Question 1

What's the difference between Diphthongs, Blends, and Digraphs?

Accepted Answer

Diphthongs, Blends & Digraphs

I had no idea what these were when I first began teaching phonics.

Not that I needed to know what these terms meant in order to teach phonics well, but it did help when it came to sorting out the different combinations in my head as I was teaching them.

Here are the basic differences between Diphthongs, Blends, and Digraphs:

Blends - Consonant Blends include letter combinations like st, pr, and nk. You can hear the individual sounds even as you are blending them.
Digraphs - Digraphs include letter combinations like oo and ew. They only make one single sound when blended together.
Diphthongs - Diphthongs include letter combinations like ai and oa. They make one sound that morphs into a second sound when blended together. (For example, "ai" sounds like "aaaeeee" if you say it really slowly, like a long a morphing into a long e sound 😁 .)

Question 2

What are graphic organizers and how do I use them?

Accepted Answer

Graphic organizers usually include boxes for writing information and pictures to help students organize information they read from a text. Below is a picture of a historical timeline which is a perfect example of a graphic organizer to help students organize important dates from a historical text.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/VJjCVlXBck/resources/ZMOnaK5ADk/ESL-Teaching-Graphic-Organizers6.jpg (ESL-Teaching-Graphic-Organizers6.jpg)

Graphic organizers are incredibly helpful tools for organizing information, regardless of whether students are English learners or not.

For our English learners who are attempting to access grade-level materials, they can be crucial.

In the ESL Curriculum Membership, you can find a growing library of graphic organizers you can use to scaffold learning for your English learners.

Click Here to Check Out the Graphic Organizers

Question 3

How do I score or grade the Kid-Inspired ESL Placement Assessment?

Accepted Answer

There have been a number of teachers who have asked about how to score the Kid-Inspired ESL Placement Assessment.

If you're a member of the Kid-Inspired ESL Curriculum Membership, there is a mini-course on how to use the assessment. There are also instructions included with the assessment itself. Here are a couple of thoughts though that may be helpful:

There is a little ruler of numbers at the top of each section of the assessment tracking sheet. These little rulers correspond to the questions in that section.

Kid-Inspired ESL Assessment Ruler

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/VJjCVlXBck/resources/rzMPxE64kp/ESL-Assessment-Ruler.png (Kid-Inspired ESL Assessment Ruler)

You take the number from here that the student received and write it at the bottom in the Score area.

ESL Assessment Final Scoring Box

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/VJjCVlXBck/resources/YyOtvfPTUc/ESL-Assessment-Grading-Box.png (ESL Assessment Final Scoring Box)

Once you have numbers for each area in this score box, you average them together for an overall level (add up listening/speaking, reading, writing, grammar and divide by 4).

If you're a member...

You can get the member copy of the assessment here.
You can find loads of other resources to get organized with the curriculum here.
You can find the Kid-Inspired Placement Assessment Mini Course here.

If you're not a member...

You can get a free copy here.
You can join the Kid-Inspired ESL Curriculum Membership here.
You can join the Kid-Inspired Interactive Online ESL Curriculum Membership here.

Question 4

How do I delete a group?

Accepted Answer

On the Groups page, select the Mark for Deletion in the Delete field for a group you want deleted. These records are then deleted on a schedule, about every hour or so. Deleting groups and deleting students are a little different than most other records which get deleted immediately.

Question 5

Can I use the materials for teaching online?

Accepted Answer

Resource Formats

**There are 3 formats for most of the resources inside the ESL Curriculum Membership:

PDFs,
Powerpoint,
NearPod.

There are a number of ways you can use the materials from the Kid-Inspired ESL Curriculum online with your students. The article below includes tutorials and tips for online teachers.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/VJjCVlXBck/resources/BgJY9jNo30/Teach%20Online%20with%20the%20Kid-Inspired%20ESL%20Curriculum.png (Teach Online with the Kid-Inspired ESL Curriculum.png)

How to Use the Kid-Inspired ESL Curriculum for Online Teaching ->

Here are a few specific tutorials for how to use the materials with popular platforms:

How to Use the Curriculum Online ->
NearPod ->
Google Classroom ->
Seesaw ->
Zoom ->

Access to the Curriculum

To get access to the curriculum and download resources, you can choose from one of the following memberships:

Kid-Inspired ESL Curriculum Membership Click Here ->

Includes the entire curriculum and all supplementary teaching resources.

Independent Teachers Membership Click Here ->

Includes the entire **Kid-Inspired ESL Curriculum Membership **
Promotional materials for the Kid-Inspired ESL Curriculum (Not available in the basic ESL Curriculum Membership)
Training courses on topics such as finding students, desigining your site, marketing, giving assessments, & more
Your own website, payment processing, scheduling, course-building software
Community of other teachers going independent

Your license:

Teachers can use the curriculum as long as they maintain an active subscription to the membership and are only using it with students they personally teach live and in-person whether it's online or offline. If the curriculum is being used on a freelance platform, like Outschool, for example, please leave a link to the Kid-Inspired website as a reference.

