Discover how Achieve solutions are proven to deliver double-to-triple Lexile gains.
The Common Core State Standards Initiative has established a clear set of K-12 standards designed to enable all students to graduate from high school “college and career ready.” The Common Core emphasis on literacy in this regard is clear:
To build a foundation for college and career readiness, students must read widely and deeply from among a broad range of high-quality, increasingly challenging literary and informational texts.
With over a decade of success in increasing students’ Lexile®/reading levels and high-stakes test scores, and in providing them with the skills they need to independently read complex text, Achieve3000 prepares students for the more rigorous demands of the Common Core State Standards and high-stakes tests.
In fact, all of Achieve’s solutions – KidBiz3000®, TeenBiz3000®,Empower3000™ and the new AchieveLanguage, AchieveIntervention and AchieveEnrichment solutions –share the all-important Common Core objective to give students the content area literacy skills they need to be prepared for college and career including the ability to:
- Argue effectively with supporting evidence
- Use higher order thinking skills to apply knowledge
- Independently read complex, grade-level texts without scaffolds
- Develop strong content knowledge
- Read and synthesize information from multiple texts and sources
- Communicate effectively when speaking or writing
To these ends, Achieve exposes students to differentiated content on a daily basis –content that advances them to more and more complex text. Importantly, text complexity is not defined solely by a quantitative measure. Achieve3000 addresses all three dimensions of text complexity covered in Common Core:
1. Qualitative Dimension: As students progress to more advanced text, students must read more rigorously for full understanding.
2. Quantitative Dimension: Achieve uses Lexiles to measure the levels of both students and text. By using the same measure, this approach ensures that students are working with just-right content.
3. Reader and Task Considerations: Achieve carefully considers the needs of the student in selecting appropriate content --delivering “just-right” texts that allow students to develop strong literacy skills while “stretching” their skills through interactions with more challenging materials. The selection of real-world topics—with collaborative whole class discussions—gives relevance, meaning, and direction to student reading.
At the same time, Achieve focuses on helping students develop the essential strategies they need to access grade-level text and beyond. And, to further assure student success in the context of Common Core, Achieve provides teachers with the instructional tools to explicitly instruct on reading and vocabulary strategies.
In addition, Achieve provides best-practice, classroom-based recommendations for guiding students as they practice the development of these skills. Professional development is further designed to provide support for content-area teachers as they identify their role in meeting students’ literacy needs.
To prepare students for the material they will read in college and careers, the Common Core State Standards mandates that students need more and more non-fiction text from grade to grade. In fourth grade, for example, students should be reading about the same amount of literary and informational text. The percentage of informational text grows to 55% by the 8th grade, and 70% and by 12th grade.
Achieve3000’s differentiated online solutions align closely with Common Core objectives and requirements in this regard as well. In addition to building literacy skills overall, Achieve gives students the content area literacy skills they need to succeed on the standards and in their future lives. Across our suite of solutions:
- Non-fiction passages ensure that students are prepared to read, write and research across the curriculum.
- Engaging content related to the sciences helps spark students’ interest in STEM topics, encouraging them to explore careers in science, technology and math.
- Customized content can be developed to meet your specific content area curriculum gaps. Also customized to state standards, these differentiated non-fiction passages give your students the content area vocabulary and skills they need.
Achieve believes – and Common Core reflects – that literacy is at the core of college and career readiness. In aligning so closely with the Common Core standards, Achieve helps students align with success in school…and throughout their lives.