1 ThinkLink Learning Online User Manual for Predictive Assessment Series Go to www2.thinklinklearning.com/pas4mlwk. Click Educator Login. Your username and password will take you to your homepage. Administrators can do these functions: * Reports: view all teachers’ reports in the school * Teachers Administration: view teacher passwords, add or edit classes * Students: add or edit students Teachers can do these functions: * Class Administration: create or change classes * Reports: view teacher’s own reports only * Start Assessments * Practice Probes: create practice probes to target areas for improvement Both can Edit Profiles to change their password and View Skills/Tools to identify learning strategies by grade and subject. Copyright ThinkLink Learning, a business unit of Discovery Education. All rights reserved. Sample administrator homepage Table of Contents: Page 2 - Admin: Start Here Page 3 - Admin: Add Teachers Page Admin: Students Page 7 - Admin/Teacher: Creating Classes Page 8 - Admin/Teacher: Populating Classes Page Start/Take Assessment Online Page 12 - Hints

2 From an administrator’s homepage, you can perform Teachers’ Administration functions. You start by viewing the entire list of teachers who have accounts for your school. From this list, you can * access each teacher’s account (Login as….) * edit a teacher’s profile including grade & subject * add or delete teacher names (Note: this cannot be done from a Teacher Homepage) * see username and password for each teacher * add classes for each teacher (teachers can add their own classes from their teacher homepage). Administrator: Start Here Sample Teacher List

3 From Administrator’s page, you can add teachers. If you wish to add a teacher, choose “Teachers Administration” and then click the “Add a new teacher” link. You may add teachers to have access to skills/tools (formerly called resources) on the website, even if they are not administering ThinkLink tests. The username and password will be automatically generated by the system. It is helpful, but not a requirement, to enter an address. Choose the appropriate subject for the teacher. If a teacher teaches more than one grade, select one grade level; tests may still be given in multiple grades. Be sure to SAVE CHANGES. Administrator: Add Teachers Sample “add teacher” page

4 From an Administrator Homepage, you can add or edit student names. Note, this cannot be done from a Teacher Homepage. When adding student names, one at a time, be sure to: * put in a student ID that is unique for each student in the school * select the grade * SAVE CHANGES Optional: If you wish to view reports on NCLB subgroups, please notify ThinkLink. A charge applies for using this feature. If you have an electronic student file, we can upload this to save individual student name entry. ThinkLink upload of NCLB subgroups involves a fee. Please contact us at or toll free at about how to submit an electronic student file. Administrator: Add Students Sample Student Input Page

5 From the administrator’s Student tab, you can add or edit student names. You can * search for an individual name to see if a student is already in the database. * browse through a list of student names by grade level, or within the entire school. Administrator: Find or Edit Student Names Sample Student Manager page

6 Administrator: Browse Student Names From the administrator’s Student tab, you can browse through a list of student names. When browsing, click on the grade you wish to see. A small shadow will appear around the grade number to let you know which grade you are viewing. You can also select whether you want to see 10 or 20 students per page or all of the students at once. If you select 10 or 20 students per page, you can see the total number of students in a grade or the entire school. Selecting all allows you to page through the entire list of students either in a selected grade or for the entire school. Sample browsing of student list

7 Note: If you sent in a teacher information form at the beginning of the year, this step should already be complete. 1. While logged in as a teacher, either an Admin or Teacher can choose “Class Administration” to “Add a new class.” * Name the class using your school’s terminology, e.g., Period 1, Cox Homeroom. 2. Select the subject. Note that the reading and language arts is one test and must be given together. If these are taught separately in your school, choose one teacher to administer the test. 3. Science or Social Studies (if applicable)-- these classes are always separate from the reading/language arts and math. Even if a class is self-contained, a separate class must be created for science or social studies. Only add science or social studies classes if included in your order and a test is available at the desired grade level. The order form will indicate which grades have these tests. 4. Select the grade. “Save Changes.” Admin/Teacher: Creating Classes Sample of selecting existing class to edit or option to create new class. Sample of editing class details for an existing class or entering class details for a new class.

