See What's New with HumanEX

HumanEX is expanding! We are excited to tell you about what’s new in our latest release.

We introduced Istation’s newest middle school reading instruction last fall, and now we are adding more! Students can now see three new adaptive lessons, two arcade-style games, new tools to help students, fluency practice, self-selected reading and writing, and four printable Priority Report lessons. Read on to learn more about each.

Adaptive Lessons

All lessons in HumanEX adapt based on what each student needs. Students discover their first choice when they reach the third stage of four in this chapter. They can choose to read “Hervor’s Tale,” a Viking myth, or a nonfiction story about Genghis Khan. Later on, students will get the chance to read the story that they didn’t choose before.

Arcade-Style Games

There are two new games available. One, a card match game, was a popular choice in NexLevel and is available in HumanEx too. Nekokami is a game where students practice spelling words correctly.

Helpful Student Tools

Students will now enjoy brand new tools to help them progress through the instruction.

1. Tools app – In this app students are able to store graphic organizers that they collect. They find this app by going to the Dashboard and clicking on the tablet.
2. Messages app – Here students will practice composing correspondence to characters in the form of emails and reflecting on what they learn.
3. Stats app – Students can monitor their own progress in Skills, Game Scores, and the Archive. In this app they can replay content (or play anything that was skipped) at the end of each chapter.

Fluency Practice

Students will practice fluency by reading about real places that connect geography and history. Passages are in the MAZE style and scored the same way Istation scores the ISIP™ AR Fluency assessment. Students see a results screen when they finish and get the chance to compare their scores with end-of-year goals for their grade level.

Self-Selected Reading and Writing

It’s important to get middle school readers excited about what they are reading. Istation works to give them choices. When they get to the self-selected reading section, they can sort through passages based on genres or Lexile measures (many students at this age may already know what level they are reading at).

When they finish a story, they can save a rating for the passage. Then they will have the opportunity to write about what they learned. They can read and write about as many passages as they choose. To advance through this part of HumanEx, they will need to write at least one time.

There are short excerpts from classical novels like Call of the Wild included among the options to encourage students to find the rest of these stories later on in a classroom, school, or public library.

Teacher Resources

We’ve added four new lessons linked in the Priority Report. We have a new, simpler, and fully accessible teacher directed lesson (TDLs) format that will be easier to print, use on screen readers, and use while leading small-group discussions or whole-class lessons. Each lesson is about 20 minutes in length but can be made longer if a teacher wants to extend it.

HumanEX appears after Timeless Tales with Paige Turner and before NexLevel in the continuum and covers 6th through 8th grade reading, language, and literacy state standards. It is a supplemental curriculum that complements any existing core or intervention curriculum. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to add more.

Click below to get a feel for what students will see throughout the introduction of chapter 1 in HumanEx!