Testimonial in Texas

"As the Kindergarten bilingual teacher of 24 wonderful students in an early exit district, life can be a little stressful. Imagine my delight when the time came to begin transitioning my students into learning their letters/sounds in English: Imagine Learning English had already gone before me and done just that!

"Even though I had spent relatively little time focusing on the English alphabet, most of my students knew most of the alphabet (letter and sounds)! In the third six weeks of school, most of my students are very successfully beginning to read in English. They have mastered the mechanics of reading in Spanish and continue making excellent progress in that area.

"What makes it even more wonderful is that they love to "play" Imagine Learning English. They have no idea that they are actually learning. Thank you for your hard work in helping my students to be successful in acquiring and mastering a second language. You are greatly appreciated!"

Marie Lowry
Bilingual Kindergarten
Royse City, Texas

Go Graphic

Literacy all begins with letters and sounds. But after learning to recognize letters, then words, then phrases, sentences, and even paragraphs, a student’s journey is still far from over. It’s time to make some meaning out of it all. Time for connections. Time to go graphic.

Each of our new forty-four leveled texts come with a graphic organizer, found conveniently in your Level 2 Resource Guide. Graphic organizers teach students not only how to organize ideas but how to find ideas and meaning in the first place. And according to the April 2007 Reading in a Foreign Language article by scholars Xiangying Jiang and William Grabe, graphic organizers are especially helpful for English learners, who struggle with meaning more than their native-speaking counterparts. Check out the type of graphic organizers we use and how you can incorporate them into your curriculum.

1. Compare and Contrast
2. Sequence/Timeline
3. Main Idea and Supporting Detail
4. Information Table
5. Story Map
6. Cause and Effect
7. Problem/Solution

Struggling readers are likely to see the same text structures over and over without even realizing it. Says Jiang and Grabe, "the limited variety of discourse structures and their recurrence across texts enable teachers to provide explicit instruction to students in text structure knowledge, and students, once familiarized with the major textual patterns, can transfer their knowledge across texts and content areas." Graphic organizers make these text patterns more accessible, so students find meaning easier.

Download a sample graphic organizer here:

Making Resolutions Reality

Another year has come and gone. And so have last year’s resolutions. That’s not to say you didn’t have some great ideas—even the greatest intentions fail without the right plan of action. But if one of your goals this year is to get your students learning, reading, and loving it all… well, we’ve got just the game plan to make your resolution a reality.

Take a look at yet another study that demonstrates students who use Imagine Learning English test better and learn more than students who don’t. Then renew your resolve to put your ELs on Imagine Learning English everyday. Because if you make time in 2009—Imagine Learning English will make results.

ClearVue Research Independent Assessment Study Research Results for an Illinois School District:

1. Kindergarten students using Imagine Learning English had a median improvement in the pretest to posttest ISEL score of 40%. In comparison, kindergarten students without Imagine Learning English gained less than 20% during the pretest to posttest period.
2. First grade students had a median improvement in their pretest to posttest ISEL composite scores of over 30%; while first grade students without Imagine Learning English gained 15%.
3. An additional measure of year-to-year differences validates the increased benefit of Imagine Learning English: Kindergarten ISEL pretest to posttest scores from the 2005-2006 school year (before Imagine Learning English was implemented) had a median improvement of 22% compared with the 40% growth achieved by Imagine Learning English students the following year (2006-2007).
4. Imagine Learning English has a gap-narrowing effect. Students selected to receive Imagine Learning English were the most needy as evidenced by pre-test scores. However, post-test scores show that this gap is narrowed considerably due to the progress of Imagine Learning English students.

And Illinois isn't the only state seeing these results. English learners across the country are closing the learning gap with Imagine Learning English. So while we can't help you with your other New Year's Resolutions, we can help your students with literacy and comprehension. This year, be sure to put Imagine Learning English on your priority list.

Submit a Story

Teachers spend their lives encouraging, guiding, and mentoring their students. Take this opportunity to share how one special teacher did this for you, and we'll post it in our Teacher Appreciation Section.

E-mail all stories to feedback@imaginelearning.com.

Contact Us

If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or topics you'd like to see more on this blog, e-mail us at feedback@imaginelearning.com.

Thanks for stopping by!

The Contributors

Lisa Salazar
Lisa loves the English language and all its quirks and idiosyncrasies. She has taught English as a second language in the US and abroad and for a period of time attempted to teach Spanish (a language she used to know well) to a class of Hungarians (in a language she barely knew). Needless to say, she quickly developed a deep respect for all language learners.

After a brief stint as a magazine writer, editor, and freelancer, Lisa joined the team at Imagine Learning. When she’s not scrutinizing sentences for comma splices, she enjoys writing music, watching documentaries, and experimenting with ginger and cilantro.

Read Lisa's articles here.

Shar Petersen
Shar has been a writer her entire life but only started getting paid to do it eight years ago. She documents the Imagine Learning products (the paid part), makes a lot of to-do lists (the unpaid part), and blogs about life with a two-year-old (the paid-but-not-in-$$ part).

Shar loves a lot of things, but best of all children and books and reading. She has worked at Imagine Learning since it began in 2004 and thinks it's the perfect place for combining those three passions. The only things that might rank a little higher on her favorites list are her husband, their two daughters, and ice cream.

Read Shar's articles here.

Brenda Johnson
Brenda comes from a family of bookworms and was bitten by the book bug early, thanks to bedtime stories and family reading sessions. Because of this, her main interests include writing, reading, writing, and reading. She also has a passion for storytelling, cooking, graphic design, and gathering useless trivia.

Brenda has written countless bits of poetry and short stories, which are only "countless" because most have been lost to disorganized hard drives or old notebooks. Her favorite book is Peter Pan, and she's begun a personal crusade to make sure everyone in the world reads it and loves it as much as she does.

Read Brenda's articles here.

Paige Lyman
Paige has loved reading and writing since she was a little girl with a very active imagination. Now she's grown, but her imagination is still active, and she puts it to good use writing, planning, and organizing. Her love for the English language has grown as she studied English linguistics and editing, and she thinks that languages are fascinating.

Paige likes dreaming up exciting stories about adventure and writing down her own life's adventures (which may not be as exciting, but are just as good). She also enjoys taking pictures, trying new foods, drawing, and playing games.

Read Paige's articles here.