How to Create a Penda School Break Challenge

School Break Challenge in 1-2-3

Maintain science learning momentum and prevent academic slide during your next Thanksgiving, Winter, Spring, and Summer Break. Leverage Penda Science to launch a fun, engaging, and competitive student challenge while stretching science instructional time and providing additional review or practice of standards.

Follow this simple 3-step process to set up and launch a successful Penda Science student challenge for your next school break!

Step 1 - Set-Up 

Identify and assign 2 low-performing standards

• Since most school breaks are 1 to 2 weeks in length, focus on reviewing no more than 2 science standards.
  • Use a recent diagnostic or formative assessment to identify 2 low-performing standards you would like students to revisit. 
  • With four activities per standard, this provides students with eight activities to complete over the break.
  • Once you’ve identified 2 low-performing science standards, log into your Penda Science account to assign the corresponding developing, achieving, exceeding, and mini-assessment activities for the standards identified.
• To assign the challenge assignment to multiple classes at once, from your home page, click Assignments.
  
  • Click New Assignment, and the assignment wizard will open.
  • On the first screen, give the Assignment a unique name, such as “Grade 5 - Thanksgiving Break Challenge,” Winter Break Challenge, or Spring Break Challenge.
  • Choose the first day of the school break for the start date and the last day of the break for the end date.
    • Please note: once an assignment has been created and is active in students’ accounts (meaning the start date and time have passed), the assignment can be edited or deleted only if no student has started the assignment.
  • Click Continue.
  • On the second screen, select the class or classes that should receive the assignment, then click Continue.
  • On the third screen, click in the Search Bar located in the top left under Add Activities, and enter one of the standards you identified earlier.
  • Using the search results, click the arrows to the right of each activity to select them - be sure to select the developing, achieving, exceeding and the mini-assessment activities. 
  • Using the hash marks, drag the activities into the proper scaffolded order - Developing, then Achieving, then Exceeding, then Mini Assessment.
  • By default, the Require Mastery feature is turned on.  This will require that each student achieve a score of 80% or better on an activity before they can open and complete the next activity.
  • Please turn this feature off for your challenge assignment to allow more of your students the opportunity to work through all the activities, even if they are not able to achieve that 80%.
  • To add the second standard, click in the activity Search Bar and type the second standard you identified earlier.
  • Select the four activities, put them in the proper scaffolded order, and turn off Require Mastery.
  • After reviewing your selections, click Continue.
  • Finally, you’ll see a confirmation screen, where you can review your assignment selections before creating it.  
  • If you want to change anything, simply click the Back button at the bottom of the window (not the web browser back button) and make your changes. 
  • Once you have confirmed your choices, click Finish.
  • Since each grade level will have different standards as part of the challenge, you can repeat the process for the other grade levels.

Step 2 - Announce!

Incentivize & launch challenge among classes

• Reward students based on the following criteria (for which students can be recognized more than once):
  
  • Option 1
    • Hours of overall usage to recognize effort. This, of course, is the most inclusive criteria, rewarding students who are putting in the work
  • Option 2
    • Or, average mastery to recognize achievement.
• Once you have decided on incentive criteria, plan your prizes or rewards - such as: front of the line pass, free homework pass, extra points on a quiz or test, McDonald's gift cards, Amazon gift cards, or even a Chromebook or Nintendo Switch for a school-wide give-away.
• Next, visit Penda’s 24/7 Help Center to download a ready-made school break challenge student flyer to announce and publicize your school break challenge.
  • Access Penda’s 24/7 Help Center by clicking Support at the top of your Penda account.
  • Click on the Digital Resources tile, and under Student Engagement, you will find School Break Challenge Flyers.
  • These documents can be downloaded and further customized, then printed or electronically posted to share challenge details, access information, and incentives with students.
  • Use the links provided at the bottom of the page to download and open any of the Word documents.
  • We recommend editing the document to include your school name and student login details, as well as any noteworthy, attention-grabbing incentives or prizes!
• All that’s left is to announce the school break challenge to your classes prior to the start of break!
  • Be sure to be up-beat and full of energy - how you sell the challenge to your classes and students will make or break the success of your school break challenge. 
  • High energy and high enthusiasm yields high participation, high results, and high impact!

Step 3 - Reward & Celebrate 

Run a Penda report to identify class/student recognition

• Upon returning from your school break, log into your Penda Science account to run and analyze a Penda progress report.
  • This can be accomplished most efficiently by using the Report Builder to create a custom report. 
•  Find our Report Builder in the left navigation bar, under the Assignments tab.
  • Click on the all-caps REPORTS tab and select Report Manager.

  • Click on the New Report button.

  • Give the Report a title. You will create a different report for each grade level in order to include all the different standards each grade will need to master.

  • Leave the Academic session field empty.

  • Select the Start date and End date of the school break challenge.

  • Click Apply.

  • To begin, under Students, select the Class level to view the data from all the classes in the selected grade level.

  • Click on the small triangle icon in front of the school name, and a list of all science classes will appear.

  • In the search bar, type a keyword that will filter the list to only view the grade level you want to include, such as “Grade 3” or “Bio”

  • Place a check mark in the box for each class you want to include the grade level report.
    Click Apply.

  • To add a column of data, use the green plus button at the top (or click in the gray column on the right)

  • Choose the Total Usage data block and click Apply.

  • Select Total in the top left corner.

  • Click Apply.

  • To add another column of data, use the green plus button at the top (or click in the gray column on the right)

  • This time, choose the Total Mastery data block and click Apply.

  • From the Total Mastery menu, under Type, choose Standards.

  • In the search menu, search for and select with a check the standard or standards you used for the challenge and want to see in the report.

  • Click Apply.

  • To add the last column of data, use the green plus button at the top (or click in the gray column on the right)

  • This time, choose the Gradebook data block and click Apply.

  • From the Gradebook menu, under Type choose Activities.

  • In the search menu, search for the standards you used for the challenge and select with a check the activity or activities you want to see in the report.

  • Click Apply.

  • The Report will populate with the data.

  • Drill down into each class’s data by clicking on the name of the class or the magnifying glass icon to the left of the class name.

  • Identify students in each class based on the incentive criteria you selected in step 2, for example:

    • sort the total usage column to honor students with the highest amount of time spent on Penda during the challenge period

      • Simply hover over and click on the heading of the column you want to sort. You can sort from highest to lowest, or click again to sort lowest to highest by

    • sort the average score column to honor students with the highest achievement scores.

    • Check the gradebook columns to see if students followed the criteria of completing each activity in the assignment. If there is an empty cell, the student did not complete the assignment.

  • For each challenge criteria, do 'shout-outs' to students in the top tier of each class, for example the top three in that category.

  • If appropriate, provide students recognized with a raffle ticket to fill out and drop into a big fishbowl.

  • For example, you may be hosting a drawing where the top three students in each grade or each class get chances to win based on time they put in and their average mastery.

    • Such as:

      • every 10 minutes of total usage = 1 ticket (60 minutes = 6 tickets)

      • every 10 percentage points = 1 ticket (90% = 9 tickets)

  • Finally, draw names for prizes and incentive items from the fishbowl - such as the in-school incentives, gift cards, or big-ticket items for a school-wide give-away.

  • And that’s it! You have completed your school break challenge!