After listening to educators, parents and caregivers from across the country, Savvas Learning Company today introduced a range of platform enhancements and new K-12 educational products aimed at making distance learning more impactful. They include features specifically designed to help teachers seamlessly shift between in-person and remote learning, easily identify both learning gaps and the critical content from the previous grade to close them, as well as increase student engagement with immersive activities and simplified access to their digital content.
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“We’ve heard loud and clear what educators and families need to make distance learning more effective this school year. With every moment of instructional time being even more precious when students return, teachers are looking for support to help smoothly pivot between remote and classroom teaching and address unfinished learning. Meanwhile, parents and caregivers want help getting their students up and running on their digital programs,” said Bethlam Forsa, CEO of Savvas Learning Company. “At Savvas, we have made it our mission to give educators and families the solutions they need so that their students can get the most out of their learning, no matter where it takes place this year.”
Long known for building learning solutions from the ground up to be used successfully in a blended classroom and online learning environment, Savvas, formerly Pearson K12 Learning, set out to further enhance its content and advanced technologies for more optimized remote teaching. This includes lesson plans, instructional tools, and readiness assessments specifically geared for distance learning. Savvas also created training videos and other resources to support teachers and parents in maximizing their use of its award-winning learning management system, Savvas Realize™.
Savvas Realize Optimized for Distance Learning
Among the many new enhancements Savvas is offering to help school districts prepare for the uncertainties of the coming school year is a feature in Savvas Realize called the Distance Learning Toggle. Savvas authors and instructional designers have carefully curated content, differentiating material that is deemed essential and optimized for distance learning, at both the course and lesson levels. With the click of a button, the content immediately filters to whichever teaching setting is needed, making Realize — already one of the edtech industry’s most versatile learning management systems — even more flexible by allowing teachers to easily toggle between content for classroom and distance learning.
Also new to Realize this year is its Interactive PDF Creator, a new tool that turns any PDF-based assignment into a dynamic document that allows students to easily complete and submit their schoolwork in an entirely digital environment.
New Tool Simplifies Assessments for Administrators
Now more than ever school districts need one place to administer assessments to students no matter where they log in. This is why we created a new District Assessment Sharing tool in Realize that allows district and school administrators to centrally manage and customize common assessments. The feature ensures that assessments meet the district needs while giving back time to teachers who otherwise would have to create the assessments themselves.
Teaching Resources and Professional Learning Support
As students return this year, teachers are seeking ways to address unfinished learning from the previous school year while also effectively teaching core curriculum in a remote teaching setting. Savvas has the answer with its Distance Learning Support Playbook, a comprehensive set of digital resources, customized to each discipline, that provides program-specific guidance documents and on-demand videos with best practices for teaching in all-remote or hybrid scenarios. For math and literacy, the resources also give teachers the current year’s priority instructional content for each grade level, with the flexible support to adjust the scope and sequence of instruction and integrate prerequisite skills as needed.
In addition to resources in the Distance Learning Support Playbook, teachers can access an array of expanded professional learning opportunities such as webinars, training videos, and virtual coaching designed to help navigate remote learning. For example, new courses include Principles of Effective Teaching for Remote Learning and Enhancing Remote Learning with Student Interaction.
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Support for Parents/Caregivers
The pandemic has highlighted the vital role that parents and caregivers play in helping their students learn at home. To better assist them, Savvas has created a parent user guide with how-to videos to help families get their students set up on Realize and to take full advantage of their digital curriculum, online and offline in cases of limited Internet access. The guide is available in English, Spanish, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Arabic, and Haitian Creole.
All-Inclusive Product Bundle for Back-to-School
Remote learning scenarios are requiring many educators to keep things simple as they start the school year. With that in mind, Savvas has introduced an all-inclusive product package that offers one easy-to-implement solution for learning anywhere, anytime.
Savvas One provides a one-year digital license to the company’s most popular, national K-12 math, literacy, science, and social studies programs, for one all-inclusive price per student, per grade level. The bundle gives school districts the confidence they are getting the highest-quality curriculum, aligned to standards and delivered on Savvas Realize, coupled with dedicated technical support and online training resources to empower their teachers.
New Products Available This Fall
Savvas is rolling out several new and updated products in the coming weeks with features and lessons aimed at improving engagement and outcomes for all students.
- myView Literacy, a leading core K-5 literacy program, and Reading Spot, a digital library, have been updated with a fully automated oral reading assessment tool called Moby.Read. This time-saving tool uses artificial intelligence and voice recognition technology to quickly and accurately measure K-5 students’ reading abilities and identify learning gaps.
- SuccessMaker Focus helps educators focus on covering the previous year’s standards by providing targeted practice on specific priority skills. Students receive a custom learning path where they experience scaffolded practice with detailed feedback on that priority skill. Data from assessments becomes more actionable, helping teachers address students’ unfinished learning while aligning instruction to Student Achievement Partners (SAP) standards.
- SuccessMaker 2020 Reading and Math, the updated popular intervention programs, are designed to close learning gaps. The updates make the programs ideal for distance learning and feature culturally responsive learning to engage students with enriching content.
- Experience Chemistry 2021 is a new, exciting and innovative approach to teaching high school chemistry that uses phenomena to engage students in real-world inquiry and allows them to conduct simulated lab experiments in school or at home. The flexible curriculum supports online learning models through Savvas Realize and engages students with videos, animations, and engineering design challenges.
- U.S. History Interactive and World History Interactive ©2022 is a new digital high school history program that promotes a deeper investigation of the past and connects history to the present. With a focus on inquiry and critical thinking, its online curriculum boosts student engagement with digital activities and flipped videos that accompany every lesson. The program takes interactive learning to new heights with the inclusion of the award-winning Project Imagine series that uses immersive experiences and diverse primary sources to make learning history come alive.
- Three Cheers for Pre-K is a new ready-to-go pre-kindergarten curriculum that provides a balance of academics and purposeful play to successfully pave the way for kindergarten readiness. It has been thoughtfully designed to support social-emotional and culturally responsive learning, and features a digital bookshelf that builds literacy skills while celebrating languages and cultures.
“We know this school year will not be easy. That is why our back-to-school efforts have been laser-focused on finding ways to make distance learning simpler and more productive for our teachers, students, and families,” Forsa said. “School districts also have the peace of mind knowing that when students finally do return to the classroom, their Savvas learning solutions are built to be flexible so that learners can succeed in any learning environment.”
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