K-4 Remote Resources

Google Classroom serves as a Learning Management System (LMS), allowing teachers to assign and collect assignments, post announcements and share other general information with students (and parents).

Google Classroom is the most important of your remote-learning tools and serves as the conduit for all instruction and communication. Students can access Classroom from the student resources tab on the District or from the tray on their Chromebook.

Liz Bell offered this helpful tutorial in the Fall. Google Classroom Tips and Tricks

Other helpful Google Classroom videos can be found here -

Google Classroom Overview

Email Summaries for Parents

Turning Off Classroom Notifications

i-Ready starts with a test that determines every student’s academic skills in math and reading. This test is adaptive, which means that the level of difficulty will change as your child answers each question. Questions get a little harder each time a question is answered correctly, and a little easier when answered incorrectly.

i-Ready also provides students digital instruction that meets them where they are–at their level. It allows them to work independently on their own personalized online instruction plan, in lessons that are assigned based on the results from the i-Ready Diagnostic test.

Please check out the resources available for families via this link.

GoGuardian allows the classroom teacher to deliver instruction, keep students on-task, and chat or monitor students as they work. Teacher can also open specific websites for students, limit the number of open tabs or restrict access to distracting websites.

GoGuardian syncs with Aspen all of your classes should be appear in the dashboard with updated rosters. Please contact the Help Desk if t his is not the case.

In the video example, a "scene" is used to block YouTube during instruction.

Similar to i-Ready, Typing Club is a self-paced resource that helps students their typing skills. Teachers can track progress and badges earned using the various reports offered in the dashboard. Information on these reports can be found here.

Similar to i-Ready and Google Classroom, Typing Club can be accessed from the Student's page on the District homepage. K-4 students can access their by "logging in with Google".

Similar to i-Ready and Typing Club, Raz-Kids is a leveled-reading resource that allows students to work at their own pace.

eBooks are available in online and mobile formats, and allows students to listen to, read at their own pace, and record themselves reading. Students then take a corresponding eQuiz complete with an extended answer response to test comprehension and determine future instruction needs. Once a child has read ten or more of the leveled eBooks and passed each of the corresponding eQuizzes, they advance on to the next reading level where they have access to lengthier and more difficult text.

The link to Raz-Kids can be found on the Students page on the District website.

Thinkcentral is a online platform associated with our current Math text, GoMath. Teachers may assign activities or assessments through Thinkcentral. To access your TC account, log into Chrome or a Chromebook with your @scolonie.org account, navigate to the students page on the District website (https://www.southcolonieschools.org/student-support/) and click on "ThinkCentral".

More information on how to navigate ThinkCentral can be found at downloads.hmlt.hmco.com/Help/ThinkCentral/Student/index.htm#t=Getting_Started/Navigate_ThinkCentral.htm

Mystery Science features multimedia science units for K-5. Each lesson starts by posing a question commonly asked by kids, like "Do plants eat dirt?" or "Why are so many toys made out of plastic?" A series of short videos and prompts then guides a class discussion, followed by an experiment that can be done as a class. Lessons cover a wide range of topics, including light and sound, biodiversity, engineering, and the water cycle.

Literacy Footprints is a Guided Reading system designed for classroom teachers, intervention, ELL, Special Education teachers, and support staff who are teaching children to read and write. Each of the kits (kindergarten, first grade, second grade, third grade, fourth grade, fifth/sixth grade, and the Intervention Partner) contains sequenced, high-quality leveled texts in a variety of genres.

Students will encounter traditional tales, realistic fiction, fantasy, and informational text. The lesson cards that accompany the books follow Jan Richardson’s “Next Step” lesson format. Each lesson includes word study and phonics instruction based on The Next Step Forward in Word Study.

The news articles span a wide array of content, including science, money, law, health, arts, sports, and opinion and meet most State Learning Standards. The site provides high-quality nonfiction texts from well-regarded media sources, such as the Washington Post, the Scientific American, the Los Angeles Times, and the Associated Press. An added benefit of using the site is that students not only practice reading nonfiction but also stay current with what is happening locally and globally.

Along with a library of articles, Newsela provides real-time assessments of student comprehension through multiple-choice quizzes and writing prompts. Each article is accompanied by a four-item quiz that probes the following areas: what the text says; central ideas; people, events, and ideas; word meaning and choice; text structure; point of view or purpose; multimedia; or arguments and claims. These categories are aligned to the first eight Common Core Anchor Standards for Reading, but they are also written generally enough to be aligned to reading-comprehension standards in states not using the CCSS. Teachers also have the option of assigning a short writing prompt related to the article the students read.

Students and teachers can also use Newsela’s built-in “annotation tool” as they read. They can highlight passages in articles, mark them with symbols, ask questions, jot notes, and write short summaries of important ideas. This is a great way for students to purposely interact with text, to promote their active reading, and to further their comprehension.

Newsela is adaptive, with each article accessible at five reading (Lexile) levels. The original article is used as the highest Lexile level. It’s then rewritten by Newsela staff for different grade levels, using a Lexile conversion chart available on their website. Teachers initially set the grade level for all students in their class; after a student has taken eight to ten quizzes, the site adjusts the articles to that student’s appropriate reading level—a continuous process based on pupil performance. This adaptive feature allows for an entire class to read and discuss the same content, while permitting individual students to access material at their individual reading level. To make its content accessible to more students, Newsela has also translated many of its articles into Spanish—again available at five reading levels.