Spotlight on 2nd Annual “Design Your Own Exact Path Contest” Winners

From October 4 through December 31, 2021, we invited our Edmentum Exact Path partners from across the United States to design their own Exact Path contest that inspires learning, incites motivation, and advances student growth. Now that it’s closed, we’ve been struck by the imaginative designs and creative prizes that our educators have come up with, and it’s time to award three contest winners!

From 100 entries this year, we randomly selected three winners, one from each grade category—elementary, middle, and high school—to receive $500 Target gift cards for their schools. Without further ado, let’s meet our contest winners for the year 2021!

Elementary School

Terry Dravage, Math Coach & Jody Puza, Literacy Coach
Memorial Elementary School in Hanover Township, Pennsylvania

Ms. Dravage and Ms. Puza held a November Math Maniac schoolwide challenge from November 1 through November 19. In this 4th and 5th grade elementary building, students were challenged to earn Mastery Trophies on Exact Path Progress Checks. Students who earned six trophies within the contest period earned a pizza party, and three top individual winners in each grade won gift cards for $25, $10, and $5, respectively. Overall, 96 students achieved the goal! The increased usage also meant that even more data was generated in Exact Path, and Ms. Dravage and Ms. Puza used those skill-by-skill results in the Knowledge Map to inform their small-group instruction, making it even more meaningful.

From their submission: “Lower-level kids can be successful, and the higher-level kids are challenged to learn new things that they may not have been taught yet. This seems like a win for all levels of students. Hopefully, after students see others being rewarded for their achievement, it will raise participation in [future] challenges.”

Middle School

Lauren Rodgers, Grade 7 Reading Teacher
Troup Middle School in Troup, Texas

Ms. Rodgers developed her contest around Texas House Bill 4545, which established new requirements for accelerated instruction for students who do not pass the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) summative exams. In her reading lab, if students spent one hour weekly with Exact Path during the two-week contest period, they earned a snack to eat in class. Ms. Rodgers felt that building a contest around the time spent in the program gave everyone a level playing field.

From her submission: “My favorite things about Exact Path are that each student can work on what he/she needs to work on at his/her own level and that I am able to pull an abundance of data from their activities! There are great resources available for me as the teacher within the program!”

High School

Stacey Jurek, Special Education Teacher
Little Falls High School in Little Falls, Minnesota

Mrs. Jurek coteaches her students receiving special education services inside of regular education classrooms and conducts separate small-group pullout classes with those students. Between these two learning opportunities, she developed a nine-week challenge (the length of a quarter) structured around growth. Students have reading comprehension goals built into their Individualized Education Programs, and quarterly administrations of the Exact Path diagnostic measure growth ensure that students are tracking positively toward those expectations. She employed both class growth and individual growth goals as a part of her contest, and contest rewards included snacks such as chips, granola bars, and other treats to promote motivation.

From her submission: “We love this because I see a ton of growth with my students with their reading level. It’s just a win-win for everybody, and it’s been a great tool for distance learning too.”

We want to take this opportunity to thank all of our educators who submitted their contest plans! Your commitment to making Exact Path part of the fabric of your daily instruction is why we do what we do. Remember, the annual contest may have come to a close, but our contest toolkit with trackers, certificates, and incentive suggestions lives on all year long, every year. Take a look!