Raz-Plus Connected Classroom combines the comprehensive Raz-Plus blended-learning platform you love with a curated library of resources and tools designed to ensure that learning can happen anytime, anywhere. Differentiating each student’s experience, Raz-Plus Connected Classroom helps educators create student-centered learning paths for all K-5 learners.
Grouped into seven Instructional Goals, the research-based teaching practices at the core of Raz-Plus Connected Classroom are aligned to national standards. Integrating these practices into instruction (in a distance learning environment, in a traditional classroom, or in a hybrid model) will help accelerate each student’s growth, bridge learning gaps, and foster social and emotional learning.
Enabling both teacher and student to be co-designers of each child’s personalized learning journey, Raz-Plus Connected Classroom helps identify and differentiate instructional needs early, while keeping students engaged throughout learning and practice with both printable and digital components for equitable access.
By automatically populating digital assignments based upon student responses, The Student Self-Evaluation promotes student voice and choice, while providing baseline data upon which teachers can build students’ personalized learning pathways.
To accelerate learning, Lesson Guides help teachers scaffold instruction so all students can access grade-level texts. Lesson Guides are packed with clear, specific teacher actions, so educators know they’re focusing students on tasks that will positively impact academic growth. Lesson Guides also detail observable student behaviors, giving teachers measurable guideposts for student engagement and success.
Raz-Plus Connected Classroom also offers teachers a detailed guide to social, emotional, and academic development (SEAD), now recognized as a fundamental aspect of school curriculum. Our SEAD Guide explains the key skills within social and emotional learning and provides tips and guidelines for integrating these into academic development.
The practices delivered in Raz-Plus Connected Classroom can be integrated into instruction over the entire school year. Each Instructional Goal Set contains multiple resources and tasks, and comes with its own Lesson Guide. Instructional Goal Sets strategically target areas where students need more practice, and specific goal sets can be assigned, unassigned, or reassigned at any point throughout the school year to individual students, groups of students, or the whole class.
From the Raz-Plus Connected Classroom landing page, educators will be able to view all Instructional Goals and assignable Instructional Goal Sets. Teachers can track student progress in the Student Activity Reports page or on the Assignments page.
Here’s an overview of the seven goals:
- Instructional Goal 1: Regular Close Reading of Complex Texts. Students complete three readings of the same grade-level text and answer questions at increasing levels of complexity after each reading.
- Instructional Goal 2: Text-Based Questions, Tasks, Discussion, and Writing. Students read a series of grade-level texts organized around an engaging and standards-aligned topic, answer text-dependent questions, take a vocabulary quiz, and write a response to a Key Question about the topic.
- Instructional Goal 3: Regular Research, Discussion, and Writing About Topics. Pairs or groups of students build knowledge on an engaging, standards-aligned topic by exploring multiple grade-level texts, discussing their thinking with peers, and writing about what they learned.
- Instructional Goal 4: Fluency Practice With Grade-Appropriate Texts. Students listen to fluent models of reading and practice fluent reading behaviors across multiple reads of a set of grade-level texts.
- Instructional Goal 5: Facilitate Social, Emotional, and Academic Development (SEAD). The detailed SEAD Guide includes practical tips and suggestions for integrating social and emotional learning into academic instruction. A Tips for Parents and Caregivers sheet is included as a support resource for easy distribution to family and community members who are engaging in important discussions with students around topics such as social justice and inequality.
- Instructional Goal 6: Systematic, Explicit Foundational Skills With Ample Time for Practice. Lesson Guides outline how existing Raz-Plus foundational skills resources can be implemented in a systematic scope and sequence during a thirty-two-week school year and provide an easy-to-use weekly lesson sequence.
- Instructional Goal 7: Regular Reading of Multiple Texts and Media on a Range of Conceptually Related Topics. Students who complete the Student Self-Evaluation are able to self-select books that interest them, resulting in a curated independent reading list in their Assignment Portal on Kids A–Z.
Tips and Strategies to Support Distance Learning
Because learning situations vary (for example, your students may be physically in class, remote, or in a hybrid situation), be sure to aim for the success of all students by integrating these tips and strategies into your planning.
- Find out about the student’s access to a device connected to the internet. When is it available to them to use? How reliable is the internet connection? Do they need to share the device with other members of the household? What are the options if they do not have reliable internet or device access?
- Learn about the student’s distance learning environment. Do they have access to a quiet space for doing schoolwork? Are they expected to take care of siblings during normal school hours? Are they comfortable using video conferencing if it means others will see their home?
- Connect with caregivers to discuss when and how students are expected to engage with the class. Offer caregivers a way to check students’ progress, such as through a digital platform or via weekly email.
- Establish a consistent routine for when and how students will check in while remote, and make sure caregivers are also aware of the expectation. Do they need to check their email daily? Where will they see assignments posted? How do they contact you with questions?
- Make time to establish rapport with each student and maintain a personal connection. Spend a few minutes at the start of each check-in to ask what the student’s current experience is. Consider having open office hours for drop-ins or scheduling a weekly class social time.
- Set up rotating student study groups for accountability so that students can turn to peers for help with assignments and to maintain connection with classmates.
- Reach out to caregivers to find out who can support students in the home, over the phone, or online, to provide additional practice opportunities and accountability.
- Give students more time to finish assignments. Students may need extra time to review assignments and ask questions, especially if they need to complete schoolwork after normal hours or on the weekend.
Make Learning Equitable
- Offer synchronous and asynchronous options for student discussions and collaboration. For example, use video conferencing or phone calls for synchronous discussions. Asynchronous discussions can take place on a message board, through real-time collaboration documents, or via email.
- Provide a variety of types of instructional content. Use videos, slide shows, interactive polls, audio recordings, and virtual quizzes to engage students in a range of media.
- Give students choices in how they deliver work. For example, allow students to record videos, create slideshows, or write blog posts. Encourage students to use technological tools they’re already comfortable with.
- Remember not all students will have internet access or consistent internet access, so always prepare a printed option. Determine beforehand how and when printed options will be collected for scoring.
