Insights is a web-based, direct assessment of social and emotional competencies. There are three versions— EE (early elementary) for grades K to 3, LE (late elementary) for grades 4 to 5, and MS (middle school) for grades 6 to 8. SELweb HS is a student social and emotional competence survey for high school.
All versions of Insights measure social and emotional competencies described in the CASEL model–these are life skills associated with success in school and life. Insights EE and SELweb LE assess four social and emotional competencies: emotion recognition, social perspective-taking, social problem-solving, and self-control. Insights MS measures Self Awareness, Self Management, Social Awareness, Relationship Skills, and Responsible Decision-Making. Insights HS assesses self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making. The development of these competencies is correlated with reductions in problem behaviors and improvements in social skills, social acceptance and academic outcomes.
Insights EE, LE, and MS are direct assessments in which students demonstrate their competence by solving challenging social and emotional tasks. For example, to measure emotion recognition, children look at faces and indicate what each person is feeling. With Insights students demonstrate their competence, similar to typical assessments for academic subjects. Insights HS is a student survey.
From K to 5, Insights includes interactive tasks. Click on the following links to see examples for EE and LE. Insights MS includes factual items (measuring students’ knowledge about social and emotional learning) and situational judgement tasks. Insights HS is a traditional self-report survey in which students rate statements to indicate how often each statement is true of them.
Yes. All Insights competencies are part of CASEL’s definition of SEL competencies. Emotion recognition and social perspective-taking are part of “Social Awareness.” Social problem-solving is represented in “Relationship Skills” and “Responsible Decision-Making.” Self-control is part of “Self-Management.” Insights HS is designed to measure all five CASEL competencies too.
Too often, challenging student behavior is attributed to negative student intent and addressed through punitive discipline practices. Insights helps move the conversation toward a focus on the skills students need to learn to be able to participate constructively in daily life in school.
Unlike attendance, behavior, and discipline data, Insights provides a measure of student skills that can be used to guide instruction and support positive youth development.
Mental health screeners are designed to identify children with or at risk of a mental health problem. They are important tools for identifying barriers that adults can help remove. Insights is different because it is designed to measure competencies that we affirmatively want children to develop and that we know are associated with success in school and life. This blog post describes how mental health and social and emotional learning are different, and how they are related.
Insights is designed for group administration with minimal adult training required. Children complete the assessment independently with minimal supervision required.
Children log in to the assessment and interact independently with a series of tasks. Friendzy students will login traditionally using a username and password on the login screen at www.selweb.com.
Friendzy will provide login cards with usernames and passwords to give to each student.
If your school would like to use Clever or ClassLink to login, contact Friendzy.
Insights EE for grades K to 3 takes about 25 minutes and Insights LE for grades 4 to 5 takes about 35 minutes. Insights MS for grades 6 to 8 takes about 30 minutes. Insights HS takes about 15 minutes. Insights can be administered in more than one session—when students return, the assessment will continue to their next item.
Insights is available in English and Spanish.
No. Insights EE for grades K to 3 is fully illustrated and narrated—no reading skills are required. An animated dog named “Comet” introduces each new module. Insights LE for grades 4 to 8 is also highly visual and largely narrated. In addition, all text elements include a speaker icon that students can click to have the text read aloud.
Insights integrates audio and visual representations for feature accessibility. All Insights EE and Insights LE subtests are illustrated or include photographic images with voice-over narraton. In Insights EE, written words are kept to a minimum and written text always includes voice-over narration so that children do not need to be able to read to complete the assessment. In Insights LE, all text is narrated: Instructions are automatically read aloud and students can elect to have any written text read aloud by pressing a speaker icon next to the text.
Friendzy schools will administer Insights twice during the academic year—towards the beginning to gather formative data and towards the end for summative results.
No. Insights is a web-based application that can be used on any device. Insights is designed to require minimal time and effort from teachers to administer.
Because Insights is a web-based application the only requirements are a device with a web browser and an internet connection. Insights is narrated, so we also recommend that children wear headphones while they complete the assessment.
Insights functions equally well in the context of Windows, iOS, and Android operating systems. It is designed to work on any browser; however, we recommend Chrome or Firefox (2018 or later).
To function properly, Insights requires a minimum of 2 Mbps per child of local bandwidth.
Friendzy will provide a roster template for your school to fill out. Once the student rosters are received, students will be processed into Insights and login cards will be delivered.
For districts that use Clever or ClassLink or that can push OneRoster formatted rosters, we can automate the rostering process and complete nightly updates.
Reports are web-based and interactive. Graphs show the percentage of students who perform well above average, in the average range, a little below average, and well below average for each Insights competency and overall. View summaries at the district, school, grade, classroom, and student levels for a single time point or comparing fall and spring administrations.
Individual student scores are available immediately. Interactive reports are available about one week after the district completes testing. Users can log in to Insights to access their reports.
Our reports are designed for district administrators, school administrators, teachers, and support personnel.
Our partners use what they learn from Insights to make decisions about how to focus their existing SEL program resources at Tier I and to inform intervention planning for students who need extra help. Interim and end-of-year assessments measure student improvement in response to instruction.
Yes! This report is a sample district-level report. This report is a sample school-level report. Feel free to click around the reports to see what they include.
Most schools use Insights to guide SEL practice and measure student progress. They begin with formative assessment to understand student SEL strengths and needs; they use this data to focus SEL program resources to build on strengths and address needs; and they reassess after a period of instruction to measure progress. Insights is also used as an outcome measure for program evaluation and other research studies.
Yes. Insights is used as a universal assessment to guide the use of Tier 1 resources. Performance on SELweb also helps inform intervention planning for students who additional need behavioral, social, and emotional support.
Friendzy can provide parent communication templates on request. Also please see this Resources Page.
A Program alignment is a crosswalk between the Friendzy SEL lessons of instruction and the subtests within Insights.
Schools can identify student needs at the school level or the classroom level from their Insights reports and reference the Friendzy program alignment document to determine which lessons to emphasize for that group of learners.
© 2023 xSEL Labs | Privacy | Terms of Use
