Talent Development
PR Newswire | August 29, 2023
Teaching Strategies, the country's leading developer of early childhood education solutions, has unveiled a first-of-its-kind curriculum tailored specifically to California's expanding universal transitional kindergarten program (TK). The program aims to build a bridge from preschool to kindergarten for close to 3 million children under the age of 5.
The new curriculum, which was built in close partnership with California educators, builds on the company's widely-recognized Creative Curriculum® but is aligned to California's early learning guidelines. The Creative Curriculum® for Transitional Kindergarten: California is paired with observational assessments that measure how well children are mastering academic and social skills, professional development for educators, and tools to keep families engaged in their child's learning–all in one, easy-to-use digital platform.
"With 90% of brain development occurring before kindergarten, TK is a critical stepping stone for many children. California is leading the way to ensure all learners have an age and developmentally appropriate learning environment, and we're proud to be helping more schools deliver on that vision," said Breeyn Mack, a former preschool teacher and Senior Vice President of Education at Teaching Strategies. "Building on our 45 year legacy of translating play-based learning research into practice, we've designed a comprehensive ecosystem of solutions— including curriculum, assessment, family engagement, and professional development—to help California educators meet each child's unique needs and prepare them with the skills needed for kindergarten."
California began expanding its free, optional, universal TK program last year by extending its cutoff date for eligibility. The state will continue to extend the date range until all 4-year-old children are eligible statewide.
The Creative Curriculum® for Transitional Kindergarten: California prepares children for kindergarten by balancing direct instruction with project-based learning that is critical to whole-child development. It provides progressions of learning and development that span the entirety of early childhood in order to individualize learning for each child, and it focuses time each day on building foundational reading, mathematics, and STEM skills.
In addition, the curriculum includes guidance and support tools for teachers to access in real time, including a suite of videos that model for teachers how to teach activities in their classrooms. It also connects families to their child's learning seamlessly through automated playlists of activities directly tied to daily classroom instruction.
Oakland Unified School District is among the growing number of school districts that have invested in the new curriculum for the 2023-2024 school year. Educators in Oakland also provided valuable feedback on the curriculum as it was being created.
"Transitional kindergarten is this magical time for children, so selecting a curriculum was important for our team," said Dr. Bernadette Pilar Zermeño, a PreK/TK English Language Learner and Multilingual Achievement specialist for the Oakland Unified School District. "We created a very detailed rubric for evaluating a TK curriculum, and we decided it should be whole-child focused, honor the needs of teachers, engage their families, and provide equitable and inclusive experiences for both children and families. After evaluating four different early childhood curriculums, we selected The Creative Curriculum®."
About Teaching Strategies
Driven by research that shows a child's first eight years form a critical foundation for success in school and in life, Teaching Strategies has been an advocate for the early education community for over 40 years. Today, Teaching Strategies connects teachers, children and families to inspired teaching and learning experiences, informative data, stronger family partnerships, and professional learning through the leading early learning platform and resources. Its products, including the most widely-used curriculum and assessment solutions The Creative Curriculum® and GOLD®, are found in over 250,000 classrooms and more than 80 countries around the world and reach over 4 million children each year.
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Talent Development
PRnewswire | June 28, 2023
MIND Education announces that ST Math was named the Best Mathematics Instructional Solution for Grades PK-8 and the Best Learning Recovery Tool of 2023 as part of the annual SIIA CODiE Awards. The prestigious CODiE Awards recognize the companies producing the most innovative Business and Education Technology products across the country and around the world.
"We are thrilled to have received these awards for ST Math, and honored to be recognized by SIIA," said Brett Woudenberg, CEO of MIND. "I am proud of our entire team's dedication and passion towards making a positive impact for students. Our science-driven approach to learning math combined with innovative technology and pedagogy is highly effective."
ST Math is a PreK-8 instructional program that teaches math the way every brain learns. It fills crucial gaps in any math curriculum to accelerate learning. Animated formative feedback introduces a positive math learning experience that has repeatedly proven to deepen students' conceptual understanding of mathematics. ST Math's cognitive playground enables perseverance and transforms students' relationship from "struggling with math" to "discovering math".
