NoRedInk, a provider of online writing curriculum used in more than 60% of U.S. school districts, today announces the availability of a comprehensive offering for upper elementary students: NoRedInk for Grades 3–5.
Since early 2012, NoRedInk has been simplifying the process of building strong writers and critical thinkers in middle and high schools across the country. While maintaining its steadfast commitment to this mission, NoRedInk recognized that empowering districts to lay a sturdy foundation for literacy in elementary school would enable them to improve student confidence, learning outcomes, test scores, and college and career readiness. “We’ve taken what works well for middle and high school learners and reimagined it for Grades 3–5,” said Jeff Scheur, founder and CEO of NoRedInk. “We’ve carried over some of our signature engagement features like adaptive exercises that incorporate each student’s unique interests and built a highly supportive elementary ELA learning ecosystem around them. By equipping teachers with the resources in NoRedInk for Grades 3–5, districts will be in a position to promote the equitable development of elementary literacy across every classroom.”
When expanding to Grades 3–5, NoRedInk’s team of former educators incorporated a range of evidence-based practices that cater to the unique needs of elementary learners and teachers who are responsible for instruction across multiple subjects—and who may not have a background in ELA. In addition to covering a broad spectrum of foundational ELA skills and integrating seamlessly with core reading curricula, NoRedInk for Grades 3–5 introduces grade-level-appropriate remediation, instructional support for elementary teachers, a new type of guided writing activity, and more. New Short Response Guided Drafts provide young writers with the support they need to craft clear, cohesive paragraphs. After completing a genre-specific tutorial, students build a paragraph sentence by sentence. As they work on each sentence, they receive targeted support and encouragement from a cast of animated characters.
Similarly to Short Responses, NoRedInk’s skill-building activities for Grades 3–5 feature robust scaffolding, including interactive, video-based lessons and grade-level-appropriate remediation. This remediation transforms incorrect answers into genuine learning opportunities by using straightforward scaffolding questions to help students understand the skill at hand, freeing up teachers to focus their time and energy where they’re most needed. NoRedInk for Grades 3–5 also saves teachers time through an extensive library of Modules, collections of sequenced, standards-aligned activities that streamline instructional planning and give teachers a roadmap for confidently delivering effective writing instruction.
“The scaffolding we incorporated into these activities is designed to make every student believe that they can be a writer, even if putting together a complete paragraph may seem overwhelming at first,” said Stephanie Wye, Director of Curriculum at NoRedInk. “Along with our writing fluency-boosting Quick Writes, Short Response Guided Drafts are an invaluable tool for helping elementary students develop into strong writers.”
Source: Businesswire
