What are strands and quartiles?
Strands and quartiles are criteria MDI uses to identify the uniqueness of a student’s abilities and needs. Strands are like topic or skill areas within a particular subject. For instance, in Mathematics students learn about many different strands including measurement, number sense, computation, etc. Quartiles, on the other hand, are used to describe a student’s relative ability level and needs within each individual strand. Quartiles may tell us that a student is strong in measurement and needs instruction at a faster pace and more challenging level, while at the same time is relatively weaker when it comes to computation and needs more step-by-step, detailed instruction.