The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), the principal trade association for the software and digital content industries, announced the full slate of CODiE winners during a virtual winner announcement. Awards were given for products and services deployed specifically for education and learning professionals.
A SIIA CODiE Award win is a prestigious honor, following rigorous reviews by expert judges including educators and administrators whose evaluations determined the finalists. SIIA members then vote on the finalist products, and the scores from both rounds are tabulated to select the winners.
About MIND Education
MIND Education engages, motivates, and challenges students towards mathematical success through its mission to mathematically equip all students to solve the world's most challenging problems. MIND is the creator of ST Math, a pre-K–8 visual instructional program that leverages the brain's innate spatial-temporal reasoning ability to solve mathematical problems; and InsightMath, a neuroscience-based K-6 curriculum that transforms student learning by teaching math the way every brain learns so all students are equipped to succeed. During the 2022-23 school year, MIND Education and ST Math reached more than 2.28 million students and 115,000 educators across the country.
About the CODiE Awards
The SIIA CODiE Awards is the only peer-reviewed program to showcase business and education technology's finest products and services. Since 1986, thousands of products, services and solutions have been recognized for achieving excellence.
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Talent Development
PRnewswire | July 19, 2023
Lincoln Learning Solutions announced today the release of its Lincoln Content Bank, a multi-modal, educational content library designed with Amazon Web Services and intended to equip teachers with nearly 110,000 rigorous learning assets they can configure and assemble to meet the needs of their students.
"Educators working with pre-K through 12th-grade students need an easy-to-use tool that allows them to personalize learning opportunities," Lincoln Learning Solutions CEO, Bob Clements, said. "Our Lincoln Content Bank gives them the ability to quickly and simply search a huge variety of content to determine the best fit for individual students, small groups of students, or entire classrooms."
The Lincoln Content Bank features a robust search tool allowing teachers to harvest information based on searches of keyword, topic, standard, subject, grade level, modality, and more. Approximately 110,000 learning assets are at their fingertips ready to be incorporated into their courses in Canvas, according to Clements.
Designed by teachers for teachers, the content bank allows them to populate and preview on the same screen and intuitively makes recommendations based on previous searches. It gives teachers the luxury of saving the searched-for educational material in collections for easy retrieval at a later time.
Teachers who provided Lincoln with feedback in the early stages of development said the content bank would go a long way toward helping them close learning gaps, challenge students, ensure alignment with IEPs and 504 plans, and obtain standard mastery, all issues they face regardless of their learning environment.
"A lot went into this launch," Clements said. "The payoff for working with AWS to create this leading-edge teaching tool will come in the form of student success, which is always our top priority.
AWS is proud to have collaborated with Lincoln Learning Solutions on the development of the Lincoln Content Bank," said Annmarie Lehner, K-12 Business Development & Strategy Leader at AWS. "We look forward to seeing how K-12 school districts leverage the tool to personalize student learning in leading Learning Management Systems to improve student success."
LLS designed the tool with AWS so that it seamlessly integrates into the Canvas learning management suite and equips teachers with seemingly limitless access to an immense repository of educational content. Available in Canvas and in the AWS Marketplace, the Lincoln Content Bank will, among other things, provide teachers with: • Perceptive and rapid searching and browsing features • Customizable material for full classes or individual students • Myriad options for supplemental learning • Streamlined access to and application of learning objects targeting different learning modalities • Cross-curricular learning opportunities
School administrators will appreciate the content bank for its ability to streamline and standardize course creation across subjects while allowing individual departments to retain a level of ownership in the scope and sequence of their courses.
About Lincoln Learning Solutions
Lincoln Learning Solutions is a 501c3 nonprofit organization dedicated to collaborating with educators and maximizing their talents to facilitate student success. Based in western Pennsylvania, it is the developer of Lincoln Empowered™, a digitally based curriculum that delivers engaging, standards-based, instruction in online and blended learning environments. Lincoln Empowered™ offers a dynamic array of courses in language arts, mathematics, science, social studies, physical education, and the creative and performing arts. Lincoln Learning Solutions currently serves nearly 100 schools in 14 states, and upward of 20,000 students.
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