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Addressing Learning Loss with EdTech Using the Education Stabilization Covid Relief Funds

education stabilization

“I feel very passionate about the use of Alive Studios’ resources to ignite engagement for early learners who have experienced a disruption to instruction or learning loss.”

 

virtual teaching for 1st grade

Guest Blogger: Maggie Phillips
Former District Tech Integration Specialist

As we all know, with the disruption to instruction that has occurred over the last year, new and different learning gaps have developed for all learners, especially early learners. Addressing these learning gaps is not only a priority, but it is essential in preparing students to be successful in the future. With the recent approval of the second COVID-19 relief package, school districts will be provided with funds that can be used for education technology and programs to directly address the student learning gaps resulting from the disruption of instruction.

I feel incredibly passionate about closing these gaps and ensuring that all students have an opportunity to engage in high-impact and meaningful learning experiences. I recently had the opportunity to co-host a webinar with Cynthia Kaye (CEO & Chief Zoo Keeper of Alive Studios) about the effectiveness of Alive Studios’ seven EarlyEd technology resources for closing the learning gap by increasing student engagement. Alive Studios’ resources are proven to help bridge the learning gaps and to help Pre-K to 2nd grade students acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to be successful in reading and writing.

The seven resources we shared in the webinar are powerful tools for addressing student learning loss and are ideal for teaching in any learning environment – in the traditional classroom, at home, or a blended/hybrid environment. Everything Cynthia and her team have developed is research-based, rooted deeply in data, systematic, and meticulously scaffolded to support learners at every level.

The resources are aligned to kindergarten state standards and are for pre-k and kindergarten instruction, but they are also phenomenally successful as an intervention tool for striving students in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade.

In the webinar, we discussed how to Close Your Covid Literacy Gap by Increasing Student Engagement.
We featured 7 resources; the first 2 are free. Here they are:

closing the student learning gap
See the 56-minute webinar replay

1. Zoo Crew Alphabet Show – FREE
Cynthia and her team at Alive Studios set some time aside during the shutdown of 2020 to create something really dynamic. They made the best of a really challenging situation and actually produced and recorded a child-focused show on YouTube. With 26 interactive and content-filled episodes teaching letters, letter sounds, and animals, these shows are ready-made instructional resources for learning in a traditional classroom or learning at home… and it’s FREE!

2. Interactive Alphabet Chart – FREE
This easy-to-use, free resource was designed to give you the ability to simply click a letter and immediately access the related episode of the Zoo Crew Alphabet Show.

I love how these first two free resources blend different modalities into an approach that’s fun and meaningful. Students don’t even realize the learning that’s happening. Both are free and include hours of remote learning fun that can be enjoyed in class or at home.

3. Journals alive
The Letters alive and Math alive printed journals are way more than just simple activity books. Learning comes alive in 3D with the Journals alive app (free download), giving kids an interactive experience that gets them excited about learning.

The journals also make the most of homework! As we all know, learning at home has tremendously increased over the past year. These journals provide a seamless piece of homework that blends three key elements of learning: meaningful content, scaffold learning, and engaging technology. These journals are perfect for bridging the home/school connection and providing additional support for kids who are at risk of falling behind.

4. Rugs alive
When I first saw these rugs, I was mind-blown! And, when kids see the rugs come to life, they have a similar experience. Seeing the animals pop off the rug and enter their classroom or learning environment truly brings the learning experience to life.

These colorful classroom rugs provide kids with an interactive experience for learning animals, habitats, positional concepts, teamwork, and other STEM-based activities! Your students will love meeting the animals and taking photos with them through the Rugs alive mobile app (free download).

supplemental early literacy engagement5. Letters alive Zoo Keeper Edition
Letters alive is a supplemental ELA curriculum kit that incorporates multiple learning modalities and a cross-curricular approach to teach letters, letter sounds, word building, sentence building, and writing.

The Alphabet Show, journals, and rugs are all tied together with Letters alive. Whether you’ve taught phonics for years or you’re new to teaching these skills, Letters alive provides you with literally everything you need to facilitate high-quality learning experiences for your students.

6. Math alive
Math alive is a supplemental mathematics curriculum kit that incorporates interactive learning games, activities, and simulations with 3D augmented reality to teach 86 essential math skills. Whether you are looking to enhance whole group math instruction, independent work, or stations/centers, the Math alive content can bring abstract math concepts to life.

7. Learning alive Zoo Keeper Edition
There are a lot of things we look at when assessing effective instruction and meaningful curriculum and content. The Learning alive bundle checks all the boxes: Reading, Writing, Math, STEM, and Social-Emotional. It couples the content students are learning to develop the fundamentals of reading and writing with a pedagogically strong instructional approach and meaningful integration of technology.

If I was in the classroom or working at the school level at this time, I would be eager to implement these Alive Studios’ resources with my students! Knowing that this solution is research-based, rooted deeply in data, systematic, and meticulously scaffolded to support learners makes me feel confident it can close the learning and instructional gaps for the youngest of students.

 

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3 Features My 1st Graders LOVE about Letters alive… Even Virtually!

1st grade ela supplemental

“Their engagement went from 0 to 100 and I was able to actually get some real teaching done.”

