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Amplify ELA: Apps and Quests
Amplify ELA: Quests and Apps Overview
Amplify ELA: Quests and Apps Overview

Learn about Quests and Apps

Updated over a week ago

Amplify ELA has multimodal quests and apps to engage students and support learning.

You can access the Quests and Apps in your Programs and Apps menu. All Quests and Apps aligned with a unit are listed in the Planning for the Unit section of each Unit Guide.

Quests

Each Quest is a series of narrative lesson plans, designed to span about a week of instructional time, that builds on the literacy skills students have been developing in the core lessons and allows students to take the lead. Quests allow your students to immerse themselves in unit texts by climbing Mt. Olympus (Myth World) or exploring case studies from Oliver Sacks’ acclaimed book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (Perception Academy).

Teacher Guide

Every Quest comes with a detailed Teacher Guide to help you prepare for and implement the Quest. It is made up of the Overview, Prep, Materials, and Running the Quest sections. You can switch to student view to preview what your student’s will experience.

A. Overview

The Overview has an introduction to the Quest and an overview of using the app. The sidebar on the left will vary based on the Quest.

B. Prep

The Prep tab helps you to prepare for the Quest. Depending on the Quest, this section might contain pertinent background information, any materials you might need, an explanation of the structure and goals of the Quest, and other tips to help you facilitate student participation.

C. Running the Quest

The information in the Running the Quest tab is broken down by lesson. Each Lesson section includes various tips for facilitation as well as talking points to discuss with your students as they go through the Quest. You can also take notes in the Running the Quest tab by clicking on the notes icon.

D. Student View

Student view shows you what your students will see during the Quest. You can explore the Quests and use the student view to help you prepare your lessons.

E. My Notes

The note-taking feature is available through the Running the Quest area of the teacher guide. In My Notes, you can see all the notes you’ve taken in the teacher guide.

F. Materials

The Materials section has all the media and materials students use in the Quest, such as videos and any printed materials.

G. Logout

Click on the gear icon to logout of your account.

Available Quests:

Myth World (6D)

Students use their devices to climb Mount Olympus or cross the Mediterranean Sea to Crete, discovering new myths along the way.

Black, White, and Blues in Chicago (7B)

Students build their knowledge and deepen their understanding of A Raisin in the Sun through a digital recreation of 1950s Chicago full of essays, interviews, and music.

Perception Academy (7C)

Students explore case studies from Oliver Sacks’ acclaimed book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat using games and multimedia assets.

Who Killed Edgar Allan Poe? (7D)

Students role-play as characters from Poe’s poems, short stories, and even his biography as they try to solve an elaborate murder.

The Emancipation Project (8B)*

Students listen to oral histories and examine other authentic artifacts to deepen their understandings of American slavery.

*This is a physical Quest that your district can order. Primary and secondary student source materials and the Teacher Guide are available in 8B, Sub-unit 8.

Apps

Several ELA Units include custom apps with experiences that allow students to work with and think critically about the text in new ways.

Amplify ELA Apps are available in the Programs and Apps menu and they are also linked within relevant lessons. For instance, in Sub-unit 3 of 6B: Mysteries & Investigations, after students have gathered evidence from the text, they can click a link to the Scene of the Crime: Sherlock Holmes app on their student card and complete the activity.

Available Apps:

Spotlight (All Units)

Highlight and project strong samples of student work

Vocab App (All Units)

The Vocab App helps students master vocabulary words through game-like activities that challenge students to think through morphology, analogy, and synonyms/antonyms, and to decipher meaning through context.

Scene of the Crime (6B)

Students arrange items in a room to match their understanding of a description of the room as it appears in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Speckled Band.”

Caught Red-Handed (6B)

Students write about how Sherlock Holmes uses various clues to solve the case in “the Red-Headed League.”

Evidence (6B)

What is the cause of yellow fever? Students identify and evaluate evidence for each claim. Once all the evidence is ranked, cartoon avatars battle it out to see which claim prevails.

Hope-o-Meter (7A)

Students determine Ji-li’s level of hopefulness in passages they have highlighted in Red Scarf Girl.

Tell-Tale Art (7D)

Students use an interactive storyboard app to arrange characters, sounds, and items to match the events described by the narrator in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart.” They also create a second storyboard to match their version of events, then note distinctions between the two storyboards to understand the concept of an unreliable narrator.

*The availability of this content/features may vary by district and in certain state editions.

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