Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eSchool News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

Certell’s Poptential™ Addresses 21st-Century Wars With Free Memorial Day Teaching Resources

INDIANAPOLIS (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Poptential™, a family of free social studies course packages from Certell, provides rich content to teach the importance of Memorial Day, including material on the U.S. involvement in 21st-century wars. Click to tweet.

“While today’s high school students weren’t yet born when the United States was attacked on 9/11, the War on Terror resulting from that day has been in the news for most of their lives,” said Julie Smitherman, a former social studies teacher and director of content at Certell, Inc. “More than 7,000 U.S. service men and women lost their lives during this protracted war, so it’s important to understand how it came about.”

The Memorial Day holiday honors American soldiers who have died in combat and has been observed annually since 1971 on the last Monday of May. Poptential’s American History curriculum features bell ringers, mini-lessons, and multimedia content to engage and teach students about the U.S. involvement in 21st-century wars, including the attack on the World Trade Center in New York, the resulting War on Terrorism, the occupation of Afghanistan and the Iraq war. Lessons include:…Read More

Poptential™ From Certell Offers Content on Tax Day for High School Teachers

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — As Tax Day approaches, Poptential™, a family of free social studies course packages, offers instructors media-rich content to teach key concepts about taxation in the United States. Click to tweet.

Poptential course packages boost student engagement by using a variety of pop culture media to illustrate concepts, including those taken from sitcoms, movies, animations, cartoons, late-night shows, and other sources.

Tax Day ordinarily falls on April 15 each year; however, this year the federal tax deadline for individuals to submit their tax returns and pay taxes owed on 2022 income has been moved to April 18.…Read More

Curriculum Associates Launches Magnetic Reading™ Foundations for K–2, Expanding the Magnetic Reading Program to Support Grade-Level Success for K–5 Students

NORTH BILLERICA, Mass.—Curriculum Associates recently expanded Magnetic Reading K–5 with the launch of Magnetic Reading Foundations for Grades K–2. This new program, along with the recently released Magnetic Reading for Grades 3–5, form an intuitive, systematic approach to instruction with rich, engaging texts that draw students to the center of learning.

Magnetic Reading is built specifically and intentionally for the ages and stages of all students to ensure they get the right support succeeding as a grade-level reader: a focus on the building blocks of reading for the youngest learners and an emphasis on comprehension and gaining insight into the world for older students.

Magnetic Reading Foundations provides teachers with the resources needed to deliver explicit, systematic foundational skills instruction. Rooted in the Science of Reading, the program uses research-based routines and engaging decodable texts to support students’ reading development.…Read More

Poptential™ Free History Curriculum Helps Teachers Explain the Significance of Labor Day With Media-Rich Content

INDIANAPOLIS, (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — When teaching about the labor movement in the United States, instructors often focus on Cesar Chavez and Peter McGuire to illustrate the rise of unions and workers’ rights. Poptential™, a free curriculum that infuses lessons with digital storytelling using pop culture references, also uses SpongeBob SquarePants.

“It’s been more than 125 years since the first Labor Day was observed, and the labor movement can seem a little dry to today’s high school students,” said Julie Smitherman, a former social studies teacher and director of content at Certell, Inc., the nonprofit behind Poptential. “Adding digital storytelling—like the SpongeBob clip—helps students better relate to these topics.”

Poptential uses a variety of pop culture media to illustrate concepts, including those taken from sitcoms, movies, animations, cartoons, late-night shows, and other sources.…Read More

Why we use a multilingual districtwide platform for personalized communications

With more than 15,000 students across 25 different schools in central Washington state, one of our biggest goals coming into this past school year was to develop a feature-rich communications system that was the same for teachers, schools, and the district. We looked at the options on the market, talked to other districts about what they are using, and then put in a new school-home communications platform in place for the 2021-22 school year.

One of our concerns when adopting a new platform was whether it could handle multilingual communications for the district, where our students speak eight different languages–mainly English and Spanish, so that was our previous sole focus.

If you take Spanish and English out of the mix, we’ve never communicated using the six other languages before, unless it was an Individual Education Plan or something else that had to be translated. We’ve never communicated our normal messaging out in ALL languages that impact our families.…Read More

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Poptential™ Free Curriculum Brings History Alive for Independence Day

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — (May 6, 2022) — Poptential™, a family of free social studies course packages that pair pop culture media with engaging digital storytelling, provides teachers and students media-rich lessons on the American Revolution and Declaration of Independence, celebrated July 4. Click to tweet.

“While the Declaration of Independence was adopted 246 years ago, the heroes guiding the birth of our nation are brought to life in popular culture, which appeals to today’s digitally-savvy learner, and can make teaching more effective and relevant,” said Fred Fransen, CEO of Certell, Inc., the maker of Poptential.

Poptential courses, used by more than 30,000 teachers in 50 states, include everything instructors need to teach a subject, digitally accessible in one place, including lessons, ebooks, bell ringers, quizzes, and tests, as well as pop culture media to make lessons interesting and relatable to students. Curriculum packages are standards-based and developed by social studies teachers.…Read More

Bringing the world to life through augmented reality

My school, located in London, is a rich and diverse community with over 40 languages spoken at the school. Affectionately known as a ‘village school in the United Nations of Brent,’ we can see the arch of the iconic Wembley Stadium from the end of our street. However, like some of our American counterparts, we serve students who have never been able to visit–let alone step inside–the iconic landmarks like Wembley, Buckingham Palace, or the Tower of London, in their own backyard. 

This fact was brought home to me several years ago when a 10-year-old student from Brazil, whom we will call Lucas, made a sobering observation on a school trip to center city London. Looking up at the glass, the skyscrapers, the abundance of wealth, Lucas casually remarked, “I didn’t know London could look like this.” 

In that moment we knew we were failing our children. If our neighborhood of Cricklewood in North London was all they knew, how could they have aspirations beyond it? It was augmented reality that began to bring the world to life for our learners.…Read More

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Do your teachers know what good teaching looks like?

Pick any high-priority instructional initiative in your district. Can you think of at least one teacher who is excelling in that priority area?

Maybe it’s an early-elementary teacher facilitating small group math learning. Or, maybe it’s a high-school science teacher appropriately deploying sheltered-instruction techniques into a lesson rich with academic language.

Now ask yourself… how can every other teacher get a chance to see that teacher’s classroom?…Read More

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How our coding platform helps us teach STEM

In a district where most of our students receive free or reduced lunches, we have next to no access to high-quality STEM programs, computer science classes, or coding courses. When I was Googling different ways to fill some of these gaps and incorporate more STEM into my Girls Excelling in Math and Science (GEMS) after-school club, I discovered an online coding platform and coding competitions that are both accessible and affordable.

This was a big find. I wanted my students to excel and compete effectively with important college and career and STEM skills, regardless of how rich or poor our school district was, but we just didn’t have the resources to make that happen. I was looking for a platform that taught basic computer coding, and one that would allow anyone at any skill level to jump in and participate.

I also wanted a program that included robotics, and that segued into our existing robotics program, which starts in seventh grade. CoderZ checked all of these boxes, so we started using it three years ago. It effectively replaced the Hour of Code general coding/computer programming platform that we were previously using.…Read More

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