Interactive Review: IXL

We are absolutely loving the IXL 30 day free trial!

Click to sign up for your free trial!

The free trial gives teachers (or parents) and students full access to all of IXL's tools, including real-time progress and student scores by state standard or objective.

IXL is fully aligned to Virginia and other state standards.

IXL is fun and engaging. Students complete questions that reflect TEI (technology-enhanced items), such as multiple answers, open-ended questions, or manipulating answer choices; it's not the typical passage-reading and answering multiple choice questions.

IXL is more of an instructional tool than an assessment tool. It is definitely a mode of formative assessment. Students are able to track their progress, and if they get an item incorrect they get immediate feedback explaining why their answer was wrong and why another answer choice was correct.

Student view: Connotation interactive

This is great to project and do guided questions with a group of students. It also serves as a wonderful computer station for a blended classroom!

Give it a try, and let us know how you use IXL!

Teaching Students to Interpret Author's Clues

The skills making inferences and drawing conclusions are umbrella terms that include an array of literacy skills. 

The following presentation focuses on introducing students to an overview of how to analyze clues provided by writers that imply the author's purpose, perspective, viewpoint, subject, theme, tone, and mood. 

To access an editable copy, click on File, then Make a Copy.

There are cloze notes that students can fill in as they follow along with the presentation below.

To access an editable copy, click on File, then Make a Copy after opening link.

The follow-up stations that accompany this will be posted shortly. The last several slides in the presentation guide students through the analysis of print advertisements, comics, political cartoons, and public service announcements. This serves as guided practice for the upcoming stations!

One of these Words is Not like the Other Words...

New activity for word relationship and word study practice! 

This Google Slides presentation reviews word relationships, word origins, and helps students make associations among related words.

The activities in this presentation align with the multi-step cognitive processes found in Common Core and SOL assessments. 

This could be broken down into sections as warm-ups for whole-group practice, divided into sections and made into stations, or made into a review game! 

As always, feel free to share and adapt as needed!

Click slide to view Google Slides presentation.

Literacy Stations In English 9

Two weeks ago I had the opportunity to guest teach in a Chesterfield County High School classroom. I worked with the content teacher and special education teacher to prepare and implement literacy stations in two small collaborative English 9 classes.

The stations in these classrooms were slightly different than how we typically use them. In this case, the teachers were using stations to introduce unfamiliar vocabulary words before reading selections from The Odyssey, so all of the stations used the same set of words but focused on a different skill.

Station 1: Sentence Writing Station
We printed 12 color pictures on 11x17 paper. Each image was labeled with a vocabulary word. Students were given a handout (chart) with boxes labeled for each word. They were directed to analyze the image and write original sentences using the vocabulary word and the image.

Station 2: Context Clues
At this station, students were given handouts with printed sentences. Here they were directed to fill in the blanks with the appropriate vocabulary words using context clues including synonyms, antonyms, examples, and inferences.

Station 3: Root and Affix Sort
The last station involved sorting the same vocabulary words by root, prefix, and affix. The students were given a chart of various words. They were directed to identify the given word part and write it on the handout chart beneath the word with which it shared the word part. (For example, they were given the word "titanic" and had to write in all of the words that shared the suffix.)

The stations were a great success! The activities were the appropriate level of difficulty for the struggling readers. Because we had three teachers in the room (myself, the content teacher, and the collaborative teacher),  we were able have one teacher leading at each station to guide students who struggled with understanding the activity or the words. The students worked cooperatively and stayed on task. The class began with the regular warm-up (journal writing), followed by station introductions and expectations. With fifteen minutes for each station, both classes were able to begin a shared reading of the first Odyssey story after completing the station rotations.

I followed up with the teacher after the lesson, and she had already created her own stations for implementing the next set of vocabulary words!

If you would like any assistance with customized stations to accommodate your students, please contact me through email (emma.zayas@gmail.com).