• Knowledge Structures: The New Law of Learning
• Ignite! Learning Best Practices
• Ignite! Launches Cutting-Edge
  Math Curriculum
• See What Your COW is Missing!
• Ignite! Launches New Website
• Schools Across the Country Love the COW!

Knowledge Structures

We learn by building conceptual bridges between new information and what we already understand. As an educational curriculum company, one of our main challenges is: how can we help teachers harness that law of learning?

When we deeply understand something, it is because we've made it a part of the maps and categories we are constantly drawing and revising in our heads. This is a natural law of learning. Just as the force of gravity organized celestial bodies into solar systems and galaxies, ideas are attracted to other ideas. That's why one of our top instructional design goals is to emphasize connections among concepts, thereby making them "stickier" -- easier to learn and remember.

One way we do this is vertically, with our course structure. Lessons don't appear as "on-off" media pieces, but as part of a whole course broken into units and topics. For example, students learn about the cotton gin in a unit on sectionalism, as one of the causes of the Civil War. But it's also true that we help students build connections horizontally, across unit and topic. We facilitate that broad understanding with our index, our enrichment activities, and our use of templates.

Index

A science lesson about wind currents would involve the term "convection" (the transfer of heat through the movement of a fluid). Convection is how heat from the Sun powers Earth's wind systems. To enrich that lesson, a teacher could use the index to relate convection to, say, a hot water heater, or ocean currents. The lesson on wind would be deepened, as students make more and better connections.

Enrichment Activities

Like the index, our enrichment activities also help students build better knowledge structures across units. For example, the Knowledge Retrieval game show activity on "Science and Society" helps students understand the cotton gin not only as one of the causes of the Civil War, but also as an instance of how technology can change society. Like Benjamin Franklin's lightning rod and Johannes Gutenberg's printing press, the cotton gin shows how science and society interact.

Media Templates

Our templates (repeatable ways of teaching content while also modeling thinking skills) are another way that our instructional design helps students make better connections. Whether it's critical thinking, cause-and-effect, or relating part-to-whole, it is crucial that students develop thinking skills with which to make sense out of our world. Our templates model and reinforce these skills. For example, our Flip-and-Flop template is based on comparing and contrasting. The two characters argue over whether A and B are more alike or different, always realizing that they are alike in some ways and different in others. From plant cells and animal cells to the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, students learn that day's lesson, and also learn a thinking skill that cuts across unit and topic. Familiarity with the template helps the student to more confidently approach new material.

As learners mature from childhood and into adolescence, their developing brains are ready to build more and more complex knowledge structures. In the ways described above, our curriculum helps students to do just that, building conceptual bridges, and improving both learning and retention.

Visit ignitelearning.com to watch a video on building knowledge structures.

Ignite! Learning's Best Practices

If you stand outside a middle school these days, you'll see 13 year olds texting on their cell phones, listening to MP3 players, and chatting with friends about the newest video game. It's no wonder when they get into the classroom and are asked to sit and listen, many of them "check-out". Today's middle school learner is very different than those of 10 years ago, so why wouldn't our instructional design and way of teaching be different as well?

The Ignite! Best Practices and Curriculum aids both the teacher in teaching and the student in learning. Best of all, the Curriculum is built for different types of learners and teachers. Just as students learn differently, teachers teach differently. That's why Ignite!'s Best Practices are essential in maximizing the use of the Ignite! Curriculum to reach our multi-tasking digital learners. Ignite!'s Best Practices aid both seasoned and new teachers, to make their jobs more fun and exciting.

Best Practice 1: Use Ignite! Curriculum in Context

Use the provided correlations between your state standards and the Ignite! Curriculum to immediately begin teaching (located on our website at ignitelearning.com/correlations). Use the Ignite! lessons in your existing scope and sequence as a road map to teach aligned content every day of the school year.

Best Practice 2: Combine Print and Media Together

The print materials in the Curriculum Binders and corresponding CDs are essential to engaging students and improving critical thinking skills. Combining the very simple-to-use lesson plans, activities, and media creates active learning.

Best Practice 3: Daily and Repeated Use

Daily and repeated use of the Ignite! Curriculum is critical to deepening student comprehension. Teach daily with the Ignite! Curriculum to introduce, reinforce, and review lessons. Optimal implementation of the Ignite! Curriculum is one Ignite! Curriculum on Wheels (COW) per teacher with multiple interactions during each lesson.