 

virtual teaching for 1st grade

Guest Blogger: Beth Pittman
1st Grade Teacher, Early Ed Influencer, Blogger
Follow me: https://www.instagram.com/flexibleinfirst/




“Since this past March, we’ve been distance learning in our California school district. Just like everyone else, we were all scrambling to find things that worked with our students. At first, I was standing in front of my camera talking to my students over a computer. I learned quickly that I was not going to be able to hold my students’ attention. They needed some excitement, some spice, and something visually to get them engaged. I had recently implemented Letters alive in class and I knew my students loved it, so I gave it a shot virtually and WOW it was just what we all needed! Their engagement went from 0 to 100 and I was able to actually get some real teaching done.

With Letters alive, we’ve been able to review and master three key ELA skills:

virtual teaching for 1st grade
See Beth’s 12-min Presentation

1. Word Building with Phonics Patterns: Yes, even 1st graders need practice with letters and sounds; especially as letters are put together and the sounds change. The Word Builder in Letters alive is perfect for this! When I use the letter and word family cards, we are able to hear the individual sounds and the word as a whole. My students love directing me to use the different cards as we work our way through words. This has been a great review and practice for vowel teams and has given me their undivided attention as I teach them these concepts.

2. Sentence Building and Proper Punctuation: My students love putting words together and building sentences. But their biggest problem has always been capitalization and punctuation. When we build sentences in Letters alive using the sight word cards, not only do we get to see what all the 26 zoo animals can do in 3D, we also get to see the capitalization and punctuation get added on the fly! This has helped my kids so much and gives me a fun way to point it out and teach them the concept. When I build “The horse can run,” we see the “T” get capitalized, a period added at the end, AND, we see Henry Horse actually running! The sights, sounds, and actions have bridged the attention gap I was having with distance learning, and my students are actually learning and retaining the information.

3. Writing: One of the biggest problems with writing is finding things to write about. Letters alive has 26 animals in the Alive Studios Zoo. Each animal has a name, a rhyming story, a set of actions, a habitat, and other animal facts. This layer of animal science has ignited my students’ imaginations and they always have fun things to write about.

In addition to these ELA skills, I discovered a cool way to improve my students’ behavior while distance learning; I assign a “helper of the day.” My helper is able to verbally assist throughout each lesson. At the end of the lesson, I allow them to select one of the 26 animals for us to watch their habitat video so we can go on a virtual field trip. My kids LOVE this! They feel a sense of pride and accomplishment by playing an active role. Now all my students are at their best in hopes of being the helper for tomorrow!

I also have to let you know about the Zoo Crew Alphabet Show. Alive Studios took their “lockdown time” as a company and filmed 26 animal/letter lessons and shared them for FREE on YouTube. There’s over 6 hours of digital learning that you can share with your students and your parents. This also helps that disconnect created by remote learning for our little ones. I know my parents are loving it as we continue to figure out what is next for schools.”


If you’re interested in getting Letters alive® for your classroom and need help with funding, we are pleased to provide four great options here.

~ Cynthia Kaye




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3 Reasons Why I Chose Alive Studios’ Resources for Remote Learning

kindergarten teacher virtual summer camp

“As you may know, capturing kindergarteners’ attention is not easy in person,
much less over a computer. So, I had to get creative. I knew just the resource from my classroom that would do the trick…”

 

kindergarten teacher virtual summer camp
Guest Blogger: Amanda Lewig
Kindergarten Teacher, Masters in Curriculum Instruction,
2020 Teacher of the Year Nominee
Follow me: https://www.facebook.com/theprimarypinkchef


“As a kindergarten teacher, I like to reach out to my incoming students and offer a summer camp to get them excited and prepared for their new adventure. This year, in the wake of Covid-19, I had to conduct my camp remotely. As you may know, capturing kindergarteners’ attention is not easy in person, much less over a computer. So, I had to get creative. I knew just the resource from my classroom that would do the trick, Letters alive. I could easily bring the kit home to help with my distance learning. What I love about Letters alive is that it is research-proven, brain-based, and most of all, super-engaging.

kindergarten teacher virtual summer camp
16-minute snippet from recent webinar

1. Research-Proven: Now, I’m a nut for data. After introducing Letters alive to my class last year, I saw a solid increase of 18% when measuring recognized letters sounds. And, this is crazy, but I saw a 124% increase in recognized sight words. I think these increases will only get better as I learn more about how to best use Letters alive.

2. Brain-Based: Since Letters alive uses a multi-modal approach, I could easily differentiate for my kids’ learning styles. Best of all, Letters alive offers active screen time; It’s a very hands-on and interactive learning experience that plays on children’s natural curiosity about animals.

3. Super-Engaging: I love how the zoo theme throughout Letters alive keeps my kids engaged and eager to learn! In my summer camp, I also gave each of my kids a Letters alive Journal and free mobile app. This not only lets them explore the animals and letters at home at their own pace, but it also gave them a real-world connection with animals to literacy, it encouraged their personal creativity and provided them with opportunities to practice writing. The journals have built in writing prompts that allowed me to do early writing lessons with my incoming Kindergarteners. This laid the foundation for starting writing workshops in the fall!

In addition, an encouraging side effect is with non-English speaking parents. They are there to help their child with a remote connection, but they are also exposed themselves to the basics of reading and writing English! How exciting is that? It was heart-warming to see family interacting and laughing together.

Thanks, Alive Studios, for helping my remote summer camp to be a huge hit! And now, I’m excited to use Letters alive for back-to-school to get my kiddos back on track in a hurry!”