Actively Learn - resources for middle and high school ELA, science, and social studies teachers, including interactive text and video assignments as well as PhET sims.

Actively Learn is an excellent resource for teachers and students, providing middle and high school teachers in ELA, Science and Social Studies, resources to help their students. Resources include interactive text to help reading comprehension, videos and simulations from PhET.

Here are two overview videos as well:
Teacher overview video
Student overview video



It offers a searchable catalog of thousands of free assignments with embedded media, standards-aligned questions, scaffolding notes, and Teaching Ideas to save teachers time and drive deeper learning for students. Any teacher can create a free Actively Learn account that never expires by going to www.activelylearn.com.

Let’s say a teacher is doing a unit on cells. That teacher can come to the Actively Learn Catalog and find the Cells Topic page, which includes a variety of assignments related to cells like textbook sections, high-interest articles, videos, and PhET simulations. All of these assignments have scaffolding notes in the margins to describe concepts that may be challenging to students and standards-aligned embedded questions.

A screenshot of an assignment in Actively Learn with embedded media and scaffolding notes:


With Actively Learn, teachers are in the driver’s seat. On a free plan, teachers can:

• Customize any of the instruction in Actively Learn (edit questions or notes)
• Upload any Google doc, website, video, or PDF and turn it into an interactive assignment with their own embedded questions and notes
• Deliver feedback to students as they read and get real-time data on student reading progress

Students can:

• Create annotations in the text, share their annotations with their peers, and respond to one another’s notes
• Translate text into over 30 languages, hear text read aloud, look up words as they read, and read in “dyslexic mode”

Example of a student discussion in Actively Learn:

Some of the benefits of Actively Learn:

The instruction is designed to drive deeper learning. Questions are aligned to Depth of Knowledge and Common Core or state standards. It actually helps students to engage with their content instead of asking generic, “What’s the main idea?” questions. Scaffolding notes are designed to help fill gaps in background knowledge while students read so that they can make sense of their grade-level, rigorous texts.


Actively Learn:

• is a one-stop-shop for teachers of ELA, social studies, and science. 
• has a content catalog of novels, short stories, primary sources, science simulations, textbook articles, high-interest articles, videos, and more. 
• has content organized into topic pages that give teachers a full suite of options for their core content needs.
• saves teachers time by offering pre-created instruction and automatic grading for multiple choice questions. Teachers on the paid plan have access to suggested grades for short answer questions and can see student progress by standard and assignment type.
• offers the flexibility for teachers to create their own assignments or modify any of the ones in our Catalog. 
• integrates with Google Classroom and Canvas for even easier use by teachers.

Take a look and try it out: https://www.activelylearn.com/









.

eSpark - a fun and engaging way to differentiate reading and math instruction for students in preK-5th grade

eSpark is a fun and engaging way to differentiate reading and math instruction for students in preK-5th grade. It is completely web-based. They have just released a free, one-year trials of eSpark as well. Sign up free here: https://www.esparklearning.com/#signup-modal

eSpark automatically differentiates for PreK - 5 students based on their current needs with targeted instruction in reading and math. It includes games, videos and other resources to help students while they have fun. It is adaptive based on each student and helps students with self-paced pathways to assist them in mastering new standards and receive immediate feedback. 

eSpark also has great teacher tools including a dashboard to track progress and see where students are. Teachers can receive weekly, actionable emails that share suggestions to work with small groups and 1:1 interventions. Teachers can also use on-demand assignments to assign targeted skill practices to students.

eSpark has an engaging variety of resources to keep students engaged and on task, while automatically meeting each student at their own level. 

You can learn more with this walk through video and below.

Disclaimer - eSpark is a paid advertiser on ETG.

Mentoring Minds - instructional materials to develop critical thinking skills

Mentoring Minds is an educational publishing company that develops K-12 instructional materials to help students develop critical thinking and problem solving skills. Experienced educators create the materials based on research and cover topics such as critical thinking, differentiated learning, instructional strategies, classroom management and more.

The company's main goal is to provide materials that help students increase their critical analysis and reasoning skills, along with problem solving skills. The curriculum does this through research based lessons and real-world connections.

Products include ELA, Math and Vocabulary curriculum programs, Professional Development tools, Critical Thinking programs, Assessments, RTI and more. The products combine print and online resources, as well as teacher editions and resources. You can take a guided tour of their products here: http://guidedtourdemo.mentoringminds.com/01/

Pricing is very reasonable and all of their resources qualify for Title I, III, and V Part D Funding. They will even help you find ways to fund your purchase.

Each state has a consultant that would work with you to provide the solution that best fits your needs.

Total Motivation Reading is one of their more popular products. It integrates critical thinking with ELA support and is aligned with the Common Core Standards. It unpacks each CCS so that teachers can find the gaps in student learning and fill them in.

Mentoring Minds bases all of their products on research to make sure that the resources will be effective in the classroom. You can read about their research here.

They also have a section call Thought Leadership, where they share free tips, research, articles and resources that help teachers improve teaching and learning.

These products can be very useful in helping struggling students, as well as helping all students learn critical thinking and problem solving - skills that all students need for the future.




Disclaimer - this article is a paid sponsored post by Mentoring Minds.


Related:

Important Skills Students Need for the Future

-

SparkNotes app available for Android -teach students responsible use

I remember in high school when ever we had a book report due, we'd head off to the library or bookstore for Cliff Notes. Now students have SparkNotes website and now an Android App. SparkNotes provides guides and chapter summaries of books. The app is free and their is an iOS version.

While some students misuse this and use this instead of reading the actual book, teachers could show these kinds of resources to their students and how to use them to help them understand what they are reading. Show the students that these are help resources, not something to replace the actual reading of the book.

The app has 50 study guides pre-loaded, you can download more and it has a built-in social networking feature to connect with other users.

This is one more resource that students have available to them. One way or another they are going to use it. As educators, we need to show them how to use the resource properly.

Get the SparkNotes app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=air.com.sparknotes.sparknotes

Related:

Android for Education resources and apps - app reviews, apps for education, news, tips, resources, and more.

Litcharts - free, downloadable alternative to Cliff Notes

ReadPrint - Free online books for students, teachers, and readers

ReadPrint is a site that has thousands of free online books to read. You can search the entire collection, or search categories such as essays, fiction, non-fiction, plays, and more.

The site has many of the classics, inclduding "The Ugly Duckling", "Jane Eyre", "Pride and Prejudice", and "The Canterbury Tales."

This is a great resource for educators and students to save money by reading the books online for free.