Get to know Amplify ELA
Start by taking a look at the Amplify ELA Program Guide, where you’ll find:
- Grade-level overviews for grades 6–8 (pages 11–31)
- Amplify ELA pedagogy (page 10)
- Sample lesson routine (page 38)
- Amplify ELA foundations (pp 70-80)
Want to go deeper or look at Amplify ELA’s approach to writing, vocabulary, grammar, and differentiation? Check out the Table of Contents for all this and much more!
Navigating the curriculum
Amplify ELA is a truly blended curriculum, designed specifically for grades 6–8. The program includes instructional guidance and student materials for a year of instruction, with lessons and activities that keep students engaged every day. Materials can be accessed either digitally or through print materials, depending on what your class needs.
Navigating in print
- Watch this video exploring the print resources available for students and teachers in Amplify ELA.
- Follow this link to open an ebook version of the print materials for your grade level and explore Unit A (the first unit).
Navigating digital
- Watch this video exploring the digital curriculum platform and the many resources available for teachers and students.
- Log in to the curriculum at learning.amplify.com using the demo account and password provided by your Sales rep.
- Once you have finished the tour, try out the scavenger hunt below!
Amplify ELA Scavenger Hunt
Inside a lesson
1. Overview & planning
The Lesson Brief equips teachers with the tools they need to plan instruction. It begins with an Overview, which describes the big ideas students will grapple with and summarizes the lesson’s sequence of activities. Next, there is a Preparation section, which points out key moments and materials to prepare. The Preparation section also describes the location and content of the lesson’s Exit Ticket.
The Lesson Brief also includes: the Lesson Objective, which details the reading, writing, and/or speaking and listening objectives; Words to Use, which points out key vocabulary from the reading; Skills & Standards, which lists the focus and coverage standards; and Differentiation, which describes differentiated supports and provides additional suggestions for modifying activities.
2. Vocab App
The Vocab App helps students master vocabulary words through game-like activities based on morphology, analogy, synonyms/ antonyms, and deciphering meaning. These activities help students develop dictionary skills by focusing on parts of speech, etymology, and multiple meanings. There are also activities for ELL-appropriate words from the unit’s texts, asking students to match an English definition, Spanish translation, context sentence, audio pronunciation, and visual definition. These activities also align to vocabulary standards.
Vocab App (Teacher View)
3. Work Visually
Visualization activities are an essential part of Amplify ELA, as they open the door to more comprehensive understanding of complex texts. In these learning experiences, students break apart the text in visual ways or use visual cues to “see” key details as they construct meaning.
In this early lesson from grade 7, students unpack propaganda images and short videos from the Chinese Cultural Revolution to build their understanding of the setting before beginning the memoir Red Scarf Girl.
Other units include visualization activities such as using an app to “see” the evidence for and against scientific theories, making storyboards and planning visual adaptations of texts to “read like a movie director,” and comparing and contrasting illustrations with key textual moments.
4. Author Videos & Dramatic Readings
Students benefit from using listening comprehension skills as they build fluency with complex texts. In these close reading experiences, students listen to the text, perform the text out loud, or watch a dramatic reading of the text.
In this lesson, students listen and watch as author Ji-Li Jiang reads the opening prologue of her memoir, Red Scarf Girl. Her facial expressions, tone of voice, and emphasis help students develop early ideas about what matters to this narrator.
Additional author videos and dramatic readings are embedded in other units. In Unit 8D: Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, students watch WordPlay Shakespeare videos where actors perform each selected scene next to the text of that excerpt. In Unit 8B: Liberty & Equality, two members of the Marvel cinematic universe—Chadwick Boseman and Elizabeth Olsen—offer masterful performances of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave and A Confederate Girl’s Diary.
5. Reading/eReader
Reading standards establish high expectations for all students, even as they enter the middle grades at a variety of reading levels. In Amplify ELA lessons, students access universal supports embedded in the eReader (and built into the print versions of the text) to help them participate fully in grade-level activities.
Point-of-use vocab in print: The print Student Edition places key vocabulary words and their relevant definitions in the text margin to support students and keep them reading.
Reveal: By clicking on these pre-selected words, students access short contextual definitions for key and challenging vocabulary.
