1. Overview of the SLA Assessment
September 22, 2017

2. Goal for Today
Familiarize teachers with the options for administering the SLA, tips for preparing students and time for any unanswered questions.

3. FAQs
The SLA will be available for the entire 2017/2018 standard school year, from August 14, 2017 to June 30, 2018.
Can choose to test one, a few or all of your students.
Teachers may administer any or all of the SLA components.
The digital questions and performance tasks can be administered and, if desired, readministered throughout the school year.

4. More FAQs
Tablets cannot be used to respond to digital questions. Most Chromebooks work. Students having a mouse is preferable to relying on a trackpad.
Data reports are available within 24 hours of submitting results.
Teachers are encouraged to share SLA Results with parents.
The results are not reported in the Accountability Pillar.

5. Four Components of the SLA
The SLA is based on outcomes related to literacy and numeracy in language arts and mathematics in Alberta’s current Grade 2 provincial programs of study. Some questions include contexts from arts education, health, science and social studies.
- digital interactive literacy questions (45 questions)
- literacy performance task (4 activities)
- digital interactive numeracy questions (39 questions)
- numeracy performance task (2 activities).
There are field tests embedded in all of the tests (French and English). For example, students will answer 45 questions on the literacy digital questions, but only 30 will be reported in the data results. The other 15 are questions are those being field tested.

6. SLA Teacher Dashboard
The SLA Application is located at and provides access to the:
SLA Teacher Dashboard
SLA Student Login
SLA Previews
Practice Questions
Released Questions
SLA Results/Reports.
If you need help, check out the SLA Quick Tip Videos: How to Access the Dashboard, How to Use the Dashboard and Promising Practices.

7. Assessment Preview
Teachers are able to preview the test components in order to decide which components are most appropriate for their students.

8. Administration Tips Give students practice opportunities.
Help students learn to interpret more than one medium in order to answer questions (e.g. a text and an audio clip).
Coach students on answering multi-step questions.
The assessment(s) should be spaced out, e.g., across a two week time period.
Some students may need more time. Allow for some differentiation.

9. Practice Questions SLA practice questions have been updated this year
These do not reflect content or complexity of actual SLA questions

10. Released Questions & Performance Tasks
Available from 2014 and 2015.

11. Prerequisite Activities
Principals must approve access, through the Extranet, for Grade 3 teachers to use the SLA Teacher Dashboard.
Teachers should use their “work” when signing up for an account.
Grade 3 student enrollment data must be submitted to the Provincial Approach to Student Information (PASI) system prior to setting up the SLA Teacher Dashboard.
School staff notify parents that their child will be participating in SLAs.
Students will need to be provided with their 9 digit Alberta Student Number.

12. ARPDC Resource Page
You’ll find direct links to Alberta Education SLA resources including key documents and How To videos. We will post all archived 2017 SLA webinars here.

13. Any final questions? sherri.johnston@erlc.ca
Thanks to Pixabay for all the CC images.