Imagine Learning Update Adds Assessment, Learning Tools
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.
About the Author
Michael Hart is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and the former executive editor of THE Journal.