What is i-Ready?

i-Ready is an assessment and instructional tool that has two primary features:

• Computer-adaptive universal screener assessment for math and ELA 

• Online lessons and practice based on students’ assessment results

i-Ready:

• Determines each student’s grade-level proficiency based on state and national standards

• Provides clear reports that give teachers and school leaders an understanding of their students’ specific strengths and areas of need. See below for an overview of some of the i-Ready reading reports that are available:

  • Class diagnostic results report

  • Student diagnostic results report

  • Class instructional groupings report

  • Student growth report

  • Class growth report

• Provides suggested next steps for instruction and PDF Tools for Instruction lesson plans for teachers to use during individual, small-group, or whole-class instruction

• Is research-based and has strong evidence showing that it is a valid, reliable, and predictable assessment

• Places students into online learning lessons and practice based on their performance on the assessment

i-Ready is made by a company called Curriculum Associates that is headquartered in Billerica, Massachusetts. You can take a virtual tour of i-Ready.

How do teachers and students access i-Ready?

Teachers and students access i-Ready through Clever. Clever is the online portal for edtech and handles two functions for i-Ready: 

1.  Class Rostering - i-Ready pulls class rosters from Clever, which are synced nightly from Aeries.

2. Single Sign-On (SSO) - Once signed into Clever, users can just click on the i-Ready icon - no username and password required.

What’s a quick way to get a handle on what i-Ready does?

The virtual tour of i-Ready is a quick but thorough way to get an overview of i-Ready.

What is a universal screener?

We know that the time in a child’s life between birth and age eight is a particularly critical period for literacy development. It is imperative that we identify the areas of strength and the instructional needs of struggling students as early as possible. We must also be able to determine whether students are making adequate progress in literacy development in the early grades. A universal screener helps us meet these goals because it is: valid (accurately measures student reading ability), predictive (accurately predicts student reading success at the end of the year and in future years), and reliable (produces similar results under consistent conditions).

How long are the i-Ready Assessments? 

Average testing time for Kindergarten and 1st grade is 20-35 minutes per student. The testing goes up slightly (on average 40 minutes) for 2nd grade.

Yes, that is a long time! But keep in mind the following:

• i-Ready will be conducting in-person training at each site prior to the first administration of the test. They will walk you through different classroom management techniques that will help ensure you have successful implementation at your site.

• The longer test assures that each student is assessed on a wide variety of skills and grade-level standards, which gives teachers greater insight into each student's strengths and areas of need.

• The test can be completed in multiple sittings and can be done in small groups or whole class. 

  • i-Ready recommends teachers setting up two or three 20 minute sessions for K-1st grade students to complete the assessment and two or three 30 minute sessions for all 2nd grade students to complete the assessments. The assessments will save where the students left off. Once a student completes the assessment they will open up their online instruction. If some students finish before others, they will have engaging lessons to work on while their peers finish the assessment.

How often can we use i-Ready?

With the licenses we purchased, you can use i-Ready as frequently as you wish during the school year. There is no limit to the number of times a student can use i-Ready.

Can I use i-Ready as a Beginning-of-Year screener? 

For Grades 1 and 2, you absolutely can use i-Ready as a BOY screener. You can have your students take the assessment, and begin using the data, immediately after teachers attend the i-Ready training. For reasons we will explain in the next section, we believe it will take a little longer to prepare Kindergarteners to take the i-Ready. Kindergarten teachers may choose to start the year with 1:1 letter name and letter sound assessments instead.

Can Kindergarteners take a computer based assessment?

Based on i-Ready’s national experience with schools with similar populations as OUSD, we are fully confident that Kindergarten students will be ready to take the i-Ready assessment online no later than October. In addition to being colorful, playful and developmentally appropriate, i-Ready training will specifically begin with computer use support for young children. Teacher PD for Kindergarten will focus on helping teachers prepare young children for a computerized test.

What Resources Are Available for Parents?

i-Ready offers multiple supports for engaging parents in understanding their child’s assessment results and in using the i-Ready tool. All the resources for parent engagement are here.

Sharing Assessment Results with Parents

i-Ready has both an English and Spanish parent report summarizing the child’s results on the assessment.  We like this guide for helping teachers to structure positive and constructive conversations with parents about their child’s results and develop a partnership around next steps

Helping Parents Understand i-Ready and Support Use i-Ready

1. i-Ready offers an introductory video for families in English and Spanish

2. There are a number of flyers about i-Ready:

   1. Domains covered by the assessment

   2. Using i-Ready at home instructions English and Spanish

How does i-Ready work for English Learners?

Please click here to read more about i-Ready and English Language Learners; this pdf is also a helpful guide to support for ELs in i-Ready. Included in the brochure are descriptions of some of the strategies embedded in i-Ready to support ELs. A few examples include:

• Interactive tools to support academic vocabulary development 

• Scaffolds, including on-demand word definitions in Spanish. 

What about TK?

 i-Ready is not appropriate for Transitional Kindergarten. 

Chromebooks and i-Ready

Students will be able to take i-Ready on a variety of devices, including Chromebooks. While trackpads can be tricky, some have additional settings to enable/disable features that can improve the experience. Mice might be easier for many students. i-Ready shares with us that in the long run, most students adapt to whatever device they are using and learn to be proficient after the learning curve. 

Demos

We have recorded all of the demos we have participated in with i-Ready in 2020. Please feel free to view any of these demos for a deeper dive into i-Ready.

• ELA Demo #1 - April 15, 2020

• ELA Demo #2 - April 24, 2020

• Math Demo #1 - May 4, 2020

• Spanish Literacy - May 5, 2020

• Growth Targets - May 19, 2020

• ELA Demo for Principals and Coaches - June 2, 2020

• ELA Demo for Principals and Coaches - June 9, 2020

• ELA Demo for Principals and Coaches - June 11, 2020