary sets, performance tasks, instructional videos, puzzles, and content-based games. Minimum score requirements, multiple attempts, and the option for students to retry their missed items are all available settings when generating assignments.

Tier 3 Intervention

• Classes can be shared with an intervention/support teacher for progress monitoring.
• Self-directed learning can be done by the students at any time through the student portal and is often used as part of intensive instruction in specific areas of need.
  • Students have access to a wealth of resources to improve their proficiency.
  • Students can work through a variety of exercises at their own pace in order to improve their Dot Rank and ultimately solidify their understanding of a concept.
• When building an assessment, create it for the majority needs of your students.
  • Then duplicate the assessment and swap out questions for less rigorous ones -- or edit the settings to reduce answer choices. You'll have a similar assessment covering the same standards, but the assessment will be tailored for specific students' needs.

Download the Tier 2 & Tier 3 Intervention PDF

3. Personalized Student Learning for Both Special Needs/Education and Gifted Students:

Teachers rely on USATestprep to match the learning pace for students who need additional time to master the subject matter, or for students capable of accelerated learning.

Assessment Results & Custom Remediation

• After students have completed an assessment, go to the Remediation tab of your results to quickly push out individualized remediation.
• Assign practice questions to your students based on their lowest-scoring standards for the assessment. Look for the "Assign Average Weaknesses" and "Assign Individual Weaknesses" links at the very top of the tab.

“I started working on our assessment program in 2007 and I was looking for useful tools to assist with benchmarking. The school was already using USATP in one area, and I liked that it offered built-in remediation. We originally started with it for our high school students but now we use it for all grade levels.” -Connie Morris, School Psychologist at Georgia School for the Deaf

Progress Report Student Dot Rank

• Periodically pull up your class progress report to see how students are progressing by standard. Click on the "Student Dot Rank" tab to view each student's strengths and weaknesses.
• Use the Filters link to adjust the date range and types of activities included. For numerical data, click the "Show Score Details" checkbox and export if needed. Click on any dot to assign practice.

Individual Reports

• On the Student Dot Rank tab, click any student's name to view his/her individual progress report. Useful for any type of meeting where standards-based data is required, this progress report reflects what the student can see in his/her account as well. Total question count(correct out of attempted) is shown in parentheses to better gauge whether it's an accurate measure of proficiency.

Self-Remediation Available Instantly

• As soon as students finish any activity or assessment, they will see their overall grade, along with their scores by standard.
• For any standard with less than 70% mastery, students can click on a pink exclamation point to watch an instructional mini-lesson video, review the vocabulary terms, and complete a set of practice questions.

Green Dot Challenge

• The Green Dot Challenge is perfect for students at all levels! You can define what goals you want students to work on over time and get scaffolded practice, moving in an order that helps them master each standard.
• Students can navigate to any of their subject area pages and work independently. Set specific parameters and learning targets for how many (or in which) standards a student should earn green dots.
• As students earn green dots, the Green Dot Challenge will evolve into a Stars Challenge (a green dot plus all activities completed for a standard).
• Students can choose between two ways to calculate their Dot Rank -- either based on their best practice question score or all activities -- using the toggle on the right side

Suggested order based on teachers’ classroom experiences:

1. Video mini-lessons to activate prior knowledge
2. Vocabulary to become familiar with the academic language
3. Practice questions to measure understanding
4. Performance tasks to apply knowledge in a different way

“Multiple choice with an adjusted number of answers wasn’t exactly what my son needed. He’s more of a visual learner. With USATestprep, his teacher would assign him performance tasks which offers a drag and drop feature and by doing so he could focus on the same standards with the rest of his class, but with a task that matched his specific needs. His teacher loved the fact that she could adjust the rigor and cater to his IEP.” - Special needs parent

Download the Personalized Student Learning PDF

Other Articles to Read on Special Education and USATestprep:

One Indiana Teacher Increases Her Special Education Students' Confidence for ILearn Testing

USATestprep Values Long-Term Partnership with Georgia School for the Deaf