Discovery Education

WOW! This past week has been stressful beyond belief. Valentine's Day parties were exhausting. Those students were beyond hyper on Friday too! I was able to enjoy a nice relaxing dinner afterward though. The 3-day weekend was very productive. Saturday I took my re-certification exam for SMART. I am now officially certified to teach SMART notebook version 11. I'm sure they'll have another update and I will have to re-certify again. But for now it is completed!

Sunday night I was able to attend the Luke Byran concert. It was AMAZING!!! He is a great performer and it was nice to visit my old collage town! Monday was my relaxing time, until my illness kicked in. UGH I despise allergies.

20 or so teachers from my school district are piloting Discovery Education in our classrooms. For those of you that use this, isn't it awesome!! Those that do not know, Discovery Education is a program that offers a continuum of solutions to meet your district's needs. They offer real-time assessment, free lesson plans and materials including thousands of videos on specific topics. I have been able to assess my students in Reading and Math using benchmark tests aligned to the Common core, and see which areas my students excel, meet, or need work in. I decided since we still have ISAT tests this year, I wanted to know how they will do on this test. Next year I will have them take the common core test.

The white bar on the right is where you would find the students' names. The columns are vocabulary/reading strategies, reading comprehension and Lit. Elements. I can see where each student stands under each category.

The results can also be broken down by standards, and you can see which standards specific students are not understand as well as if there are any standards the ENTIRE or most of the class is not understanding. I was able to pinpoint topics that needed to be addressed as a whole class and in my small groups for both reading and math. I am so excited to work more with this program. Finger's crossed the Board approves this to be implemented in the district next year. I do not know what I would do with out it!!! If your school or district does not use this program, I highly recommend it.

Kimberly