Next Generation Social and Emotional Learning Assessment System

ACT® Tessera®

Using Your Results

2 | www.act.org/act-tessera

WHAT IS ACT TESSERA?ACT® Tessera® is an assessment from ACT designed for

students in middle school and high school. It helps

educators, parents, and students identify and reflect

upon strengths and opportunities for improvement

in a set of critically important social and emotional

skills related to success in school, college, careers, and

life. ACT Tessera measures social and emotional skills

in five areas: Grit, Teamwork, Resilience, Curiosity, and

Leadership. It also assesses school climate. ACT Tessera

measures how students see themselves and how

they believe they would behave in certain situations, and provides important feedback

for enhancing development in each of the social and emotional skills. Individual student

reports provide insight into a student’s strengths and areas for improvement. School

reports provide individual and group-level information on students’ social and emotional

skills, as well as group-level information on school climate.

How Do Students Take ACT Tessera?ACT Tessera is taken online via ACT Academy. Students

are provided with a username and password to log in.

ACT Tessera takes students about one class period

(approximately 30 minutes) to complete.

How Do Students Get Results?Students receive an Individual Student Report (ISR)

from their teacher or counselor. The school will also get

a copy of the report so that the teacher or counselor

can go over results with students. Although students

may benefit from reading results on their own, ACT

Tessera usually works best when students are able

to talk about results with an adult at the school or a

family member who can help to decide what to focus

on first. There may be many things students want to

do to enhance their strengths and improve the skills in

which they are not as strong.

Page 1 © 2018 by ACT, Inc. All rights reserved. Report Number: AC-201639292-1-99cc513e5df • April 14, 2018

Scores for Student Name April 14, 2018 ACT Tessera measures five important social and emotional skills, described below. Stars indicate your current level on each skill. Don’t worry too much if you get one star on any of the skills. You can always improve with practice.

For detailed information on improving the five Tessera skills, and for explanation of how star scores are related to percentiles, go to www.act.org/tesserareport.

Grit Grit reflects the extent to which a student’s actions demonstrate persistence, goal striving, reliability, dependability, and attention to detail at school.

Teamwork Teamwork reflects the extent to which a student’s actions demonstrate collaboration, empathy, helpfulness, trust, and trustworthiness.

Curiosity Curiosity reflects the extent to which a student’s actions demonstrate creativity, inquisitiveness, flexibility, open mindedness, and embracing diversity.

Resilience Resilience reflects the extent to which a student’s actions demonstrate stress management, emotional regulation, a positive response to setbacks, and poise.

Leadership Leadership reflects the extent to which a student’s actions demonstrate assertiveness, influence, optimism, and enthusiasm.

At or below the 16th percentile. Approximately 84% of the national tested sample scored higher than students in this range.

Between the 17th and 50th percentiles (inclusive). Approximately 16% scored lower and 50% scored higher than students in this range.

Between the 51st and 84th percentiles (inclusive). Approximately 50% scored lower and 16% scored higher than students in this range.

At or above the 85th percentile. Approximately 84% scored lower than students in this range.

Contents

What is ACT Tessera? 2

How Do Students Take ACT Tessera? 2

How Do Students Get Results? 2

What Do Scores Mean? 3

Building Social and Emotional Skills in Your Home 5

www.act.org/act-tessera | 3

What is ACT Tessera?

What Do Scores Mean?

ACT Tessera measures five social and emotional skills that are important to success in

school, work, and life. Information describing each area is provided in the ISR. The skills are

defined in this table:

Social and Emotional Skill Definition

GritGrit reflects the extent to which a student’s actions demonstrate persistence, goal striving, reliability, dependability, and attention to detail at school.

TeamworkTeamwork reflects the extent to which a student’s actions demonstrate collaboration, empathy, helpfulness, trust, and trustworthiness.

Resilience

Resilience reflects the extent to which a student’s actions demonstrate stress management, emotional regulation, a positive response to setbacks, and poise.

Curiosity

Curiosity reflects the extent to which a student’s actions demonstrate creativity, inquisitiveness, flexibility, open-mindedness, and embracing diversity.

LeadershipLeadership reflects the extent to which a student’s actions demonstrate assertiveness, influence, optimism, and enthusiasm.

It is very important to know that students can improve in all of these skills with practice.

Think of each of these skills like a muscle; the more you exercise that muscle, the stronger

it gets. In the same way, the more one practices Grit, Teamwork, Resilience, Curiosity, and

Leadership, the stronger one becomes in these skills.

4 | www.act.org/act-tessera

What is ACT Tessera?

For each of the five skills, the ISR provides a full

page of information. On the top of the page,

students can see their star rating (ranging from

one to four stars) for each skill. Each star rating

corresponds to a percentile range that your

student falls into for each skill. The language

used to describe student skills emphasizes

that this report indicates only how students are

performing at the present time. The message

that is important to take away is that this is not a

report of a person’s permanent skill or capacity,

but that this is a report on one’s current actions,

actions that can be relatively easily changed for

the better in the future. The star scoring is based

on students’ responses when compared to other

students of their age across the United States

who have taken ACT Tessera.

Page 3 © 2018 by ACT, Inc. All rights reserved. Report Number: AC-201639292-1-99cc513e5df • April 14, 2018

Curiosity Curiosity reflects the extent to which a student’s actions demonstrate creativity, inquisitiveness, flexibility, open mindedness, and embracing diversity. To access videos and other tools to help you improve your curiosity, go to www.act.org/curiosity.

