Attracting and retaining students is one of the biggest challenges teachers face. Every day we have to compete with games, videos, apps and influential people. It can certainly take longer than a simple lesson to keep students focused. So we went to search for pop culture lessons filled with current characters, shows and movies of our students ’choice. Created by AT&T, The Achievery is a free educational platform that offers exactly what it wants. Let’s see what they have to offer.
1. A library of free lesson plans and resources for teachers
The Achievement is a completely free resource for educators and parents. Just sign up with your name and email and you’ll have access to a full collection of lessons, activities and videos. Achiever currently has 60 unique units, each with two or three separate lessons. Topics range from writing and public speaking to coding. By highlighting the content of companies like Cartoon Network, Warner Bros., Young Storytellers, Scratch, and others, we know that we will find excellent learning material with which our students will be excited to be involved.
2. Secure access to the videos used in their pop-culture lessons
Showing online video clips can be risky, but with The Achievement, you can show video clips without worry. The Achievery works directly with the companies and organizations that make the videos This means teachers can trust that the clips are classroom-safe and high-quality. These are tailored specifically for each lesson, so you don’t have to deal with inappropriate ads or waste time hovering over a keyboard ready to pause at the right moment. Additionally, since clips are part of a value-based lesson plan, you can feel confident explaining to parents or administrators why you are using pop culture videos in class. Finally, it’s easy to find the perfect clip for your needs, since you can search for units by grade level, academic standard, media type, subject, or associate.
3. Popular characters, movies, and TV shows to engage all students
Once you sign in, you’ll start to get an idea of how much The Achievement can really offer. Wonder Woman Clips teach leadership and decision-making skills. Cartoon Network Craig’s Craig Teaches reading and writing skills. One aspect of The Achievery that I like the most is that there are many types of lessons to explore. We all know that we can’t show our students movie clips every day and keep them engaged. But Aquaman One day after a high quality lesson featuring content from an educational institution like Young Storyteller or Scratch? That sounds almost perfect.
4. Ready-to-go lesson plan with standard-lined lessons
When you discover a great resource it is so bad that you probably won’t be able to use it in your classroom. Sometimes we have to skip the idea of a great lesson because we can’t find a suitable video clip to go with it. Other times, we struggle with how we can make it meaningful in our values. Achievement lesson plans, however, solve these problems nicely. Each lesson and learning activity at The Achievery is aligned with Common Core or CASEL (Social Emotional Learning) academic standards and reviewed by education experts at ASCD (The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development).
5. Coming soon: Activities for all subject areas, grade level and subjects.
Currently, The Achievery has perfect units for English / Language Arts, Socio-Emotional Education, Arts and Technology and Engineering. And there are even more units on the horizon. Lessons in science, social studies, math and digital literacy are coming soon. Achievements continue to grow. They want to develop meaningful units filled with pop culture lessons that will involve all students.