Creators of ELA assessment and education products have long been tasked with finding a balance between being effective and engaging. In an article published by NWEA, it’s stated that elementary school teachers carry the responsibility of continuing student interest in reading. Young students often enter the school system excited to read, but that interest wanes over time. Add on the responsibility for educators to collect effective assessment data, and it’s clear why innovative products are important.
As ELA assessment and product creators, products that are effective and engaging are essential in gaining and keeping educator satisfaction. Aside from maintaining national expectations of assessing key aspects in student reading, such as phonics, comprehension, and vocabulary, product creators also strive to keep students interested. This is a difficult role when the content they have access to is over-used.
As we mentioned in a previous blog post, Education Content: Deep Look at Purpose, the content used in education products determines its effectiveness. It also greatly affects the level of student engagement. When students are repeatedly exposed to the same content, they can become highly disengaged. Often, this type of disengagement leads to an overall loss of interest in reading at an early age. For these reasons, education product creators should widen the scope of their licensing budget and agreements.
CurationIQ’s creator deeply understands this conflict in education publishing and has designed the platform to overcome these obstacles. With decades of education licensing experience to support it, CurationIQ is designed with bothproduct creators and educators in mind.
Here is a look at three ways MOSAIQ’s CurationIQ reinvigorates ELA assessment and educational products.
Broadens ELA Assessment Passage Options
ELA assessments and education products are meant to combine state and national standards with effective assessment practices. (For more information on how CurationIQ can help bridge the gap in meeting standards, check out our blog post.) However, there are also specific text types and genres that product creators need to include. Product creators must incorporate literary texts, informational texts, and texts with specific structural elements just to name a few. Because of this seemingly ever-growing list of requirements, many products and assessments turn to passages that have proven their effectiveness over time.
The advantage to using the same passages is that there is extensive proof they meet all the necessary requirements. The disadvantage to these passages is that they have been used to exhaustion in most cases. Over-exposure to texts that are not relatable to the students who read them can lead to disengagement. However, finding content that meets all of the previously discussed passage requirements can be highly difficult. This becomes even more difficult when product creators are faced with tight timelines or limited budgets.
CurationIQ is designed to help with these concerns. By partnering with publishers to have access to their extensive libraries, CurationIQ does the searching for products. Each of CurationIQ’s publishing partners bring something unique to the platform. The greatest asset they bring is newcontent that has not been overused by other products or assessments.
Increases Variety and Authenticity in ELA Assessment
CurationIQ has a large library of publishers who offer licensing options on content in all genres. However, one of the marketplace’s greatest offerings is its vast inclusion of different subject matters, ethnicities, and origins. In our blog post on Multicultural Content, we expand deeper into the importance of including content written by members of different multicultural groups. The clear advantage to this is the increased variety it brings to ELA assessments.
Author voice and purpose are two skills students are often tested on in ELA products. Increasing the variety in these areas in educational products will only improve student understanding of these concepts. For this reason, amongst many others, having a access to a variety of passages that demonstrate these skills will benefit a product.
Another benefit to having access to a variety of content for ELA assessment, is an increase in passage authenticity. CurationIQs publishing partners include publishers who specialize in bringing truly authentic texts to educational products.
Provides In-depth Taxonomy for ELA Assessments
Given time and other restrictions around ELA assessments mentioned above, and in this detailed report by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, product creators need help in discovering new content. CurationIQ uses an in-depth taxonomy for tagging all of the content to which users have access. The tagging is designed to make searching for content quick, easy, and effective.
As already mentioned, all passages are tagged by author origin and genre, but this is only the beginning. CurationIQ does its part to help ELA assessment creators find the topics, themes, and author craft assets needed to assess complex standards. The taxonomy also includes extensive Lexileand grade level assessment of all content. Finally, content is also vetted for structure, features, word count, and so much more.
MOSAIQ’s CurationIQ brings quality publishing works to ALL education products, but its usefulness in ELA assessments and products is evident. To help ELA products evolve along with the students they serve, providing new and engaging content is paramount. CurationIQ wants to be the catalyst for meeting these needs and surpassing them for all product creators.
If you are and ELA assessment or product creator, we would love for you to head to our homepageand create a FREE account. Let us know in the comments below how we can help you meet your ELA, and other subject area, product needs.