September 5, 2024 RCSD Educator Digest
Educational Services
We are looking for teachers interested in participating on a K-2 Foundational Skills committee to discuss the lessons and scope and sequence of the foundational skills in the updated Benchmark. Teachers on the committee are excited to use the Benchmark Curriculum foundational skills lessons with fidelity in order to be able to accurately review the curriculum and communicate the effectiveness of the lessons. If you are interested in participating, please see the information below and submit this form by September 6th, 2024.
K-2 Benchmark Foundational Skills Committee Form
Contact: Kelly Yusim
6-8 Math: IXL Math Snapshot Diagnostic - Real-Time Diagnostic Setting and Analytics
The window for the IXL Snapshot Diagnostic is August 12 - September 13.
Activate the Real-Time Diagnostic
Once your classes have completed the Snapshot Diagnostic, you can encourage your students to keep their diagnostic levels current by turning on this setting in IXL. Go to the Assessment tab in the green section at the top and then click the over button, and then click the small star icon in the box.
Snapshot Diagnostic Analytics
An overall diagnostic score is the same as a diagnostic level. These levels correspond to grade levels and indicate a student's working grade level. For example, a score of 700 means a student is ready to start working on 7th-grade skills, and a score of 750 means the student is about halfway through the 7th-grade curriculum.
There are two different reports to analyze your students’ diagnostic data. The Diagnostic Overview includes a class level summary, as well as individual student scores. Click here for more information on this report. The Diagnostic Strand Analysis identifies students who would benefit from small group instruction based on their performance on the diagnostic. Click here for more information on this report.
Contact: Lisa Wegsteen
K-8 Science: Mystery Science and Discovery Education Experience Updates
Mystery Science made changes to some of their units over the summer. You can check out the details of the content updates here.
Discovery Education also made some changes this summer. The first change is to the DE Experience search options. If you toggle on the new DE Experience search, you can now filter content by standards.
Another change is that you can now edit the assessments in the DE Science Techbook. Click here for instructions.
Contact: Lisa Wegsteen
Middle School Teachers: Access to Discovery Education Experience
All middle school teachers now have access to a limited version of Discovery Education Experience through Clever. Discovery Education Experience is a learning platform that offers easy-to-use teaching tools and resources. Use the icon below in Clever to explore these resources. After logging in through Clever, you will be prompted to set up your profile.
Contact: Lisa Wegsteen
Technology Services
Workarounds for Sharing External Google Sites with Students
Following a recent Google update, students could receive files from outside our domain, previously restricted to approved domains. After discovering external content, including proxy lists, in student drives, we restricted student file sharing to only within RCSD. This restriction has unintentionally affected students' access to Google Sites created outside our domain. While staff can still access these external sites, students cannot. Google Support has confirmed that students can only view external Google Sites if we enable students to receive files from outside RCSD.
To address this issue, we recommend any of the workarounds shared below to enable staff to share external Google sites with students:
- Present During Instruction: Show the Google Site to students during instructional time from your staff account, utilizing the presentation technology available in your room
- Embed External Content: Teachers can embed specific pages or content from external Google Sites into an RCSD-hosted Google Site. This allows students to view the material without leaving the RCSD domain. Direct access to the external site will still be blocked.
- Copy and Transfer Ownership: If the external site is interactive and challenging to copy, staff can request a copy from the site's creator. Once copied, the creator can share or transfer ownership of the copied site to an RCSD staff member, who can vet and share the site within the RCSD domain, ensuring students can access the content.
Zoom announced it will be enforcing its minimum version requirements per its Software Lifecycle Policy starting November 2, 2024. To ensure uninterrupted access, staff are required to update to the latest version of the Zoom client before this date.
You can update Zoom by:
- Follow this guide to check for updates within the Zoom application or
- Visiting zoom.us/download to download the latest version.
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