Help Students Move from “Renting” to “Owning” Vocabulary: 3 Ways to Build Background by Emphasizing Key Vocabulary

Vocabulary development is crucial to student success, however, overused vocabulary tactics can grow uninspired and tiresome. Read more below to learn about 3 different ways to help move students from “renting” to “owning” vocabulary. Why Teach Vocabulary Development While vocabulary is often closely linked with reading comprehension, vocabulary development is actually crucial to success in all 4 language domains of reading, writing, speaking, and listening. While teaching vocabulary, you ground students in the lesson by previewing language that is important to the content of the lesson, it helps students recognize and interact with vocabulary throughout a lesson and encourages students...

Formative vs Summative

“If you don’t use the results of the common formative assessment to make a difference in student learning, the assessment is summative” (Bailey and Jakicic).

The quote from above is one of the best descriptions for both formative and summative assessments. We are all familiar with the classic definitions but the reason & why are more important than the characterization.

Gaining Standards Insight Through Your CFAs

Assessment strategies are critical components in any classroom. Assessments are tools for learning that are commonly used to drive instruction. However, despite their commonality, creating assessments which both measure evidence of learning (summative) as well as evidence for learning (formative) is one of the more challenging tasks as a teacher. In this post, we’ll look at Common Formative Assessments (CFAs) as a tool for gathering standards-aligned data you can use in your PLC meetings. Why use CFAs at all? In the PLC process, CFAs are the tool used by teams to measure learning on essential standards across classrooms. These regular...

Focused and Targeted Instruction Using NWEA Scores and IXL Skill Plans

One way to use NWEA data to drive instruction is to use skill plans within IXL. With IXL’s skill plans, students can turn their pinpointed NWEA results into skill plans to quickly grow their math knowledge. Skill plans are available for math, reading, and language assessments.  Creating a personalized MAP skill plan 🎉 Elkhart teachers, this step has already been completed for you for all students that completed NWEA within the testing window! Skip ahead to the bottom of this section to learn how to manually enter data for students that missed our testing window! If you are an IXL...

4 IXL Reports to Help Remediate and Extend

Remediation and Extension is essential for any classroom but lack of time, data, and resources makes it difficult. That’s where IXL can help! I will show 4 different ways IXL can help you, but it’s up to you to use it in a meaningful way.  In order to have quality data you have to give the Diagnostic and Star Essential skills. Watch the video below to see what the diagnostic looks like and tips on giving it to your students. Once your students completed the diagnostic you can use the reports below to help scaffold and differentiate. 🎥 IXL Diagnostic...

Focused and Targeted Instruction Using NWEA Scores with Free eBook

Are you looking for ideas on how to utilize NWEA data in meaningful ways to inform instruction and put the data to work?  Teach. Learn. Grow. blog contributor – Kathy Dyer and Senior Curriculum Specialist for NWEA, John Wood – provide great ideas and techniques for getting the most from MAP Growth data in their free ebook “Using MAP Growth Data to Inform Instruction”. This valuable resource also provides real examples on how you can apply MAP Growth assessment data in your classroom to help improve instruction, set goals, predict proficiency, and even help with parent communication. Check out the...

Beyond Drill: 3 Ways to Use IXL in Your Classroom

IXL often has a bad rap amongst students. While it is easy for teachers to use and assign, misuse of the program and an overemphasis on drill will cause burnout for your kids. Whether you have been using IXL for years, or have yet to start, read below for three ways to get your class excited about using IXL. IXL in Centers/Stations As your students move through rotations in your math or literacy class, it is often challenging to have work that all students can do independently. Whether it is gaps in learning, struggling readers, or lacking background knowledge, there are many...

✨ 2022-2023 Technology Ambassadors ✨

Welcome back to school! We’re excited to be back and learn with everyone this year. If you’re wondering who to contact for ideas, tips, or tricks in instruction this year, we have the updated Tech Ambassador list below. Each of these teachers is ready to help you brainstorm ways you can engage your students. Rebecca Dodd Beardsley Sondra Flora Beck Jason Hite Bristol Jeremy Rohyans Cleveland Mackinzie Kempton Daly Michelle Holderman Eastwood Nakeyta Hardy Feeser Jessica Moreno Monger Shelby Eby Osolo TBD Pinewood Emily Zitkus PRIDE Academy TBD Riverview Carolyn Kelley Roosevelt Karin Wirick Woodland Emily Kuzdas North Side Mariana...

Focused and Targeted Instruction Using NWEA Scores with Khan Academy Math

NWEA MAP data is powerful and can be put to great use to accelerate student learning and Khan Academy offers personalized math practice using NWEA scores.

Ready-to-Use Activities to Teach About Labor Day

Think of your favorite ice cream flavor. Can you guess how many workers it takes to produce that delicious cone of mint chocolate chip? 🍦We celebrate these (and all!) workers on Labor Day.

Celebrate the achievements of workers in the United States throughout its history with the exploration of Labor Day.

Check out these ready-to-use resources that may help you weave Labor Day into your instructional day a little easier!

Spotlight on Strategies: High Impact Teaching Strategies to Support All Learners

Finding new and creative ways to engage students can be challenging. We know that it is best practice to use multimedia content in the classroom, which helps the teacher engage the students and in turn helps the student to be more involved and retain more information from the lesson. Sometimes finding those resources and strategies, however, can be difficult.   Subscribers to Discovery Education have access to an extensive collection of multimedia resources, as well as a collection of creative, research-based instructional strategies, known as Spotlight on Strategies (SOS).  These strategies are presented by teachers for teachers to support implementing multimedia...

Top 5 Accessibility Tips for the iPad

What I truly love about Apple and the iPad is their dedication to accessibility. (You can learn more, here). Below I present to you my top 5 iPad accessibility tips for the iPad! Tip #1: Enable dictation (it isn’t cheating) Dictation allows students to use the microphone to use their voice to type. This is POWERFUL for many students, and while it may feel a bit like cheating, I promise you that it isn’t. To turn on dictation, Settings > Keyboards > Enable dictation towards the bottom. Tip #2: Speak Screen and Speak Selection (this also isn’t cheating) Speak Selection...

Canvas Accessibility 101

Homepage You should be meeting the following requirements to ensure your homepage is accessible. Translated Text Fonts that are readable (avoid cursive or anything that looks cursive) Visual icons Below are two customizable homepages you can use and edit for your own class. There is a horizontal calendar option and a vertical calendar option. Click on the links for the canvas course to copy it in your course. Canvas Horizontal Calendar Homepage Canvas Vertical Calendar Homepage Common Icons I recommend starting the year with an intro and a key of common icons you use in your classroom, see example above....