With thousands of opportunities available in the grant community, you’ll want to pursue only those that have the greatest chance of being funded.
To help you decide which grants to focus on, here’s a five-point checklist of criteria you’ll want to keep in mind as you search for the best grants to pursue: Read more »
I recently asked Imagine Learning‘s director of training to share some of the challenges educators encounter that prevent their students from getting as much from Imagine Learning English as they could. I thought it would be instructive to share some of her observations and offer some tips that can help you overcome these roadblocks if you’re experiencing them too.
The most common issue she hears is that scheduling frequently makes it difficult to give students enough time in the lab. Often it’s a tough decision of limiting the student’s exposure to another subject in favor of increasing their literacy or second language acquisition time. While it may be obvious to a student’s classroom teacher that more time spent using the program would be beneficial, if your school has specials teachers, more coordination between instructors may be needed to determine what will best serve the child.
So how have other teachers addressed this challenge? Let me share two suggestions that have worked for many schools using Imagine Learning English. Read more »
You already know that students who read over the summer perform better than their non-reading peers when school starts in the fall. But why? In a recent study at Harvard University, researchers tried to pinpoint what factors made summer reading so effective at improving performance. What they found surprised them.
It wasn’t necessarily access to books, the quality of literature, or even the number of pages read. The main factor leading to effective summer reading was involvement from adult family members.
Have you met all of the characters from Imagine Learning English? Many of you may be familiar with Pete, Amanda, Chloe, and Mic –the characters who live on Imagine Island and help your students learn the basics of literacy.
However, as students master those skills and move on to more advanced instruction, they are introduced to Alex, Nick, Lily and Mel — characters who help students learn more academic vocabulary and master important reading comprehension strategies like answering main idea and inferential questions.
These cool kids hang out at the Imagine Museum, just a stone’s throw from the coast of Imagine Island, and they are joined by Booster, a flying robot who gives students feedback when they need a little extra help. Each character has a specialty. For example, Alex focuses on reading and comprehension; Mel helps with vocabulary.
Check out the video below to see the kids (and robot!) who are helping your students master language and literacy:
A growing body of research confirms that even small summer setbacks can result in big learning losses for many students—especially struggling readers. So what can you do to ensure that your students retain all the skills you’ve worked so hard to teach over the last year?
Here are a few simple tricks to help you beat summer learning loss: Read more »
