The 2 days that John spent with the teachers was terrific!  We tried to bring in the teachers by grade level,  for an hour over two days, so he had 1 to 3 teachers each hour.  And I saw them visibly relax as John showed them features of the program that they did not yet know about.  His knowledge of the program at every grade level is impressive and exactly what was needed.   It is a difficult pilot because it is such a short pilot and it is in the middle of the year.  Most all are piloting Units 5&6 except for 5th grade , which is piloting units 4&5.

I thought it was very beneficial, and I to now am cautiously optimistic. 

Students Feedback

What do you like about Benchmark Advance so far?

Grade 4

• I like reading the articles - like the one on Rosa Parks.

• I like to take notes in my magazine

• I’m learning about history while I am reading.

• We talk about what we read.

• I learned how to compare and contrast in my writing.

• We are writing about what we read.

• The stories are interesting.

• Reading Stanley’s Release makes me want to go read the whole book!

• I like the challenging questions.

• The stories are giving me new knowledge.  And I see there are fiction and nonfiction stories.

• The book puts the theme in all of the stories so we are finding/learning about things we didn’t know before.

• I enjoy the stories about the government in action with real photos, too

Grade 5

• There is a lot of new information to learn, especially about social studies

• I like that we have our own book, a place to write and annotate the text