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by Vicki Davis on Apr 28, 2023 2:00:11 PM
Science teachers often miss out on extra support for reaching their students who learn differently. For example, support to create leveled texts or differentiated experiences with science textbooks and materials can often be limited. Imagine a world where science concepts could be customized for a class, a group of students, or an individual student. Propello, today’s tool of the day, allows you to reach every student in your classroom in a unique and customized way.
If you already have a science curriculum, you can use Propello as supplemental material. However, if you need a science curriculum, now is a great time to test and review this as a potential for your middle school. Such potential.
If you’re struggling to reach every student in your science middle school classroom, this app is worth a test, especially because it is free for teachers and also aligned with NGSS Science standards. I highly recommend this tool. (And ELA is coming for the next school year!)
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Middle School Science
As you log in, select the subject area you are teaching. Earth and Space Science, Life Science, and Physical Science are all included.
For this demonstration, I will select Physical Science because it includes topics I teach in computer science.
As you look at the subject, you can see the available chapters along with the subjects. So, while this is a standalone curriculum, you can select a topic within a chapter to assign to your students.
Physical Science Chapters
So, then, I move to the chapter on waves as I teach communication systems and analog and digital signals in my Computer Science coursework and need some NGSS standards-aligned supplementary material to reinforce what I am teaching.
Creating a Learning Path
I will assign Analog and Digital Signals, but I don’t want to assign the full textbook, so I will create a learning path for my students.
Note: One amazing thing about this is that I can create a learning path for a district, a class, a group of students, or even an individual student.
I’m going to assign Analog and Digital Signals
Propello is hands-on and has many activities and embedded formative assessments inside the materials. These external resources help bring other items that I’m already using with this subject into the digital, differentiated textbook that is Propello. For example, after an introduction to reading, the lesson on radio waves has an activity to help students understand communication signals.
Differentiation: Leveled Texts and Immersive Reader Built In
The lessons are Inquiry-based so they start with the science mystery to solve it. Additionally, they didn’t lower the vocabulary, but they have leveled texts on grade level and below grade level built in.
Immersive Reader is also built-in and it will let you change the font size, the font (Comic Sans is great for dyslexic readers) can point out parts of speech, and syllables. The focused reading line is also available for eye tracking. Read aloud and then translations built in for over 100 languages. This is a fantastic way to reach every student in your classroom.
Formative Assessments Throughout Science Articles
I also like the formative assessments built into the reading assignments. This helps show the student's progress.
Monitoring Student Progress
The student progress feature through the lessons will be released in May/June timeframe but this mock up has me very excited about what this will mean when I teach this lesson in the fall. (Which is why now is the time to test this tool!)
Setting Up Rosters
Once I’ve created the learning path, I can assign it to a class and some students. Teachers will always have rostering for free which includes Google Classroom, Microsoft Teams and manual rostering. So if you complete this form, you can request rostering and see if they have slots open.
Try Propello Now: An Awesome NGSS Science Standard Aligned Differentiation Tool
Science teachers have told me they often struggle to reach every student. This supplemental material or textbook tool will be perfect for middle school science teachers. Test out a few lessons now to evaluate Propello to use in your classroom in the fall. Now is the time to start using a tool that can save you so much time and help every child learn!