Highlight, Bookmark, and Notes: The digital highlighting, bookmarking, and annotation tools allow students to save and review any text notes from any lesson.
Text size and line spacing: Students can adjust text size and line spacing to find what works best for them
6. Writing
Two or three times a week, students complete their reading work by developing a piece of writing to refine their reading analysis. They write for 10–15 minutes, focusing on one claim in response to a prompt, and using evidence from the text in support of their claim.
In this lesson, students build on their discussion of the setting and their analysis of the passage to determine the author’s point of view at the start of her memoir.
Differentiated supports: Five levels of differentiated supports can be assigned in the moment or in advance to help every student work productively. Levels can be assigned ahead of time (by simply dragging and dropping students into groups) and students remain in their assigned levels until they’re changed by the teacher. For more information on differentiation in Amplify ELA, click here.
Automated Writing Evaluation: The Automated Writing Evaluation (AWE) tool has been developed in conjunction with Amplify’s regular writing activities, which ask students to use textual evidence to develop one focused idea or claim about the text and communicate that idea clearly and effectively to an audience. AWE is a tool designed to help teachers understand, track, and support student skill progress with these key foundational skills, which are a strong indicator of a student’s analytic writing proficiency. AWE provides auto scores for Focus and Conventions, allowing teachers to prioritize their assessment of a student’s progress with Use of Evidence, a skill that is relatively new for many middle-grade students.
7. Share
Establishing a supportive writing community in the classroom helps students develop their voices as writers. Each writing activity is coupled with a sharing session, where clear routines and student-facing feedback protocols support students as they share and respond to each other’s writing. Here, students try out their writing with an audience of their peers to figure out how to express their ideas in a clear and convincing way. In addition, these sharing sessions allow students to learn from the range of perspectives in the classroom.
Clear and consistent Response Starters ensure that students provide feedback that targets key skills and focuses on where a student is using a skill effectively, fostering an effective and supportive feedback environment.
8. Solos
Solos are an important part of the ELA curriculum, and are designed to be completed as homework—but not every student has a computer at home. However, most students DO have access to a mobile device. The new Mobile Solos give every student access to this part of the curriculum, protecting valuable classroom time for lessons and group activities.
Navigating the first unit
Dig into Unit A
It’s time to continue your journey by exploring the first unit!
- Choose a 6th-, 7th-, or 8th-grade Unit A.
- Find the Print Materials for your grade level’s Unit A and review the unit overview. (password: middle678school)
- Log in to the curriculum and navigate to your chosen unit.
- Scroll down to the unit guide. Open each section and read it.
- Read the background and context document in the Materials section.
- Go to Sub-unit 3 and read the Sub-unit Overview.
- Choose two lessons to explore further.
- Open the first lesson and read the Lesson Overview. Be sure to open and read each section in the Lesson Overview.
- Open each activity tab and read the teacher Instructional Guide. Familiarize yourself with the entire lesson and note where students are building reading and writing skills
- Repeat with the second lesson.
Diving Deeper
Check out Amplify ELA’s professional learning website, featuring self-guided training modules and videos to help you with planning and pacing, navigation, and learning key curriculum features.
You can log in using your Amplify credentials or the demo account and password provided by your sales rep.
Additional support
As you continue to explore the curriculum, you may also want to take a look at the Amplify ELA Resources Website, which is full of additional information on the program. If you have any questions, please contact us through the Amplify Help section.
And you’ll find even more information by watching this session from our Literacy Symposium, in which Sarah Kitzmiller from the Niswonger Foundation and Teddy Redding from Amplify discuss some of the challenges of the 2020–21 school year.
Amplify’s Literacy Symposium session: Focusing on the Fundamentals to Start the Year Right
You may choose to view other sessions from the Literacy Symposium as well, all accessible from the schedule menu in the top left corner.
This webinar also offers valuable insight, with Baltimore City middle school ELA teacher Lucas Drerup describing his experiences with Amplify ELA and discussing how he brings middle school ELA to life, even in a remote teaching setting.
How to bring middle school ELA to life: A teacher’s perspective
Support
elahelp@amplify.com
1(800) 823-1969