Blended Learning

Imagine Learning Update Adds Assessment, Learning Tools

• By Michael Hart
• 07/06/16

Imagine Learning has added new features to its core product, a software program designed to help students, often learning English for the first time, with their literacy and language skills. The latest version of Imagine Learning provides teachers with a number of new assessment tools and students with new content and learning tools.

Imagine Learning English and Español both address individualized instruction with exercises tailored to each user's needs and internally monitors individual progress, accelerating instruction levels based on the user's rate of progress in each essential skill area: vocabulary, comprehension, fluency, phonics and phonemic awareness.

The newest version includes an Annual Growth Test (AGT) that lets teachers measure and document literacy and language skills over an entire school year and more closely track student development.

"The new AGT not only will allow educators to get a snapshot or point-in-time estimate of student skill levels, it will also allow them to see changes in those skill levels since the initial placement test," said Imagine Learning Assessment Designer Barbara Badgett.

Other features new to this version include:

• A Fluent Reader feature designed to help students prepare for reading fluency assessments and provide teachers with the ability to monitor student performance;
• Digital books that support learners in five new languages — Burmese, Farsi, Karen, Polish and Urdu. Imagine Learning already offered programs in 15 other languages;
• A new end-of-session screen that will let students monitor their own progress and see how well they are doing;
• New avatars in the character creator and new activities in the Imagine Museum; and
• New content that includes activities designed to teach cause and effect, more articles from the Associated Press for older students and new decoding activities for younger students.