How This Kindergarten Teacher Encourages Her Students to Achieve at High Levels

"[Boddle] is helping so many kids learn, and that is truly what it is all about."

Jenn is a Kindergarten teacher at a K-2nd grade suburban school in Pennsylvania. In addition to serving on the McGraw Hill National Teacher Advisory Board, she is also Orton Gillingham Reading Basic Language and Basic Math Skills trained as well as a member of the International Dyslexia Association. Having taught Kindergarteners for 17 years, Jenn is no stranger to being faced with the recurring challenge of meeting the widely varying skill levels of her young scholars. She notes that "[i]t can be tough to find an engaging way to meet every child at their level and encourage them to keep achieving at a high level." As such, Jenn has found Boddle to be a beneficial resource that "... is the best combination of play and learning" and also allows her to focus in on the skills that each student needs help with the most.

Key Outcomes:

• ‍Age-appropriate Combination of Learning and Fun: Through using Boddle to address grade-level standards for her Kindergartners, Jenn has found that her students find joy in learning and that "[e]very [game] update brings more joy to the students".

• Meeting Students Exactly Where They Are - Extra Help and Enrichment: Because students enter Kindergarten with a wide range of needs, be they heavy scaffolding or enrichment, Jenn is able to use Boddle's adaptive technology to create and assign content that addresses the diverse requirements of every student.

Challenge: The proficiency levels of new Kindergarteners consistently show a wide variety. Therefore, finding an engaging and helpful approach to addressing each child's individual abilities can be quite challenging.

Kindergarten-aged students face an immense amount of newness all at once. Suddenly, they are immersed in a brand new world of learning about social interactions, how to act while at school, friendships, and so much more. On top of all that, they are entering Kindergarten with widely varying backgrounds of academic exposure. Assessing, analyzing, and planning for how to address each student's specific needs is a huge task for any teacher, but in particular, Kindergarten teachers like Jenn.

Solution: Rather than having to rely solely on a one-size-fits-all curriculum or program that is not well-equipped to address each students' specific needs, Jenn is able to assign additional practice where needed as well as assign "mini lessons for kids who go beyond [the] scope and sequence".

Because Boddle uses adaptive technology to assess and gather baseline data and subsequently provide learning content that suits students' unique needs, Jenn is empowered to focus on grade-level skills for the students who need that specific support as well as provide a challenge for students who are ready to move on to above-grade-level skills. Boddle also helps Jenn in preparing her young students for upcoming assessments. "For me, as the teacher, I can see all of their progress and any struggles. I love that I can assign extra practice to my class when we are finishing a chapter in math that I am going to be testing on in the next few days."

Result: Jenn uses Boddle to continually amplify her students' enjoyment while addressing standards in the specific way that is best suited for each of them.

Boddle has had a transformative impact on the students in Jenn's class and has become the go-to choice during free time, as the students eagerly engage with the game to earn rewards. In addition to providing an engaging learning atmosphere, Jenn has noticed that her students are excelling at their grade-level expectations. She says that "[the] class average is above grade level on a difficult assessment and [they] have not even taken [their] curriculum based assessment yet for the end of the year."

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“Boddle has been such a game changer for my class. Whenever there is free time, my class chooses Boddle. Every update brings more joy to the students. "

- Jenn (Veteran Kindergarten Teacher)

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Devices

Boddle currently runs on desktops, laptops, and Chromebooks using Safari, Firefox, or Chrome browsers. The Boddle app for iPad, tablets, and mobile users is also available on the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store.

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