Ensuring Standards-Based Excellence at StrongMind
At StrongMind, our commitment is to provide educators and students with content that adheres to national and state standards. We recognize the complexities K-12 teachers and administrators encounter when aligning curricula with standards. The goal of our alignments team is to provide accurate alignments, instilling confidence in educators that our curriculum meets standards.
Once a course is developed, our Alignment Team takes charge of identifying and assigning alignment levels for national and state standard sets. Each team member oversees the K-12 curriculum for their subject area. These team members are former educators with particular expertise in standards alignment.
Our course alignment process begins with a foundational set of standards, whether national or state-specific. The team uses a standards alignment tool to predict alignments based on topics and keywords from the standards and matches them to lesson titles. The team then engages in an in-depth review, or hand-alignment process, refining alignments by reviewing all standards against the course content to ensure the highest possible alignment. This process is conducted on a course-by-course basis for most of our offerings. For standards sets expected to be taught across multiple grades or courses, the alignment team ensures comprehensive coverage within the series of StrongMind courses.
We face the unique challenge in creating content that aligns across multiple states or standard sets, so we are continually refining our alignment process to create closer, more accurate alignments. Keeping pace with the dynamic educational landscape, we actively track and realign to revised state standards as they are updated and implemented. This ongoing effort is essential to maintaining the relevance and accuracy of our course alignments.
At StrongMind, we recognize the vital role that alignment plays in facilitating effective teaching and learning. Our dedicated Alignment Team ensures that our courses not only meet but exceed the standards, providing a solid foundation for K-12 education.
Support Site Spotlight: Course Additions and Improvements.
Our Curriculum Team has been hard at work to bring you new and updated courses. The focus for the addition of these new courses is to offer a wider variety of world-class electives, and to make positive adjustments to existing courses to enhance the overall student experience.
One example of this is the modifications made to both honors and general English 12 courses. Course improvements for both Standard and Honors courses include a restructuring to reduce the number of activities in all units, simplified question prompts, and updated vocabulary activities. The texturized version now represents the general course, while the original, more complex course has been designated as the honors course. These changes were implemented in direct response to valuable feedback from our customers, ensuring a more engaging and effective learning experience.
Grading is Now Easier in Every LMS!
Automatic Grade Passback for Teacher Graded Items is now available for Schoology and Buzz. Canvas functionality will be available on December 20th. Previously, teacher graded items in Schoology and Buzz would need to be manually pasted into the gradebook and in Canvas teachers would be required to update existing grades.
This new functionality automatically updates the gradebook of the adjusted score once a teacher has manually graded a question. For more information on grading in your LMS, please visit our StrongMind Support Site.
FlipSwitch Powered by StrongMind Marketing is Now Available for All Customers
StrongMind is now able to offer FlipSwitch marketing services to support your growth! From branding and advertising to social media and SEO, FlipSwitch has you covered.
Download the flyer below and reach out to your Customer Success Manager to discover how our proven digital marketing expertise can help you drive awareness, build community, and increase enrollment or sales.