Welcome

We are excited to partner with you in support of your students' academic language development! As you know, Speak Agent integrates engaging STEM content with research-based language activities. Our toolset paired  with your expertise prepares students for success in and beyond the classroom. Whether you want to learn how to get the most out of Speak Agent for planning, instruction, or progress monitoring (or all of the above!), let this page serve as your guide for best practices and implementation inspiration. 

 

Planning

Alignment

Speak Agent aligns its STEM content with your district's curriculum and pacing. That means when planning for your upcoming unit, you won't have to spend time searching for what you need. Our lessons are already named and ordered exactly as you see them in your scope-and-sequence. 

 

Understanding Activities

activity-guide_icon Activity Guides

There are many kinds of Content+LanguageSM activities in Speak Agent. Each activity incorporates research-based strategies, language supports, and multimodal language exposure. You will find activity guides when you view any lesson from your teacher account. Just press on this icon for the activity you wish to learn more about:  activity-guide_icon

Each guide describes how the activity fits into our three stage learning model, the WIDA ELD language uses, and your instructional plans. The guides also tell you if the activity requires things like headphones or mic or can be use independently or with a group.

Preview Mode

We recommend previewing a lesson before assigning it. When previewing a lesson and its activities, you see exactly what your will students see. Therefore, you can familiarize yourself with the language, identify common misconceptions, and strategically plan for and pace out each activity.

 

Planning Template

Speaking of pacing out activities, we have a planning template to help you do just that! Feel free to make a copy of the GoogleDoc and edit it as you see fit, or print a hard copy and jot away.

 

Instruction

Dosage

Speak Agent's recommended dosage is 60 minutes a week. You can structure that 60 minutes of usage throughout the week as you see fit. However, research shows that Speak Agent is most effective when used in 5-10 minute increments every day. You may be wondering where those 5-10 minutes of engagement will best fit into your instruction. Here are some implementation strategies that are working for our teachers:

 

Whole Group

Vocabulary Instruction

Review or preview the STEM vocabulary embedded in previous, present, or future units. In preview mode, share or project your screen to go through the Word Gallery with your class. Present all of the concepts in the word list or just a select few you want students to focus on.

Collaborative Writing

Check out Speak Agent's Story Spin activity for a fun way to engage the whole class in collaborative writing. Create a Story Spin game in your teacher account, present your screen with your class, and spin our giant virtual spinner to see who will kick off your creative STEM story!

 

Small Group

Intervention & Enrichment

Unless you have an extensive file cabinet full of worksheets and games you've collected over the years, you probably spend a lot of time finding and creating materials for your small groups. Instead, copy a Speak Agent lesson and personalize it to meet your group's needs. Then, assign the lesson to the students in your small group. During small group time, complete an activity together or provide support as needed.

Partner Work

Speak Agent partner work is especially beneficial for our younger elementary students. Have students work side by side on one device. Language buddies can help one another complete activities, discuss the learning tasks using academic language, and engage in collaborative problem solving.

 

Independent Work

Warm Up

Instruct students to log into Speak Agent as soon as they walk through your classroom door. This is an effective way for students to interact with the language associated with the day's lesson and prepare for what's to come.

Split the Class

During direct instruction, split the class into two groups. While you are teaching the day's lesson to one half of the class, the other half is working independently on Speak Agent. When you are finished providing direct instruction to the first group, switch!

Rotations

Teachers often include Speak Agent in students' rotation schedules, choice boards, or must-do can-do lists. Speak Agent will seamlessly fit into whatever structure you have in place for independent work time.

Homework

Although the decision to assign homework can be controversial, students' motivation to sign into Speak Agent at home is not! Many Speak Agent students have asked for their login information so they can continue independently completing activities at home and show their adults their hard work. Speak Agent is optimized for low bandwidth connections. We even have an iOS app for iPhone® and iPad®.

 

Differentiation

Speak Agent features a handful of tools teachers can use to personalize wordlists and lessons and meet the varying needs of your students. To learn more about our personalization tools, schedule a 1:1 coaching session with a Speak Agent or ask your administrator about our 201: Differentiating Instruction PD course.

 

Progress Monitoring

Student Report

Speak Agent teachers can view progress data at both the class level and individual student level. You can access individual student reports by selecting the name of a student and one of the lessons they've been assigned. Teachers have used the data collected in student reports to track progress, inform parent-teacher conferences, and identify how well the student understands each term and concept.

 

Class Report

View a class level report by selecting a Speak Agent class section and one of the lessons that class section has been assigned. This will populate a report that shows every students' progress and performance on each activity. The class level report gives teachers the opportunity to compare students' progress, track trends and patterns, identify misconceptions, create homogeneous groupings, and more!

 

answer-key_iconAnswer Keys

Many activities come with answer keys, where appropriate. When you view any lesson from your teacher account, just press on this icon to see the activity answer key:answer-key_icon

You may also find the same answer keys whenever you view the activity in a student's portfolio. They are there to help you evaluate student work.