Amplify ELA’s Flex Days are an opportunity for you to provide your students with needed grammar instruction and support additional practice in a targeted area of reading, writing, language, or speaking and listening. Depending on a students’ performance during the previous sequence of lessons, you might assign a particular group to work on reading fluency, revise an existing piece of writing, create a new piece of writing, practice close reading and discussion, or work on one of the key reading strands.
In the Materials section of your Year Overview, you can access the Flex Day Activities Guide PDF, which gives specific instructions on selecting activities and provides an explanation about each activity and how to prepare for the activity.
Flex Day activities
Flex Day activities can be assigned to an individual student or group of students independent of other activities. Each activity is generally designed to last 15 minutes, so students will be able to work with more than one activity in a class period.
Students should have your support the first time they work with a new activity; after that, the preparation for most Flex Day activities involves selecting the text passage or prompt with which students will work.
Activities include:
Specific activities that target needed additional practice with key learning areas, including reading elements such as theme, central idea, and figurative language, or writing skills such as use of evidence or conventions
Targeted recommendations for groupings based on each student’s performance on embedded assessments
Writing activities with suggested prompts for additional analytic writing aligned to either the unit texts or a text of your choice
The Conversation Connections activity is designed to support and engage ELL students in conversational practice with topics aligned to the week’s lessons
Individualized or whole class grammar and conventions lessons, targeting areas identified through the Automated Writing Evaluation (AWE) tool, or key learning standards
Targeted fluency practice using key lesson passages
Flex Days can also be used for:
Independent Vocab App work
Independent reading groups using texts chosen from the hundreds available in the digital Amplify Library
Student revision of a piece of writing, using Amplify’s Revision Assignments and feedback tools
Direct instruction of key standards and skills using Amplify’s Text Analysis Modules, Writing Modules, or Vocabulary Modules
There are also targeted Flex Day activities specifically designed to develop English Language Learner’s competence and confidence in classroom discussions. Learn more about support for multilingual learners here.
Selecting activities
You can use the Embedded Assessment Measure (EAM) report to select your students’ Flex Day activities. The EAM report analyzes student data over the course of a unit, then sorts and reports on student performance in key areas of reading, writing, and language to offer recommendations for student groupings and activities. The EAM report notes where each student could benefit from additional practice and you can assign Flex Day activities accordingly.
It is important to refresh the EAM report before planning for each Flex Day, as student data may have changed since the report was last viewed. Flex Day recommendations will update as your students’ progress through the program, but you can override a Flex Day recommendation or add additional Flex Days to better support your students.
If you decide to focus on grammar during a Flex Day, there are several grammar resources you can use. Plan to browse the Grammar Unit’s sub-unit Overviews, lessons, and activities to identify which would benefit your students. You might also browse the available lessons and activities in the Mastering Conventions PDFs found in the Materials section of your Year Overview. Additionally, consider assigning students lessons in Quill, which can be found in your Programs & Apps menu.