Resilience Resilience reflects the extent to which a student’s actions demonstrate stress management, emotional regulation, a positive response to setbacks, and poise. To access videos and other tools to help you improve your resilience, go to www.act.org/resilience.

ACT Tessera • Scores for Student Name

Page 2 © 2018 by ACT, Inc. All rights reserved. Report Number: AC-201639292-1-99cc513e5df • April 14, 2018

Where you are today doesn’t have to be where you are tomorrow Social and emotional skills change over time, and improving these skills can help you achieve your academic, professional, and personal goals.

This report provides you with your scores and some exercises that may help you learn more about each skill and improve. The more you practice your Grit, Curiosity, etc., the stronger you become in those skills.

Improve Your Grit Other Words for Grit: Hard-working, organized, trustworthy, reliable, conscientious, and tenacious.

Improve Your Grit One way you can improve your grit is to maintain an awareness of why you want to achieve your goals. What would it mean to you and others if you achieved your goal? Think about the steps you must take to achieve your goal and then monitor progress to stay on track.

Go to This Link To access videos and other tools to help you improve your grit, go to www.act.org/grit-test.

Improve Your Teamwork Other Words for Teamwork: Helpful, supportive, empathetic, respectful, collaborative, and agreeable.

Improve Your Teamwork Considering other team members’ perspectives can enhance teamwork and cooperation. The next time you work with other team members, try to see things from their points of view.

Go to This Link To access videos and other tools to help you improve your teamwork, go to www.act.org/teamwork.

Improve Your

Curiosity Other Words for Curiosity: Interested, inquisitive, eager to learn, creative, inventive, and imaginative.

Improve Your Curiosity Try to consider several ways of solving a problem before you settle on a solution. Observe people you think are creative. How do they solve problems or come up with solutions?

Go to This Link To access videos and other tools to help you improve your curiosity, go to www.act.org/curiosity.

Improve Your Leadership Other Words for Leadership: Assertive, persuasive influential, optimistic, encouraging, and enthusiastic.

Improve Your Leadership Great leaders are often optimistic and enthusiastic. They see that the “glass is half full” and are confident that the future will turn out well. Do your best to see the positive side of most situations.

Go to This Link To access videos and other tools to help you improve your leadership, go to www.act.org/leadership-training.

Improve Your Resilience Other Words for Resilience: Relaxed, calm, self-controlled, collected, not overly worried, and not overly stressed.

Improve Your Resilience Being grateful can help improve your composure. Being grateful means being thankful for the things you have. Try to spend a little time each day thinking about the things in your life for which you are grateful.

Go to This Link To access videos and other tools to help you improve your resilience, go to www.act.org/resilience.

ACT Tessera • Scores for Student Name

ACT Tessera reports also include

several additional components to

help students improve their social

and emotional skills. Reports contain

descriptions of each skill and some

examples of how students at each

star level may behave. They also

contain information and links to

resources on ACT Academy that

students can access to help them

improve their skills.

www.act.org/act-tessera | 5

Grit y Work with students to help them set short, medium, and long term goals, and to regularly monitor their progress and redirect their actions toward achieving those goals.

y Take care to help them with time management and organization skills; ensure, for instance, they have a calendar and planner for their schoolwork, and sit with them to prioritize their responsibilities, manage their tasks, structure their time, and organize their materials.

Teamwork y Support students’ skills in working with others by modeling prosocial behavior, demonstrating empathy, and inviting students to imagine how others perceive tricky situations and consider what feelings they might have about the problem at hand. Seek out opportunities for students to team with other students in both structured/organized activities like youth sports and in unstructured experiences like backyard play dates with groups.

ACT Tessera is a tool that is designed to help students become more successful in their

futures. Looking at a student’s ACT Tessera scores can provide insight into whether or not

the student has the social and emotional skills needed to achieve success in the future. It is

important to understand that the scores are based on students’ own responses to questions

about themselves and how they would act in various situations. Students should discuss

their results with adults who know them well in order to consider if the scores reflect their

current status on each skill, and to create a plan to improve.

The following are some activities you can do with your students to help them develop these

important skills. Strengthening these social and emotional skills will help your students

be more successful academically and socially, and will increase their chances of earning a

high school diploma and making a successful transition to college and careers. Parents and

guardians can have a meaningful and positive impact on their student’s growth in these

areas by supporting good choices and actions. Here are some suggested activities:

BUILDING SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL SKILLS IN YOUR HOME

6 | www.act.org/act-tessera

Building Social and Emotional Skills in Your Home

Resilience y Encourage students to specifically name their emotions, particularly when they are upset—Is this feeling anger, impatience, jealousy, disappointment?—and then experiment with specific steps they can practice for managing each type of negative feeling.

y Suggest students keep a gratitude journal and write regularly in it about to whom and for what they are grateful.

Curiosity y Welcome and encourage students to ask questions (the more, the better) and pose frequent questions to them and to others about why the world is the way it is or how things might be improved in specific situations.

Leadership y Ensure students know it is fine to be shy, but, at the same time, help shy students (and all students) learn and practice tactics to start conversations and communicate their thoughts, feelings, and opinions.

Social and emotional skills

change over time, and

improving these skills can

help students achieve

academic, professional,

and personal goals.

WHERE YOU ARE

TODAYdoesn’t have to bewhere you areTOMORROW

© 2019 by ACT, Inc. All rights reserved. JA80001.CJ0048

Learn more about how ACT Tessera can help you accurately assess your students’ social and emotional skills—and deliver the sound data critical to promoting continued growth and whole child development.

Call toll free 855.730.0400 Visit www.act.org/act-tessera