Benchmark Advance

Good Day Readers!
Sorry, it has been a while, but I have been working to understand Benchmark Advance. I know there are a lot of opinions out there about Benchmark, but for this post, I am going to talk about things that have worked for me. While I am still working to understand all which is involved in this program there are some things I have figured out. Shall we start at the beginning?

First, I was working on understanding the mini-lessons and workstations. I have read about people teaching all 3 lessons and then doing the workstations, people doing a lesson then a rotation, people struggling to do the lessons and not getting to the workstations. From this, I have come up with something that has worked for me.

I start out each day with the Read Aloud for 10 minutes with my class. I do not use the Read Aloud book because it seemed too much for my students and in the case of Unit 3 of grade 5, my students would check out on more information about corn BEFORE the lessons even started. So for my Read Alouds, I read chapter books such as The Giver, Wonder, etc. I enjoy these more and so do my students. This is especially true when you need to get to the lessons on reading with enthusiasm and dialect. Thus, my students get a 10-minute lesson every day not only on listening but on reading with enthusiasm and dialect. (Check for 2 skills in 1!)

When I have finished reading I pull one of my high groups to work with. This rotation is only 10 minutes but is enough time for me to work with them on a project or activity they will work on for the week. This allows me to meet with one of my high groups every day should I wish; now I don't do this every day but it does give me some play time with the groups.

From here I go into one of my mini-lessons. Now, I am not sure if most of you know this, but the TE for this program gives you the mini-lessons for the day and "in the number order" they should be taught. However, after researching and talking to a person at Benchmark, the lesson order is a suggestion (mainly for the upper grades 3+). This is different for the lower grades. Thus if your students are more focused on the beginning work on the most difficult lesson for them or the one which will be easier for them. Teacher's choice!

After this lesson, I go into a rotation where the students work on the independent or partner work which might not be done within the time of the mini-lessons. From here I repeat the process.

While I know most of you are going but where is the technology piece here? Well, here it is. If you have had a chance to work on the Benchmark website there are a few things which you can use during lessons and rotations. For example, Benchmark has games online to aid with the teaching or workstations for spelling and grammar. I use these to increase student understanding and give them something to do other than "boring work" according to my students.

In order to find these, I am going to type and show the process. These games can be given to students the same way you give assignments. So here we go!

Let’s start on the homepage: From here you are going to go to the drop-down menu at the top and choose Interactive Learning Games.

Once there it is going to produce all the games available for you. You will notice that the grades available are only K-2 which as an upper-grade teacher doesn’t help you, but it does! Instead of just choosing the grade level and unit you will need to look for what it is you are going to teach.  There are 2 ways to do this. 1. Search through the list as a scroll down or search using the search bar at the top.

Now that you have found what you are looking for all you need to do is assign it to your students. You can click on the gear on the lower right (this is the easiest for me) and click add to assignment or drag and drop into the assignment. If you have not assigned something to your students before you will need to do so on the right-hand side of the screen.

You will need to make a name for the assignment. For this, I usually name it whatever skill the students are to practice or the workstation they will be doing the assignment in. From here it is quite easy to use. Next, you can give instructions should you wish. Next, you will need to select your students. This will take you to a new section of the assignment and you will need to choose your homeroom and then students.

Once you clicked on students you can either choose each student individually or go to the bottom and click select all.

Now that you have chosen your students, click done and it will send you back to the assignment page. Finally, give it a day and time to work on it and select save.

User Rating:
Overall, this rating will be for creating assignments in Benchmark Advance. I would give it a level 1 because creating the assignment is quite easy. It is the searching and determining what to use which is difficult.

Glitchy Review:
I will not be giving a review of this since I do not want to have people thinking I am evaluating the program which I am NOT. I am trying to help people use the digital system. Thus I will remain with the User Rating of ease of use and nothing more.

Please let me know if there is something you wish for me to write about or create a video for! Leave your comment below! Enjoy!

Sutori

Product Description:
This month I will be talking about Sutori. Sutori is a website were teachers, students, writers, professors, etc.; can go and make interactive articles. The website allows people to create their own from scratch and share them on the website or print.

Glitchy Review:
I have to admit I was skeptical of this website when I started poking around. I saw some beautiful articles (I guess this would be the best word) created by Sutori and a few members; however, this left me wondering would this be something I as a teacher could use?

