What’s the difference between Adaptive Practice and the Placement Quiz when setting up a Program?
Adaptive Practice and Placement Quiz serve different, but complementary, purposes in XtraMath. Understanding the difference can help you, as an educator, choose the right setup based on instructional goals.
Adaptive Practice
Adaptive Practice refers to the daily XtraMath sessions, which are short (about 10 minutes) and designed for ongoing fluency development. Each daily session includes:
- Progress Quiz (first ~2 minutes)
- When students first begin XtraMath, this quiz functions as a Placement Quiz, assessing their current fluency level. This placement process typically takes 2–3 days and establishes a baseline for tracking progress over time.
- After placement, the daily Progress Quiz continues to measure student improvement and retention, supporting long-term memory development.
- Two Practice Activities
- These activities reinforce math fact learning and improve response speed. XtraMath’s adaptive algorithm uses spaced repetition to tailor practice to each student, helping strengthen recall, build automaticity, and improve fluency across operations.
💡Best for: Daily classroom or at-home use to build and maintain math fact fluency through consistent practice.
Placement Quiz (Fluency Quiz – XtraMath Premium)
The Placement Quiz option in XtraMath Premium is a diagnostic fluency assessment. It helps educators identify students’ fluency levels and pinpoint gaps in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Once completed, XtraMath assigns an initial fluency score for each operation.
This option is especially useful for older elementary, middle, and high school students who need targeted fluency intervention. It also supports ongoing monitoring throughout the school year, allowing educators to:
- Track fluency progression
- Make data-driven instructional decisions
- Adjust instruction and interventions as needed
💡Best for: Screening, intervention planning, and progress monitoring—especially when instructional time is limited or daily practice is not the primary goal.