8 Once student names have been added or electronically uploaded, you can then populate classes (electronically enroll students in appropriate class or classes for online testing). From “Class Administration,” click on the name of the class you wish to populate. All of the names in a grade appear in the left column of step 3. Select the check box by the name of each student in the class and then click “Add” to move the names to the right column to populate the class. Be sure to SAVE CHANGES in Step 4. Admin/Teacher: Populating Classes Sample of selecting students from the master grade list to populate into a specific class. Sample after the students have been added to the class. Be sure to SAVE CHANGES as the last step.

9 From any Teacher homepage, click the “Start an Assessment” link. * Select the class and assessment subject. Click “Proceed to next step.” On the next screen, choose the assessment period (Test 1, Test 2, Test 3) and choose one of the following options: * Option 1: “Start Assessment” assumes that you are ready to initiate the assessment at this moment on this computer. Option 2: “Generate Access Code” allows you to create a code (six characters) which may be used on multiple computers in a classroom or lab by a group of students. It facilitates getting a lab ready before the students walk in to take the test. **Self-contained classes: you will have to generate a separate access code for each subject.** This code is good for 8 hours! If testing cannot be completed within a day, a new code must be generated whenever testing resumes. Teachers: Start an Assessment Sample: Start Assessment Step 2: Select Assessment Step 3: Start Assessment or Generate Access Code Step 1: Select class & subject

10 * If you choose to “Generate Access Code,” students will use the “Student Login” link from upper right corner of the ThinkLink Learning homepage. Go to: www2.thinklinklearning.com/pas4mlwk to find the Student Login link. * Students will click the Predictive Benchmarks logo to enter the code (six characters) and begin the assessment. * * The Predictive Benchmarks logo should only be used when a login code (six characters) has been created for the Test 1, Test 2, Test 3 PAS Assessments. * *The Practice Probes logo should only be used after a Practice Probe has been created by either an administrator or teacher. Once a Practice Probe is created, a login code is automatically generated. This code does not have an expiration period. As with the Predictive Benchmarks, there are two ways to access the Practice Probes online. You may begin the Practice Probe from the Teacher Login or from the Student Login by choosing the Practice Probes logo. Student Login for Assessments & Practice Quizzes Sample Student Login Screen: Choose Predictive Benchmarks or Practice Probes

11 Students: Taking an Online Assessment 3. Sample list of items. This list is always available to see which items have already been answered. Timing an assessment: The monitoring person should look at their watch but not be too concerned about the time that it takes to complete an assessment. Expect that a Reading/LA test will last about 45 min., and a Math test will last about 45 min. Science and Social Studies tests last about 35 min. Upon starting an assessment, the teacher’s login is disabled to keep students from going to other sections of the teacher’s account. * Whether you start immediately or use the Access Code for a class, the student selects his or her name to begin the Predictive Benchmark test. * Next, the list of items appears. “Click here to start assessment at the beginning” or choose the first item in the “Question List.” This list can be seen throughout the session. Answers are recorded upon completing a single screen of items. If stopped in the middle of a test, the screens that have been completed are recorded, and you use the Question List to see where to continue. 1. Sample to confirm test info. 2. Sample for student to select his or her name.

12 Hints: 1. Have students in math use a ‘worksheet’, not a scratch sheet. By this, we mean, get the student to show their work by item and treat it as a document that a teacher will review. This encourages showing all of their work and increases the emphasis on working out the problems rather than selecting an answer because they worked it in their heads. They can’t work most of these in their heads. Even with a computer terminal, this worksheet is key to getting the best math results. You can even “collect” the worksheets and keep them until the reports are made available so that the students can see the relationship between the worksheet effort and the item results. 2. Don’t stop a child from completing the test, even if it takes a long time. You want to see their best work and if they are indeed working, you will get more insight by letting them continue. 3. Results are recorded by page, as soon as the student clicks on “next page” or “question list”. 4. If you are monitoring student progress, be sure that you have each child show you their question list before declaring that they are finished. This way you will know if they have answered every question. You can actually monitor progress from a teacher workstation by reviewing the Answers Report and periodically “refreshing” the page. In this manner, you can watch the entire class and their progress in answering items. 5. If you are using Imacs, periodically, empty the computer’s Internet file cache. This cache “fills up” as the test is taken and slows down the computer. If you empty the cache you will find that there is less waiting between pages. 6. We recommend using Internet Explorer rather than Netscape. They both work, but the IE browser is a bit faster in retrieving pages on the Internet. If you have other questions, please call ThinkLink at or toll free at