Help

The ISA Teaching Resources Centre is an online platform for primary and secondary teachers. The site has been designed to meet the needs of teachers wondering 'what next' after completing their ISA testing. It contains teaching activities, concept builders and annotated test questions sorted into achievement levels and skills, videos explaining the core ISA concepts, research and links to other resources.

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Once teachers have received, read and analysed the ISA test data for their students, they should be encouraged to take the next step and use the results to inform their teaching.

The ISA Teaching Resources Centre provides teachers with free access to tailored teaching activities, targeted research-based strategies and tools that teachers can use in their day-to-day classroom practice.

To access the ISA Teaching Resources Centre, teachers should login to their school account and click on the ISA Teaching Resources Centre icon on the right of the landing page.

Teachers in your school don't yet have accounts? View 'How do I set up teachers with access to the ISA Teaching Resources Centre?'.

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The ISA Teaching Resources Centre allows teachers to match resources, research-based strategies and lesson plans to the knowledge and skills of their students.

Students' test results are reported as scale scores on the ISA scale for that learning area. ISA reports classify test questions by content or skill area and location on the ISA scale.

The ISA Teaching Resources Centre has a similar structure to the ISA reports, classifying teaching activities by skill area and location on the ISA scale. This allows teachers to match activities to the achievement level of your students.

To plan effective programs of work for your students:

1. Review your class' results on the ISA test. We recommend using the ISA Interactive Diagnostic report.
2. Select the Cl_Read (or Cl_Math) tab. Select your class and the content area or skill you wish to explore from the drop down boxes at the top left of the screen.
3. Sort your students' results by their scale scores using the Sort by band button to group students' performance into levels and content areas or skills.
4. Open the ISA TRC and select an activity within that level and content area/skill for those students.

Case Study

Class 5B completes the ISA Grade 5 Reading Test.

1. Their teacher reviews their responses in the ISA Interactive Diagnostic report and then sorts and analyses the results to look for strengths and weaknesses in the class, within groups of students and in individuals for the different content/skill areas and for particular questions.
2. The Class 5B teacher selects an aspect to focus on from the drop down menu at the top of the page: Integrate and interpret.
3. Their teacher selects the Sort by band button and divides the students into three groups based on their scale scores: Level 6, 480–552; Level 5, 407–479; and Level 4, 334–406.
4. For the second group, after reviewing the different teaching activities available on the ISA TRC for students in this level, their teacher selects Differing contexts as the first lesson to work on with this group of students.

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Students' test results are reported as scale scores on the ISA scale for that learning area. ISA reports classify test questions by content or skill area and location on the ISA scale.

The resources centre has a similar structure to the ISA reports, classifying teaching activities by skill area and location on the ISA scale. This allows you to match activities to the achievement level of your students.

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It is critical to schedule time for staff to analyse their results to get the most from the testing.

Results can be used at both group and individual level:

• ISA Maths and Reading scale scores can be used to measure improvement over time
• Scale scores provide a picture of how students' results compare with results of students internationally in the ISA Reference Norm in the same or different grades in the same year, of a particular grade from one year to the next, or of the same students from one year to the next
• Analysis of students' performance across mathematics and reading skill areas will provide information to inform teaching practice.

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The ISA Teaching Resources Centre covers two learning areas: Maths and Reading.

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Each ISA learning area is divided into a range of sub-strands / skills. Achievement is grouped into scale score levels. Maths and Reading have different scales. You can access information and resources about a skill and a scale score level by selecting each from the drop-down menus. You can also use the side-bar to navigate to the content you want. You can then access teaching activities / concept builders and annotated questions for a particular skill and scale.

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ISA Reading covers from Grade 3 to 10.

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ISA Maths covers from Grades 1 to 10.

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The teaching activities and concept builders are direct-instruction lesson plans written to assist students to consolidate their skills in various learning areas.

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You can view or print out a copy of the teaching activity / concept builder on your computer or tablet within the classroom while delivering the lesson.

The teaching activities can be delivered as whole lessons or you may choose to use only part of the teaching activity or concept builder in your lesson.

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The annotated questions provide an analysis of ISA questions organised into skills and scale score levels. The annotations detail what skills students need to have used to answer a question correctly. Some of the annotations analyse why a student may have selected an incorrect option.

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The annotated questions can assist you to pinpoint specific skills that have been attained or have yet to be achieved by students in your class. In maths the item commentary (analysis) and/or the option reasoning can help identify possible areas of misconceptions.  

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At the top of the activity you'd like to print, select the printer icon to the right of the title. A pop-up print box will appear. Adjust your print settings and select OK.

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To the right of the heading near the top of your screen, select the star icon and click to 'Add to this item to favourites'. The star will change to yellow. This page will then be saved in your list of favourites.

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Navigate to the page you would like to remove from your list of favourites. Near the top of the screen, to the right of the heading, select the yellow star icon and deselect to 'Remove this item from favourites'. This page will then be removed from your list of favourites and the star icon will not be yellow anymore.

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To the right of the heading near the top of your screen, select the star icon and click to 'Add to this item to favourites'. The star will change to yellow. This page will then be saved in your list of favourites.

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Teachers must have a school account login to access the ISA Teaching Resources Centre. They can access the Centre by clicking on the ISA Teaching Resources Centre icon on the landing page once they've logged in.

School account access

Staff accounts provide school staff with access to specific features of the school's account, depending on what role is assigned to staff members.

ACER recommends that teachers are assigned as Report Generators, which allows them to run reports on their class and access the ISA Teaching Resources Centre. The Account Administrator can restrict what data the Report Generators can access, if necessary.

While reported data can be exported and provided to teachers outside of the school account, the flexible and powerful reporting features enable the most effective analysis of test data to occur within your account. Being able to read and analyse test data is a key skill for teachers in schools who intend to use the data to inform their learning and teaching programs.

Otherwise, teachers can be assigned as Session Managers, which limits them to managing testing sessions and accessing the ISA Teaching Resources Centre.

To set up teachers with access, click on the Staff dropdown arrow in your account, and then select Create. Written and video instructions on creating single or bulk staff are provided in the Help section.

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The ISA team can provide advice by email - isa@acer.edu.au - and telephone +61 3 9277 5555.

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