Review by Patricia Monticello Kievlan, Common Sense Education | Updated June 2016

Visit website

StudySync

Visit website

Superb ELA resource spurs critical thinking with dynamic multimedia

Common Sense says

Rating Details

Teachers say (6 Reviews)

$avg_user_learning_rating

See 6 reviews

Write a review

Grades

3-12 This grade range is a recommendation by Common Sense Education and not the developer/publisher.

See subjects & skills

Take a look inside

5 images

The library of 900+ texts provides multimedia lessons based on strong pedagogy and best practices.

StudySync lets teachers digitally share and explore texts with their students.

Blasts engage students in contemporary topics and debates.

Teachers can assign work to individuals or groups of students, including rubrics for differentiated assessments.

The teacher toolbar offers easy access to student groupings, communities, assignments, and the library.

Pros: Every text is backed by quality multimedia; SyncTV models how students can communicate in class.

Cons: Just getting familiar with StudySync will take a lot of time; interface is a bit dated.

Bottom Line: StudySync offers great potential to build background knowledge, model critical thinking, and prompt in-depth discussion and writing.

Lesson & Activity Ideas

Once you enter your class's info in StudySync's online community, you can assign tasks to individual students, small groups of students, or your entire class. Students can interact with each other in a variety of formats and on a variety of topics –- from short quick-write responses and Blasts to more engaged, thoughtful responses to Prompts and peer review.

StudySync offers Blasts several times per week, and they are current, relevant questions debated through an online community. You can also create assignments in the Goals section. Possible assignments can include a SyncTV episode, reading and writing activities, or short 140-character quick writes. The Common Core standards support is the icing on the cake, making it easy for you to incorporate StudySync's materials into your school's own curricular requirements.

Tool Overview

StudySync is a comprehensive, web-based literacy resource (and Chrome app) that offers multimedia materials, instructional resources, and supports paired with over 900 fiction and nonfiction texts. This digital library covers English language arts, history, science, math and technology, and social studies. Along with each text, the program offers audio, video, critical-thinking questions, writing/discussion prompts, and lesson plans. The kicker? All of these well-written lessons are linked to Common Core State Standards. What's more, StudySync is a research-based program aimed at developing students' skills for close reading and writing across the curriculum. Within teacher-created or public groups, students interact and engage in a variety of ways -- from 140-character quick-writes to more thoughtful responses, as well as peer-review activities.

StudySync's lessons and activities are delivered as both Thematic and Full-Text units. Each Full-Text unit offers a complete curriculum of fiction and/or nonfiction texts. The Thematic Units include fiction and nonfiction texts that surround a common theme, and slot easily into a teacher's preexisting curriculum. All units include a bevy of resources: Instructional Paths, which let teachers explore what's available and make thoughtful choices about the right content to use in their classrooms; First Read and more complex Close Read assignments; videos and multiple-choice questions; and embedded grammar and vocabulary help. The short Blasts assignments prompt students to respond to provocative topics and current events. The Thematic Units also include Extended Writing Projects, which ask students to address a writing prompt (Narrative, Informative/Explanatory, or Argumentative). The Full-Text units include similar writing tasks and offer a wide range of texts.

Learning Value

The depth and quality of StudySync's multimedia materials really is outstanding, but its coolest feature by far is SyncTV, which can fit beautifully into classroom study. SyncTV's dramatized chats involve a diverse group of kids responding to a prompt on a variety of subjects like Frankenstein's monster or Anne Frank. The student-actors bring in several points of view, citing evidence from the text, sharing their own activated prior knowledge, and making connections to what they already know. Their connections often lead to current topics that are important to teens. They use iPads or other technologies as they do research, but most of all, they bring sophisticated meaning to the texts, including outside quotes, biographical information, and in-depth character analysis.

The banter between the actors is fairly genuine if a little canned, but the discussion should keep teens' interest. This type of rich discussion models for students what engaged learning can look like, and hopefully they'll be moved to emulate it in the classroom. With a wealth of resources and great tools for fostering active, engaged learning, StudySync is an endlessly valuable way to use technology to enrich, and maybe even redefine, your ELA classroom.

Rating Details

Overall Rating

Engagement Is the product stimulating, entertaining, and engrossing? Will kids want to return?

A great selection of texts, stellar video content, and social features engage kids, connecting them with great literature and ideas.

Pedagogy Is learning content seamlessly baked-in, and do kids build conceptual understanding? Is the product adaptable and empowering? Will skills transfer?

Lessons and activities like the Socratic Circle incorporate best practices for in-depth learning, while other activities model collaborative learning and higher-level thinking.

Support Does the product take into account learners of varying abilities, skill levels, and learning styles? Does it address both struggling and advanced students?

