As a teacher, my number one goal is to make sure my students understand what I am teaching them. I try to keep my lessons engaging, age appropriate, and corresponding to the standardized curriculum but sometimes it is hard to curate lessons that hit those tick-points for an entire classroom. Every child learns at a different pace, which makes creating lesson timelines incredibly difficult; there are always students that learn quickly and some that fall behind and it is tough to pace my lessons to meet everyone’s needs. I knew that I wanted to use some type of online learning program to help meet the needs of my students, and, after reviewing the features of Lumos StepUp, I decided that it was the best program for my students.
Through Lumos Learning, I am able to create customizable assignments for my students, track their progress, and view just how much of my lessons my students are comprehending through the progress tracking feature. I love having the ability to see exactly what my students understand, where they struggle, and what I can do to help them succeed. I am easily able to create assignments specific to my lessons and can alter the content and layout of my assignments to maximize my students learning potential. One of the key features that helps my students move at their own pace is it “Remedial” assignment option.
The “Remedial” assignment feature lets me automatically assign additional practice to students based upon their performance on the assignment. If a student does not reach proficiency on a certain lesson, they are given extra practice on the topic until they master it. This is especially helpful for giving students automatic access to practice material and for their mastery of common core standards. Using the remedial setting, I am able to test students on an exact common core standard, analyze their proficiency of that standard, and provide additional support. I am able to set what proficiency level I expect students to be at and Lumos Learning will track student’s performance and automatically assign practice material based upon their performance.
Another unique feature of the Remedial assignment is the ability to use the Coherence Map to show exactly how different standards work together, which makes creating lesson plans and pacing charts that much easier. This map shows me what skills my students need to master to have a foundation for the next common core standard and provides students with the opportunity to practice these baseline skills at their own pace. It also lets me know, if a student is struggling with a particular standard, which previous standards they need to improve in order to move forward. Knowing what standards my students understand (or don’t understand) is especially helpful when creating and pacing my lessons. I am able to plan my lessons based on my students’ mastery of the skills, rather than just guessing if they understand the material or not.
I love being able to use Lumos Learning to provide my students with the best possible education and ensure that they are actually learning the material, rather than just memorizing information that they will forget later on. I have seen a drastic increase in my students’ abilities and I am proud to give them this opportunity to succeed. Now that they are mastering the material before moving on, they have a strong educational foundation to build upon. I can see what my students need in the classroom and can adjust my lessons according to their proficiencies. This not only increases the pace of my lessons, it also excels my students faster than I have ever seen my previous classrooms achieve.
