Preparing to teach your Amplify ELA units
We’ve developed a variety of resources to ensure you have the tools you need to support students in your classroom. In this section, you’ll find information on using Amplify ELA.
Note: Login may be required to access some resources.
- Educator and Student Homes
When you log in to Amplify ELA, Educator Home will be your landing place. Here, teachers will see all their Amplify programs. You’ll also see recommendations on how to plan, prep, and conduct instruction, class activity, scheduled assignments, and more.
Student Home is the landing page for all Amplify ELA students. Here, they’ll see recently assigned lessons and activities, and scheduled assignments at the date/time chosen by the teacher.
New this year: your Amplify ELA student experience will transition from My Work to Student Home, where they will have access to their assignments, scores, and teacher feedback. You’ll continue to have access to Classwork!
- Grade Overviews and Curriculum Maps
Located in the Materials section of your Year Overview page, grade overviews will guide you as you begin to understand how units are organized and start mapping out your year of ELA.
At the beginning of the school year, the Get Started Sub-unit is meant to help you establish routines, get to know your students, and gather some insight into how students are doing with writing. Be sure to begin there!
Unit Overview and pacing guides
When you click into a unit, the Unit Overview features planning details for the unit, including teacher references and printable resources. Refer to the PD Library for a number of resources to aid in your unit- and lesson-level planning, such as implementation guides, lesson internalization guides, and more.
- Amplify ELA Apps
Classwork
Classwork is your feedback tool for all digital submissions in the middle school curriculum. With Classwork, teachers can review student work and easily add scores and comments in one place.
Reporting
Reporting provides teachers with detailed information on student progress with reading and writing skills. In Reporting, teachers can track key writing and reading comprehension skills and performance on unit assessments and Solo (or homework) completion, as well as view overall scores for specific skills.
Read our overview of ELA Reporting, including the Embedded Assessment Measure.
Vocab App
The Vocab App includes game-like activities based on morphology, analogy, synonyms and antonyms, and deciphering meaning, all of which help students develop vocabulary and words skills by focusing on parts of speech, etymology, and multiple meanings. The app pulls key vocabulary from lesson texts to help students increase their knowledge of words and their contextual definitions, as well as their overall vocabulary skills. Instructors access the Vocab App through their Programs & Apps menu, while students access it through the first activity in most lessons. Extensive additional information about the Vocab App can be found in the Vocab App User Guide.
Amplify Library
The Amplify Library (located in the Program & Apps menu) offers more than 700 classic and contemporary books aimed at fostering a love of reading and learning.
A notable classroom resource in the library is the Amplify Novel Guides collection. The guides provide teacher support and student activities to accompany a range of favorite middle-grade novels. They can be used to support an independent reading program or to accompany a core unit. (There’s a dedicated section for Novel Guides within the Library that can be accessed here. Using this link, you can see which texts are in the Library based on the presence of the little book icon.)
Lesson planning
You can zoom into the lesson level of Amplify ELA with our model lesson videos. Use this Lesson Planning template for help with planning and breaking down the lessons.
Assessments in Amplify ELA
Visit this page to learn about assessment options you have for starting the school year and monitoring progress throughout.
Formative and summative assessment opportunities are embedded throughout the curriculum.
Within the core lessons, Solo activities provide teachers with an understanding of students’ reading performance, core writing activities are auto-assessed for key writing skills.
Exit Tickets provide a snapshot of students’ understanding of the lessons’ skills and objectives.
End-of-unit summative assessments provide a more complete picture of student performance against the unit (and grade) skills. Printable versions of these assessments are located in the Materials section of the assessment lesson of each unit.
There are also Benchmark and/or Interim Assessments available, to help you gather some benchmark data at the start and middle of the year. If your school has access to Illuminate, you have the option to complete these assessments digitally. Benchmark Assessments and Interim Assessments are located under Other Resources in the Programs & Apps tab.
