How Can Teachers Use It?
Before your students dive in on their own -- especially if you have kids working at a variety of levels -- it's worth your while to try one of the lessons together as a class. Project one of the introductory paragraphs and correct it together so everyone can get the hang of how the site (or Chrome app) works. During this intro, you can also do some class-wide informal assessment that might help give you a better idea of your students' knowledge base around a particular skill.
Students can log in at any time to see what's you've assigned. The program is likely to be most effective if you assign lessons that relate to the concurrent work you're already doing in class. Depending on your class's device access, you might want to group students by skill or even individualize assignments if your class is smaller. Also, if your students have consistent access outside of school, consider assigning lessons as homework.
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What's It Like?
Quill is a (mostly) free tool for interactive grammar instruction. More than 150 lessons are available for first through eighth grades, though it could also be used with high school-level ELLs. Teachers can assign single lessons or entire units to individual students, small groups, or a whole class. Lessons are organized around specific Common Core-aligned grammar and writing skills.
Each lesson begins with an introduction and diagnostic paragraph for students to read, proofread, and rewrite. Based on their performance, students are then led to a related lesson that's been modified to meet their ability and target new skills. Within the lessons, students read sentences and correct them by typing an edited version. To be considered correct, errors need to be fixed and the sample sentence has to be complete, with accurate spelling and capitalization.
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Is It Good For Learning?
Both ELA and ELL teachers are always on the lookout for quality lessons to support their grammar instruction but often resort to making their own in the absence of better ready-made resources. Quill fills a void in this respect, giving teachers instant access to the kinds of grammar lessons they've usually had to create on their own: authentic writing with relevant subject matter targeting a specific Common Core-aligned concept. With Quill, the icing on top is that the lessons are adaptive; students get immediate, instructive feedback as they work through the application. Feedback alerts students to both correct and incorrect examples of usage as it relates to a variety of Common Core-aligned skills and concepts.
Given the range of grade-level lessons from first through eighth grades, your students can grow into these exercises as they become more proficient with reading and typing. However, it's important to note that some students -- particularly ELLs and emerging readers and writers -- might struggle. Overall, the program seems best suited for upper-elementary and middle schoolers. Also, the fact that accurate spelling and capitalization count is a bit of a mixed bag. Of course, these are important foundational skills; however, this specificity could make it harder for teachers to isolate exactly why a particular student might be struggling, especially at lower grade levels. While it's great that student progress is easy to interpret -- green for mastery, yellow for difficulty, red for review needed -- teachers won't be able to dig in and view students' actual responses, a feature that could aid in individualizing follow-up instruction.
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Teacher dashboard is straightforward; students can be invited or added by you.
Create an activity pack for students or use a featured activity pack.
Students can edit work and then check it, seeing why an answer was correct or incorrect.
If answers are incorrect, students can do an activity to better understand the concept.
An example elementary-level activity on prepositions
Teachers can easily view student proficiency.
