Maricon Reyes
ED638-40 Fall Intersession 2020
Dr. M.Rivera
IRA Newsletter Weekly Project: Effective Literacy Website #4: StudySync
StudySync (https://www.studysync.com/) is an exceptional and comprehensive core literacy program designed to help grades 6-12 students become close readers, careful writers, and critical thinkers. This tool has a free trial for teachers and also offers subscriptions for a single teacher, school, or district-wide subscriptions. It has more than 2000 literary and informational texts with an abundance of resources to boost student engagement, productive class discussion, and develop foundational reading and writing skills. Featured texts include full-length like Shakespeare plays and excerpts from novels, and short stories, poems, and essays. Informational texts include biographies, autobiographies, journals, letters, persuasive writings, historical documents, speeches, and newspaper articles. Each text includes research-based lessons, higher-order and engaging activities such as quizzes and writing prompt, and accordingly aligned with the Common Core State Standards. All texts are available in both English and Spanish to help English language learners and students with special needs, to include online and offline access. The majority of the texts allow toggling between Lexile levels to help find a passage with an adequate challenge. To show the commitment to providing a library reflective of equality and diversity, just recently, the developers have added more text from female authors and people of color.
Taking a closer look at each grade level packet, it features six units with 30 days of lessons and instructional activities totaling 180 instructional days. Each unit has novel study options which include curricular supports. There are 2 per unit for middle school and 3 per unit for high school. The full-text units focus on novels and play with comparison texts. Teacher and student reading guides with vocabulary lists, key passages, and notes from StudySyncTV, and close reads are primarily included in each unit. PDF and epub copies of the text are also made available. StudySyncTV videos feature a diverse group of teenagers performing a dramatization of Collaborative Conversations. In these conversations, performing students follow a script where they refer to and read-aloud text to illustrate a point. Students make connections to their own background knowledge and interact in a respectful engagement with others giving respect to others’ perspectives. StudySyncTV videos may be used for class conversations and help students learn how to verbally engage in critical thinking. Brief current events news stories alongside writing and discussion prompts are accessible every day. Additionally, each unit offers an extended writing project centered on particular types of writing such as narrative, literary analysis, informative writing, or argumentative writing and research projects culminating in oral and multimedia presentations and prompts for a written response. Aside from StudySync ELA, another available product is SyncBlasts which has daily current event stories and nonfiction articles which focus on topics relating to STEM and social studies.
Whether Study Sync is used as an ELA program or as an instructional supplement, this is a remarkable tool that aims to help students grow and develop their reading and writing skills. Here are some images highlighting the features of this tool.
StudySync is an ELA program for grade 6-12
The extensive support resources help teachers and students make use of the features.
Texts are available in English and Spanish and at multiple Lexile levels.
Fiction and nonfiction texts include questions and activities to check for understanding and spark engagement.
Teachers can use and assign built-in assignments or create their own.
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