We’re excited to announce the launch of our new English enrichment courses for 5th grade English Language Arts (ELA 5) and 8th grade English Language Arts (ELA 8). These two new courses continue our expansion into enrichment and remediation of core academics.
We also offer math enrichment courses for 5th grade math (Math 5) and 8th grade math (Algebra I). By the end of November we will be launching courses geared towards 11th grade math (Algebra II) and English Language Arts (ELA 11), and future plans include courses for 6th and 7th grade students.
Registration for Piqosity’s premium courses takes less than 30 seconds and does not require a credit card. Join for FREE at the Community level, which includes access to a diagnostic test and limited practice material. Full course access starts at just $89, and tutors and teachers can save more than 50% when purchasing on behalf of their classes.
The new ELA courses are the culmination of nearly a year of effort from more than 20 different contributing educators. Cody Jackson leads Piqosity’s ELA curriculum development:
The strength of the ELA courses is the diversity of material that challenges students to apply key ideas to a variety of domains and styles of writing—further strengthening comprehension and command of the material. By exposing students to a variety of passages, the ELA courses strive to engage students with material they will find compelling while enriching their understanding.
Want to know more about how it all works? Read our in-depth English Course Navigation Guide for a step-by-step introduction to Piqosity’s ELA offerings.
Introducing ELA 5
We designed the new ELA 5 course to help 5th grade students with both enrichment and remediation. This course heavily emphasizes improving reading skills through a diverse group of texts, including short stories, informational texts, novels, traditional tales, and argumentative texts. Aligned to Common Core standards, the course is divided into six genre-specific units:
- Unit 1 – Short Stories (6 stories at launch)
- Unit 2 – Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (12chapters)
- Unit 3 – Informational Texts (16 texts)
- Unit 4 – The Secret Garden (27 chapters)
- Unit 5 – Traditional Tales (16 tales)
- Unit 6 – Argumentative Texts (16 texts)
Two of the units ask students to read full-length novels (Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden). Students are presented with questions on every chapter of these classic novels.
At launch, the ELA 5 course features more than 150 reading passages and 1500 questions. This should take most students about 40 hours to work through. Assuming that the average US school is in session for about 35 weeks, this means that enrichment students could spend a little over an hour a week with Piqosity’s new English course.
Students using Piqosity to remediate or prepare for a standardized test such as the ISEE Lower Level will likely have to compress this timeline.
Introducing ELA 8
Our new ELA 8 course is targeted primarily at 8th grade students for enrichment, remediation, and test prep. Aligned with 8th grade Common Core standards, the course is divided into five genre-specific units:
- Unit 1 – Short Stories (6 stories at launch)
- Unit 2 – Informational Texts (18 texts)
- Unit 3 – The Hound of the Baskervilles (15 chapters)
- Unit 4 – Creative Nonfiction (14 works)
- Unit 5 – Inquiry Topics (4 discussion pieces)
One of the units asks students to read Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles and presents questions on every chapter of this classic novel.
At launch, there are 110 passages and over 1500 practice questions. We estimate this will take most 8th grade students about 40 hours to complete. Sara Fetahagic is a contributing writer for the new ELA courses:
Communication is a large part of what makes life so special – the ability to convey your thoughts to others and perceive the thoughts of others, regardless of how complex those thoughts may be, is remarkable. An effective and involved ELA curriculum is intrinsic to the communication skills students need in order to navigate our world. Piqosity’s 5th and 8th grade ELA curriculums are full of engaging and detailed explanations so that students can fully understand not only what they should expect from themselves when reading or writing, but how to implement these skills and why these concepts are important to be familiar with.
My favorite part of the ELA curriculum is that you can see the real-life applications of the concepts you learn. Each lesson is full of applicable examples, and many exam questions use real literature to show students how authors use what they’d just learned.
Bundle with ISEE Test Prep for Unsurpassed Practice Content
We are also launching a new “Advanced” test prep package option, designed for students who are preparing for the ISEE Upper Level or Lower Level. This package bundles three complementary course to provide an unparalleled amount of practice for ISEE test prep students:
- Full ISEE course access with 10 full-length practice tests ($289 value)
- Full ELA course access with up to 150 more reading passages ($89 value)
- Full Math course access with nearly 1,300 more practice questions ($89 value)
This package provides over $460 of value for just $389, which represents a savings of nearly 20%. If students work through all of the included content, it is the equivalent of completing more than 25 ISEE practice tests.
Piqosity’s Innovative Platform Features
These new ELA courses are built on top of the same innovative and flexible platform as our acclaimed ISEE, ACT, and SAT test prep courses.
Piqosity’s key platform features include:
- Instructional lessons with multiple variations, including video tutorials
- Adaptive practice, including gamification options
- Student analytics, and “strength and weakness” diagnostics
- Answer explanations from both the original author and third-party educators
- Printable PDF practice tests and question sets
- Timers with flexible settings (including time-and-a-half and double time)
- Test-taking assistance: interactive whiteboard, question “scratch-throughs,” and flagging
Our team of engineers is continuously improving and expanding the Piqosity e-learning application. Coming later this month is the Piqosity Virtual Tutor (PVT). This new feature works with Piqosity’s AI to determine what students should be working on by synthesizing information about their goals, current abilities, and timeline.
Piqosity is Built for Tutors and Teachers
We built Piqosity to be both user-friendly for parents and students at home and ready to meet the complex needs of full-time tutors and teachers. Key features for educators include:
- Student management, including the ability to see everything the student sees
- Automatic scoring and analysis of all student work
- Assignments with due dates
- Custom Branding (tutoring companies and schools)
The biggest features for educators are still yet to come. Later this month, we are opening up our platform to enable any qualified educator to upload their own instructional content to Piqosity. This means that educators will be able to create their own lessons and questions within our easy-to-navigate interface. They will then be able to share this content with other teachers, or just with their own students.
A Mission to Rethink Education
Piqosity (pique + curiosity) is a Houston-based education technology startup on a mission to rethink education. One product launch at a time, we are on a journey to democratize education publishing and personalize student learning.
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