Spark a passion for reading: 15 ways to motivate daily reading practice
Spark a passion for reading: 15 ways to motivate daily reading practice
October 16, 2018
By: Team Renaissance USA A little bit of reading goes a long way. By reading around 15 minutes per day between grades 1 and 12, a student will have read more than 5 million words by the time they graduate high [...]
Tips and activities to prevent summer learning loss
Tips and activities to prevent summer learning loss
October 11, 2018
By: Ken Stoflet, Marketing Communications Specialist, Renaissance USA Decades of research confirm that summer learning loss is real. In an article published by The New York Times, Smirk (2011) says, “The . ideal of lazy summers filled with fun has [...]
Scary-good book ideas for students this Halloween
Scary-good book ideas for students this Halloween
October 1, 2018
By: Lisa Lysne, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Renaissance USA Trick-or-treating, costume parties, and carving pumpkins. Halloween is time to have a scary-good fun! At Renaissance, we have more than 2.8 billion real-world data points that show us exactly how [...]
Getting students hooked on investing in their own learning
Getting students hooked on investing in their own learning
September 29, 2018
By: Jan Bryan, EdD, Vice President, National Education Officer, Renaissance USA Over the past few years, an increased focus on educator effectiveness has permeated the literature and dominated conversations. The idea has been to identify the observable and replicable characteristics of [...]
Effective teachers are empowered—and so are their students
Effective teachers are empowered—and so are their students
September 20, 2018
By: Jan Bryan, EdD, Vice President, National Education Officer, Renaissance USA Educator effectiveness and grit are trending across educational media. Is it coincidence or inevitability that these two concepts should dominate current discourse simultaneously? Perhaps it is the potential for these ideas to be [...]
Learning with a destination in mind: The art and science of personalised goal setting
Learning with a destination in mind: The art and science of personalised goal setting
September 18, 2018
By: Eric Stickney, Director of Educational Research, Renaissance USA A version of the famous quote from Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu states, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” But what determines whether that journey will be successful? [...]
Building reading comprehension through questions, inquiry, and sketchnotes
Building reading comprehension through questions, inquiry, and sketchnotes
September 18, 2018
By: By Billy Spicer, Instructional Coach, Renaissance USA To comprehend or not to comprehend—that is the question. To comprehend illustrates a strong connection between reader and text, a connection that can only be made if students truly understand the words that are [...]
What does Student Growth Percentile do?
What does Student Growth Percentile do?
September 17, 2018
What is Student Growth Percentile? Achievement indicates whether performance is below, above, or on par with grade-level expectations. Growth explains the kind of progress the student is making over time. Student Growth Percentile is a method of characterising and measuring growth used [...]
Tips for helping students find reliable news and online sources
Tips for helping students find reliable news and online sources
September 17, 2018
By: Team Renaissance USA In a world of constant notifications, tweets, and status updates, we have access to more content than ever before. With a 24/7 media cycle, there’s more and more content being pumped out—some of it great, some [...]
What is Lexile® Framework?
What is Lexile® Framework?
August 30, 2018
The Lexile® Framework for Reading is a scientific approach to measuring reading ability and the text complexity of reading materials. The Lexile scale is like a thermometre, except rather than measuring temperature, it measures a text’s complexity and a reader’s skill [...]