Audio and video supplements nicely support the lessons, and multimedia tools and resources aid students, groups, communities, and assignments. There's a nice variety of teacher support materials available.

Common Sense Reviewer

Patricia Monticello Kievlan Foundation/nonprofit member

About our ratings and privacy evaluation.

Teacher Reviews

(See all 6 reviews) (6 reviews) Write a review

Featured review by
Kate H. , Classroom teacher

Classroom teacher

Excellent platform to support transformed teaching that puts powerful learning in the hands of students.

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.

Read full review

Write a review

Reading Informational
RI.6: Key Ideas and Details
RI.6.1	Cite textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity
RI.6.10	By the end of the year, read and comprehend literary nonfiction in the grades 6–8 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.
RI.7: Key Ideas and Details
RI.7.1	Cite several pieces of textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity
RI.7.10	By the end of the year, read and comprehend literary nonfiction in the grades 6–8 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.
RI.8: Key Ideas and Details
RI.8.1	Cite the textual evidence that most strongly supports an analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity
RI.8.10	By the end of the year, read and comprehend literary nonfiction at the high end of the grades 6–8 text complexity band independently and proficiently.
RI.9-10: Key Ideas and Details
RI.9-10.1	Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity
RI.9-10.10	By the end of grade 9, read and comprehend literary nonfiction in the grades 9–10 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.
RI.11-12: Key Ideas and Details
RI.11-12.1	Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including determining where the text leaves matters uncertain.
Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity
RI.11-12.10	By the end of grade 11, read and comprehend literary nonfiction in the grades 11–CCR text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.
Reading Literature
RL.6: Craft and Structure
RL.6.6	Explain how an author develops the point of view of the narrator or speaker in a text.
Key Ideas and Details
RL.6.2	Determine a theme or central idea of a text and how it is conveyed through particular details; provide a summary of the text distinct from personal opinions or judgments.
Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity
RL.6.10	By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, in the grades 6–8 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.
RL.7: Craft and Structure
RL.7.6	Analyze how an author develops and contrasts the points of view of different characters or narrators in a text.
Key Ideas and Details
RL.7.2	Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text; provide an objective summary of the text.
Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity
RL.7.10	By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, in the grades 6–8 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.
RL.8: Craft and Structure
RL.8.6	nalyze how differences in the points of view of the characters and the audience or reader (e.g., created through the use of dramatic irony) create such effects as suspense or humor.
Key Ideas and Details
RL.8.2	Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including its relationship to the characters, setting, and plot; provide an objective summary of the text.
Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity
RL.8.10	By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, at the high end of grades 6–8 text complexity band independently and proficiently.
RL.9-10: Craft and Structure
RL.9-10.6	Analyze a particular point of view or cultural experience reflected in a work of literature from outside the United States, drawing on a wide reading of world literature.
Key Ideas and Details
RL.9-10.2	Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze in detail its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text.
Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity
RL.9-10.10	By the end of grade 9, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, in the grades 9–10 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.
RL.11-12: Craft and Structure
RL.11-12.6	Analyze a case in which grasping a point of view requires distinguishing what is directly stated in a text from what is really meant (e.g., satire, sarcasm, irony, or understatement).
Key Ideas and Details
RL.11-12.2	Determine two or more themes or central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to produce a complex account; provide an objective summary of the text.
Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity
RL.11-12.10	By the end of grade 11, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, in the grades 11–CCR text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.
Writing
W.6: Text Types and Purposes
W.6.1	Write arguments to support claims with clear reasons and relevant evidence.
W.7: Text Types and Purposes
W.7.1	Write arguments to support claims with clear reasons and relevant evidence.
W.8: Text Types and Purposes
W.8.1	Write arguments to support claims with clear reasons and relevant evidence.
W.9-10: Text Types and Purposes
W.9-10.1	Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.
W.11-12: Text Types and Purposes
W.11-12.1	Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.

StudySync

Superb ELA resource spurs critical thinking with dynamic multimedia

Subjects and Skills: StudySync

Take a look inside

Lesson & Activity Ideas

Tool Overview

Learning Value

Rating Details

Overall Rating

Engagement Is the product stimulating, entertaining, and engrossing? Will kids want to return?

Pedagogy Is learning content seamlessly baked-in, and do kids build conceptual understanding? Is the product adaptable and empowering? Will skills transfer?

Support Does the product take into account learners of varying abilities, skill levels, and learning styles? Does it address both struggling and advanced students?

Key Standards Supported

Reading Informational

Reading Literature

Writing

Teacher Reviews

Explore Our Favorite Tools

Get weekly updates on the latest digital tools and teaching strategies.

Please take a second to answer this question.

Thank you!