The sign-up process is a breeze particularly if you sign up with Google. Once you get in there is a tutorial for you to get acclimated to the different parts of your dashboard as well as when you start your article. (Don’t skip this if you are a level 1 user, even some level 2 users should check it out.) This makes the adjustment to the program easier.

I have to admit as a teacher I could see while putting my first article together there are A LOT of ways for students to get distracted with the different things you can put in the article. Unless the teacher put requirements in this could go one of two ways. One the students pick and choose and do so minimally like so:

The article is clean and to the point, but not too interactive.
Then there is option 2 where students get so overwhelmed they don’t do anything.

I would like to let you know these are 2 students of the same technological ability as well as academic ability so you can really see how drastic the differences can be. In addition, I let my students have at it with Sutori to see what they would do. After all if we don’t let them play we can’t get a really good idea of what they can do to start off.

With this in mind, I was able to see some potential here. If I was to give them something to write about and gave them requirements to add; I could see students being successful. This would be a perfect website for students to use to show their knowledge in a different way. I could see my students (of all levels) being able to use this website fluently (with time and practice of course!)

With the new NGSS standards (which are inquiry based) this would be the best way for students to show their knowledge with writing as well as with models. Additionally, this allows students hands on experience with parts of informative text! Students really can’t understand this without using it themselves and this program allows them to do this. Finally, the website makes sure the students or user creates a bibliography or citation list. This is great for upper grades where students really need to do this. The only downfall here is the set-up is the same for a 5th grader as much as a 12th grader. I would suggest this change for grade levels to aid students in learning how to do this. For example, type of fill in the blank for the lower grades to allow them to learn and a blank box for upper grades.

Overall, the website is a great tool for teachers to use and have their students use. While it does have some work to aid teachers with their students it certainly has potential.

User Rating: This is a level 2 website where you do need some experience to get all the perks out of the program but it is not out of reach of level 1s either.

Glitchy Rating: I would give this website 4 out of 5 because students DO need an email to access and I know there are teachers out there whose students don’t have them. Definitely something I would fix to allow more classes onto the website.

Newsela

Product Description:

Newsela is a website which houses numerous different non-fiction articles for different grade levels. Teachers can either assign articles, quizzes, or writing based on these articles.

Glitchy Review:

Newsela is a decent program. I use the free version with my class and can still do many different things. While with all programs the paid version does give you more information there is still much to do with the free version. When you sign up you get a month of the paid program to check it out. The only flaw with this would be if you like the program you HAVE to be a school or district to get the paid program. There is not option on the site to order for the individual teacher. I am currently looking to find out if you can get Newsela for individual teachers. I will update when an answer is received.

For this review it will be a compare and contrast the free version to the paid.

First, with the free version you have access to all the articles available on Newsela as well as the quizzes and writing assignments. The only difference between the paid and free version is you can assign these to the students online while the free version you do not have that option. For me I just read the questions on type them up for my students. (Paper and pencil is still good!) The only thing you can do with the questions on the paid version and not on the free is customize the prompts.

Second, with the free and paid version you have the ability to change the Lexile level of the article to allow all students to read the same article at their level! (Hello access to the information!) Now students and teachers do not have to worry about students not being able to follow along or not have access to the information! (This is my FAVORITE feature! Yes, even more than the quizzes.)

Third, with the paid version you have access to all articles in SPANISH. Yes, you read that correctly, SPANISH. All quizzes, writing, and articles will be in Spanish as well. No other languages are available, but I am sure they are in the works.

Fourth, is a couple of things. With the paid version you will also have access to a report for each student with a breakdown of the concepts. This breakdown also allows you to see the class average, annotations made by students, organize the questions by CC Strand, view student progress, and compare your students to other students on Newsela. This works great for any teacher’s, schools, or districts looking for RTI information or small group information.

Glitchy Rating: I give this website a 4 simply because you have so much you can do as teacher on the free version. I really wish they would have a way for us to buy the program as the individual teacher and more language options available.

User Rating: This website is a level 1. You can go in there and begin working right away. It will take some “playing around” to figure out where everything is, but still highly user friendly for any of the user.

Here is the website for you: https://newsela.com/