The friendly letter is a ubiquitous elementary project, but without a meaningful context it often ends up as a rote exercise in following formatting rules. With the advent of digital tools and social media, the rules for formatting a friendly letter writing are also changing. While many bemoan this change, digital tools also made it easier to both edit writing, add visuals and voice, and share immediately with an audience beyond the classroom.

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Students in first grade are learning more about subtraction and addition, place value, and geometric shapes. They are ready to build foundations for understanding how to subtract and add numbers, measure lengths as units, and classify shapes.

Wixie's curriculum library includes a range of math-focused templates you can use for formative assessment purposes or to support student thinking as they use virtual manipulatives and a blank canvas to construct understanding.

Teachers can assign Wixie templates directly to students, or customize templates to differentiate them for specific learners in their classroom. Instructions for students show in the Wixie interface and you can ask students to record their voice to explain their mathematical thinking.

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Designed by teachers and educators at the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, the 6+1 Trait® Writing Model of Instruction & Assessment organizes writing skills into seven “traits” that provide a common language for writing instruction.

The traits are:

1. Ideas
2. Organization
3. Voice
4. Word Choice
5. Sentence Fluency
6. Conventions
7. Presentation

Using these traits can help students see techniques of great writing, as well as take action to build specific skills that improve their writing.

Here are ways you can use Wixie to help students practice and support skills building for each of the traits.

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Third grade students work on developing an understanding of multiplication, division, and fractions. They are also beginning to grasp the properties of different geometric structures and how to analyze two-dimensional shapes.

Wixie's Templates library includes over 40 templates you can use for formative assessment purposes or as performance tasks your 3rd-grade learners can complete independently or in station rotations.

Teachers can assign Wixie activities directly to students, or customize to differentiate them for specific learners in their classroom. Instructions for students show in the Wixie interface to help them begin to work independently.

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Fact:  10% of students enrolled in our schools today are second language learners.
Fact:  ELL’s need to spend at least 50% of their instructional time “producing” oral language.
Fact:  ELL students will be included in standardized testing requirements in the majority of the states.

With these facts in mind, how do you start preparing students for learning in another language in a meaningful and deep way as new standards propose?

I am not a language acquisition expert, but my experience teaching in a bilingual classroom and supporting educational technology has allowed me to see many successful learning strategies used with ELL's. Wixie makes it easy to help your language learners master content and reach your curriculum standards.

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