Community reviews for StudySync

It is all-around terrible. The book is okay, aside from the fact that it misses major pieces of the stories, and the multiple-choice questions are usually fundamentally flawed. The real issue is with the Studysync assessments. They have subjective questions with only one correct answer, questions that can be interpreted multiple ways, multiple correct answers for questions with only one being marked as correct, and grammatical questions with multiple correct answers (These are the most objective questions possible, and they mess these up?!) These StudySync assessments genuinely make me wonder if the author of them read the texts the test is being given based on. This curriculum is why most students hate school.

This program is causing massive problems in our mid-sized school district because it is not disability accessible.

While it has been bad enough for ELA, trying to use it for ELD has proved to be worse. There are only TWO dedicated lessons per unit for designated ELD. While this may be enough support for integrated (it's not, but let's just say it is) it is an absolute disaster if your district was sold that it was an ELD curriculum. This is misleading at best, deceptive at worse. It is designed like an English support curriculum, which is in no way helpful for my students to pass the ELPAC. Honestly, if I had all the hours I have spent going down rabbit holes trying to find things on this maze of a platform, I would be able to add a whole week to this year.

I am going to emphasize things teachers were promised in the sales pitch that do not exist. 1) Audio support for texts. This is haphazard and unpredictable. A core text in a unit will have no audio support but optional, independent reads will. 2) Diverse voices and opinions. In the entire 12th grade core curriculum, students are never, not once, asked to conduct a close reading of a text by an African-American or Latino author. All close readings are centered on texts written more than 20 years ago and predominantly by white authors. StudySync tries to look like a modern and diverse text set by providing lots of extra texts in the library and in optional reads, but the actual core curriculum that students read repeatedly and write in detail about contains very little not written by a white man prior to the 21st century. 3) On- and off-line flexibility. In a poor district with frequent laptop and connectivity issues, this was key for me. StudySync reps reiterated that everything available online was also supported in the workbooks and that it was easy for teachers to print off materials from the site. This is simply and entirely a lie. Most of my colleagues and I are spending hours every day screenshotting or otherwise manipulating materials to try and render them printable for students whose IEPs require physical texts. Rubrics especially are impossible to print. And speaking of diverse learners... 4) StudySync trumpets its "scaffolds" and supports. These "scaffolds" consist of absolutely nothing for ELL students except a picture glossary of key language, a summary of texts and repetitive, meaningless "discussion stems." Scaffolds for students with IEPs or otherwise below grade level are even rarer and more surface-level. Supposed extensions for students above grade level are slightly better. 5) Interesting and engaging material and activities. Students do the exact same thing with every single text, from sixth to twelfth grade, with the exact same language and repeated videos across grade levels. It is abundantly clear that a large part of "writing" this curriculum was copying-and-pasting. This is a disaster of a curriculum, deceptively sold to districts desperate for a resource for new or overworked teachers, that seems deliberately designed to drain any interest in literature from all students but especially students of color or those reading below grade level.

The whole curriculum isn't worth anywhere near the price we have paid for it. Workbooks are utterly useless and a waste of money. They are a carbon copy of the textbooks and districts should save themselves the money by simply purchasing a classroom set of the hardbacks. The only system is burdensome and poorly designed. You have to click through too many tabs to find what you want. For example, if you assigned a story and later decide you want to print off a quiz instead of having students complete it on their computers, you can't simply go back to the assignment to get the quiz. You have to go on a whole separate scavenger hunt to track it down, The only good thing about lessons is how you can easily scaffold them to help support readers of different ability levels. Lesson videos are corney and nearly pointless. Students do not have a positive opinion of them. If you are teaching the lesson yourself instead of assigning them as independent work, Id skip them entirely. We were sold on buying the curriculum in large part because at our school we had been developing our own and finding sources for modeling and practice through a wide range of available free and low-cost alternatives. We were shocked to find out after purchasing this system that not only did it hardly offer any practice for formative assessment (despite being told otherwise), but we were also mystified to find that the "self-graded quizzes" didn't actually grade any of the short response questions, despite being promised otherwise during the initial sales pitch. So at the end of the day, after teachers struggled to set up this albatross of a curriculum and fit it into lessons, it turns out to offer VERY little of any benefit outside of being an updated text book full of short stories. If you want an updated text book of short stories, you might want to give Studysync a look. If you want an actual classroom curriculum, I'd look elsewhere.

I love the technology in my classroom. I think this platform brings ELA into the future, exposing students to a variety of texts and mediums to engage in.

Wouldn't do it again.

I LOVE using StudySync in my classroom because it challenges the students, yet engages them in learning using modes that are increasingly pervasive in modern culture. It helps me to truly differentiate my instruction and spend time with individual students who really need more assistance, but then also allow those who want to push forward more the opportunity to do that, too. It does not not much time to set up and get started, but, like any robust curricular support there are so many great resources within this one platform that it does take some time to learn exactly how to tailor the specific facets of the resource to the needs of each class of students.

StudySync is a progressive tool that can help students develop 21st century literacy. I love that students can engage with a variety of media, read a wide range of texts, annotate digitally, listen to audio recordings, watch video clips, and anonymously provide peer feedback on each other's work!

I love this product (trust me, my colleagues are tired of hearing me rave about it) and, even better, my students love it too! The thing I love most is that it makes writing a "normal" activity, as opposed to something we do on special occasions or for big projects, because the work of reading, scoring, and responding isn't only on my shoulders. Now, we write all the time, and they get better at doing it, because they're getting consistent and varied feedback. It also gives them practice looking at and evaluating their peers' work, which also makes them better writers. Finally, the huge library of texts means that I can expose them to a wide variety of literature (without spending hours finding selections and creating handouts), and the writing prompts are already included.