It's a new school year and Speak Agent has updated its ed tech platform and many of its courses in order to make your life better!
Jump to: New Courses | Lesson Changes | Offline | Reports | Math Writing | Coming Soon
Course Changes: MS Math
We have restructured our MS Math program (Math 6, Math 7, and Math 8) based on teacher feedback. In some cases we split lessons into two, so as to break out what many teachers felt was an overwhelming amount of new vocabulary and activities. In addition, all Math 6-8 courses now have two levels of each lesson.
- L1, or Level One, engages students in multimodal vocabulary practice.
- L2, or Level Two, engages students in reading and writing in order to develop comprehension and mathematical communication skills.
- These are not English language proficiency levels. They are just meant to occur in the sequence L1→L2.
- We normally recommend that you assign both levels to all students, but that is your choice!
Our honors math courses (aka Accelerated Math) have also been restructured to reflect curriculum changes.
New Courses in Math, Science, and Social Studies
We released several new courses this year:
- Applications in Mathematics, a sheltered course for newcomer multilingual learners who are preparing to enter Geometry next year.
- BioGeoChemical Systems, a phenomenon-based NGSS course for ninth grade that integrates biology, geology, and chemistry.
- National, State, and Local Government, a multi-level course aligned to the American Government Framework for the State of Maryland, with support for emergent multilingual learners.
Changes to Lesson Features
There are a few changes to how lessons work that you should take note of:
- Preview shortcut: You can now preview a lesson directly from the lessons list page by clicking the eye icon:
- Favorites: You can favorite a lesson by clicking the heart outline
and pull up your favorites instantly by checking the box next to the red heart
. - Print options: From any lesson page, you can print the Lesson Details or a Word Wall (or save them as PDFs). This fall we will also be adding a Print Cognates option as a support for speakers of Spanish.
- Editing assignments: You can now revise due dates or which activities are required vs. optional after you assign a lesson. Just click the pencil icon
on the right sidebar to see prior assignments and click the icon again for the assignment you wish to change.
Offline Strategies
Are you looking for opportunities to get your students off the screen and communicating with one another? We now offer strategies for how to use the printed Word Wall and Cognates. Some newer courses such as HS Biology, HS Geometry, and NSL Government, have additional offline strategies. This fall we will be posting these strategies to your mission hub or support webpage.
Reports
Based on teacher feedback in SY24, we updated our Class Progress report to enable you to cycle through the data, student by student, from A to Z. Learn more here →
We also heard from many teachers looking for data on Student Growth Measures. We've got your covered! Learn more here →
New Math Writing and Modeling Tool
Looking for a tool with built-in scaffolds to help your students with math writing and mathematical modeling? Check out the new Math Problem Maker and Solver activities. These are included in higher level lessons (L2 or L3) usually toward the end of the marking period, as they are culminating activities. See our presentation from summer PD sessions →
In Math Problem Maker, students come up with their own math questions related to a curriculum-based topic. Then they gather information required to answer their favorite question and write a word problem about it!
In Math Problem Solver, students randomly receive a problem that a classmate wrote and can compare their solution path to the original writer's solution path.
Coming This Fall
We are wrapping up development of a new visual representation toolkit called Drawing Board. Expect to hear more about this soon!
We will be piloting Drawing Board in September and October at four schools who volunteered at the PGCPS Secondary Mathematics Conference on 8/21:
- Greenbelt MS
- High Point HS
- MLK Jr. MS
- Nicholas Orem MS
Written by Ben Grimley
Ben is CEO and Co-Founder of Speak Agent, Inc.
