This year TES has a new Social Studies curriculum called Studies Weekly. Your student will be bringing home these newpaper lessons every couple of weeks. In between issues coming home, you and your child can do some studying online with extremely helpful reading tools, and even a fun rewards game. Here's how it works:
1. Go to www.studiesweekly.com and click the KIDS button at the top.
2. The login page should come up next.
(click image to see larger & read hint bubbles)
(click image to see larger & read hint bubbles)
3. Students login using their school username & password (library number). Students use this login & password for AR and CCC at school, so they should be familiar with it.
4. After logging in, this annoying pop-up seems to always come up. Simply close it.
(click image to see larger & read hint bubbles)
(click image to see larger & read hint bubbles)
5. Now you are at the homepage. This is where you can find all the issues of Studies Weekly, Tests over the different issues, and the My RevRat game.
Third Grade is doing the OKLAHOMA STUDIES WEEKLY set.
(click image to see larger & read hint bubbles)
The Studies Weekly reader is an excellent tool for struggling readers to practice. The online reader will read-aloud the text, with words highlighting as they are being read. The student can also click on a single word multiple times to hear it read in isolation. Any re-reading a child does helps improve reading fluency, which is the basis for all other reading skills. This extra practice could go a long way toward helping your child meet reading improvement goals.
(click image to see larger & read hint bubbles)
The My RevRat rewards game is there to encourage kids to take the comprehension tests, available for every issue of Studies Weekly. These are kind of like AR tests, in that they test to see if the student understands and remembers what they read. They DO NOT COUNT TOWARDS AR GOALS, however. Instead, students earn points to buy furniture and things to deck out their RevRat virtual pet. I showed the introduction video in class, and students seemed pretty excited about this part.
I hope this is a useful tool for you to use at home. Please let me know what you and your kids think about it! I'd love to have something more to tell students and parents next year!