Teachers are not allowed to:

Re-package the curriculum in any way
Build a Self-Paced, Resellable Program Out Of It
Resell the Curriculum
Share the Curriculum with Others They Are Not Personally Teaching
Use Resources, Images, Text, or Logos from Kid-Inspired Classroom in Promotional Materials (The Independent Teachers Membership includes pre-prepared promotional materials teachers are licensed to use as long as they maintain an active membership)

Question 6

Can a student be in more than 1 group?

Accepted Answer

You can put a student in as many groups as you want. The platform is designed to keep things flexible for you. This way you can see data results and get reports across a variety of characteristics you choose.

Generally though, you don't need to group students by any of the data you add on a student's profile—i.e. grade level, background flags, etc.—since you will be able to sort students by these fields at any time.

Question 7

Free ELL Management Portal Account Terms of Service

Accepted Answer

Free ELL Management Portal Account Terms of Service

These Terms of Service are in addition to the regular Kid-Inspired Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.

For a limited time, members of the Kid-Inspired ESL Curriculum Membership, Interactive Online ESL Curriculum Membership, or Independent Teachers Membership can create a free account in the ELL Management Portal Membership.

This Free Account Comes with the Following Conditions:

Fifty student seats are provided with the free account.
The free account will remain active only as long as an active memberbership to one of the following is maintained: ESL Curriculum Membership, Interactive ESL Curriculum Membership, Independent Teachers Membership.
If the active membership to the ESL Curriculum Membership, Interactive ESL Curriculum Membership, or the Independent Teachers Membership is canceled, the free ELL Management Portal Membership account will also subsuquently be canceled.

If you have any questions or need any help, please contact support by emailing support@Kid-inspired.com or by visiting the support portal.

Question 8

How does the numbering on the lesson pages work? (i.e. Unit 1 #1, Unit 1 #1.1, etc)

Accepted Answer

If you've started using the curriculum, then you've probably noticed the numbers at the top of the pages within lessons.

The numbering system may seem a little odd at first.

Let me explain the logic behind the system and why it can be a little odd at times:

**Here were the criteria I wanted to meet: **

Each page, organizer and worksheet had its own number in case you were assigning a single page to students and needed to refer to it.
Subsidiary pages would be numbered in relation to their primary page. (Primary page like a vocabulary page for instance = Unit 1 #1; Subsidiary pages like vocabulary worksheets related to the primary page = Unit 1 #1.1, 1.2, 1.3, etc.)

**Here were some of the challenges that came up: **

Over the course of creating materials for the curriculum, some of which were created only for the site (we don't use them at our school) a couple of things happened from time to time:

Sometimes, subsidiary pages could relate to more than one primary page and when I chose to put them in one lesson as opposed to another, the numbering was sometimes off.
Sometimes, I chose to leave out a page from a lesson because I didn't feel like it was up to standard or was one too many pages for that lesson or still needed work. This has created gaps at times in the numbering.

The primary reason for the system is to give you a way to refer to a specific page, so you can safely ignore it if it does not benefit you.

Question 9

Free Kid-Inspired Student Portal Account Terms of Service

Accepted Answer

Free Kid-Inspired Student Portal Account Terms of Service

These Terms of Service are in addition to the regular Kid-Inspired Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.

For a limited time, members of the Kid-Inspired Interactive Online ESL Curriculum Membership can create a free account on the Kid-Inspired Student Portal.

This Free Account Comes with the Following Conditions:

The free account will remain active only as long as an active membership to the Interactive ESL Curriculum Membership is maintained.
If the active membership to the Interactive ESL Curriculum Membership is canceled, the free Kid-Inspired Student Portal account will also subsuquently be canceled.

If you have any questions or need any help, please contact support by emailing support@Kid-inspired.com or by visiting the support portal.

Question 10

Are Kid-Inspired Classroom resources copyrighted? What is the legal use agreement?

Accepted Answer

The Kid-Inspired ESL Curriculum License Agreement

Teachers can use the curriculum as long as they maintain an active subscription to the membership and are only using it with students they personally teach live and in-person whether it's online or offline. If the curriculum is being used on a freelance platform, like Outschool, for example, please leave a link to the Kid-Inspired website as a reference.

Not Allowed Under the License Agreement

The following items are NOT allowed under the Kid-Inspired Classroom License Agreement.

Users may not:

Re-package the curriculum in any way
Build a Self-Paced, Resellable Program Out Of the Resources
Resell the Curriculum
Share the Curriculum with Others They Are Not Personally Teaching
Use Resources, Images, Text, or Logos from Kid-Inspired Classroom in Promotional Materials.

If you have any questions or need any clarification, please contact support at support@kid-inspired.com