North Billerica, MA, July 22, 2019
Curriculum Associates continues to enhance its award-winning i‑Ready program to further support students, teachers, and administrators. These enhancements, which will be available for Back to School 2019 and which were recognized by the Tech & Learning ISTE 2019 Best of Show Awards, include an engaging new student experience, new support for middle school students, a new Diagnostic for Mathematics available in Spanish, new accessibility features, and more robust historical reporting. Today, more than 7 million users nationwide use the award-winning program to improve student outcomes and proficiency.
“We are constantly working to improve our programs with content and resources that best meet the unique learning needs of all students,” said Rob Waldron, CEO of Curriculum Associates. “These new i‑Ready enhancements will better engage students in the learning process, better support teachers in their instruction, and better inform administrators about overall student performance and growth.”
For Grades K–8, there will be engaging new instructional lessons and a new student dashboard with an age-appropriate design that encourages students to take ownership of their learning and motivates them as they progress through i‑Ready. New age-appropriate introductions will play before the Diagnostic to encourage every student to do their best.
To meet the needs of middle school students specifically, i‑Ready will release approximately 100 new lessons designed to engage middle school students in their learning. These include 60 new reading comprehension lessons for Grades 6–8 featuring culturally responsive passages, as well as nearly 40 new online mathematics lessons for Grades 6–7 that cover Algebra and Algebraic Thinking and Number and Operations.
These lessons feature a new age-appropriate look and feel along with additional enhancements to motivate middle school learners. With the lessons, students will engage more directly with learning concepts, see substantially less talking from i‑Ready characters, and benefit from responsive instruction that adjusts the pacing of a lesson to meet the individual learning needs of each student. These lessons are the first phase of a multiyear initiative to offer completely new digital instruction and practice at middle school grades.
For educators, i‑Ready will include new guidance, tools, and resources built for the specific challenges of the middle school classroom. This includes ideas for classwide and schoolwide activities that reflect teen insights and engage students in the learning process, guides for holding data chats with middle school students, and recommendations on using Teacher-Assigned Lessons in middle school to address on-grade level content.
Students across all grade levels will also benefit from improved accessibility features on the Diagnostic, which will support students with visual, auditory, and physical impairments through keyboard navigation, closed-captioning for pre-recorded media, and compatibility with screen readers. Further accessibility improvements are underway for i‑Ready Instruction, i‑Ready Standards Mastery, and Learning Games.
A Spanish version of the i‑Ready Diagnostic for Mathematics will also be available, so Spanish-speaking English Learners can take the assessment in their native language.
Educators will additionally have access to historical reporting and more diagnostic information. This marks the completion of an entirely new set of reports for school- and district-level reporting.
To learn more about the new i‑Ready enhancements, visit i-ReadyCentral.com/AlwaysGettingBetter.
About i‑Ready
i‑Ready integrates powerful assessments with engaging instruction in reading and mathematics to help all students grow and succeed. It makes the promise of differentiated instruction a practical reality by providing teachers with the tools needed to ensure all students are on the road to proficiency, while motivating students by providing them with their own personalized path to growth.
i‑Ready, which has more than 7 million users nationwide, is currently being used by more than 15 percent of all K–8 students nationwide across all 50 states. To learn more about i‑Ready, visit i-Ready.com/Empower.
About Curriculum Associates
Founded in 1969, Curriculum Associates, LLC designs research-based print and online instructional materials, screens and assessments, and data management tools. The company’s products and outstanding customer service provide teachers and administrators with the resources necessary for teaching diverse student populations and fostering learning for all students.
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