Best Practice 4: Engage, Motivate, and Challenge

Use the pause, fast forward, and rewind buttons to fully engage students by managing the pace of the presentation. Teach with the Ignite! Curriculum to challenge students with questions, give writing prompts, and facilitate discussions. Actively engage students by allowing them to "drive" the COW.

Best Practice 5: Enrich Learning

Use the enrichment activities during or at the end of a unit to tie concepts together. Each of these challenging, problem-based learning experiences organizes learning around real-life simulations, and emphasize connections among concepts, thereby making them "stickier" -- easier to learn and remember.

Best Practice 6: Assess Learning

Continuously check for understanding using daily lessons, the unit challenge, and enrichment activities. Assess learning more formally with the unit test. Ignite! Learning's dedication to transforming classroom curriculum truly demonstrates our passion to make a difference in education.

Ignite! Launches Cutting-Edge Math Curriculum!

Ignite! Learning knows that mastering the fundamentals is important to student achievement in mathematics. So is student engagement! That's why we created the Math COW (Curriculum On Wheels)- an innovative combination of media and print materials to engage and challenge your students in a whole new way.

The Math is cutting-edge classroom curriculum that uses an innovative approach to engage and challenge all students in the area of mathematics. A new resource for teachers using the Ignite! curriculum is the addition of Student Workbooks. These exciting lessons offer multiple opportunities for students to practice and build their skills. Each lesson contains the following print components:

Notes: the important link between print and media, the Notes pages offer a resource for students as both a reference and study guide.

Daily and Reteach Exercises: students are provided opportunities for repeated practice of lessons with problem-solving assignments using various question types.

FLIPS (Future Leaders In Problem Solving): these whole-class activities present challenging math problems which require a variety of mathematical and logical skills to solve.

Home Connection: these activeties make the important connection between school and home with take-home problem sets and at-home experiments.

The Math also comes with in-depth teacher material. Each unit covers specific concepts through multiple lesson plans and introduces a list of goals which students will accomplish. NCTM Principals and Standards are outlined to assist with specific teaching objectives. Both math and non-math vocabulary words are bulleted to assist the teacher in covering important new words. Lesson plans span across several days and include individual and whole-class, hands-on activities. Problem sets that spiral the curriculum are used to introduce and reinforce math skills. All material required to complete the lesson including the applicable media pieces are summarized.

Each activity offers step-by-step instruction for the teacher including pausing media and offering guided questions. Debriefing questions conclude the lessons and allow teachers to assess students' comprehension of the material. Assessments may be used individually or as a whole-class activity to test students' knowledge of the entire unit.

The media library on the Math is perfect for introducing and reinforcing concepts. With Ignite!'s engaging and motivational approach, students are sure to see Math in a whole new light! Visit our website to experience a complete sample lesson, find out about introductory pricing, and take a behind-the-scenes look at the development of our cutting-edge curriculum!

See What Your COW is Missing!

Are you using your COW and the Ignite! Curriculum to its full potential? Learn how to save time with included lesson plans, activities and assessments.

In staying true to our company's value propositions of providing classroom curriculum that is comprehensive, motivational, and easy-to-use, Ignite! Learning is excited to announce the arrival of Curriculum Binders! Curriculum Binders include printed copies of the lesson plans, student activities, and assessments that have always been available on the companion Curriculum CD! Contact your local account manager or call 866-464-4648 for more information.

Ignite! Launches a New Website

Have you seen the new ignitelearning.com?

The Ignite! Learning website received a face lift over the summer! Please take this opportunity to visit ignitelearning.com to read about our Company History and Instructional Design. Make sure to visit the Community section to see some new resources available to teachers such as the Getting Started Guide. While you're there, don't forget to register! Registration is important to ensure you receive company and curriculum updates.

Schools Across the Country Love the COW!

Have you ever wondered how other teachers might be using the Ignite! curriculum in their classrooms?

Also new to our website are several testimonial videos showing how teachers across the country use the COW and the Ignite! curriculum in their classrooms. Visit http://www.ignitelearning.com/results/ to hear their stories! If you have a story you'd like to share, please call 866-464-4648, or send an email to cow@ignitelearning.com!

Ignite! Your Classroom. Call 866.464.4648!