Star Assessments Connects with Nearpod to Accelerate K-12 Student Growth

Renaissance, a global leader in pre-K–12 education technology, is pleased to introduce a powerful new connection between its industry-leading Star Assessments and Nearpod platforms to accelerate learning in the 2022–2023 school year. This is just one of the many exciting new product features that schools and districts can access for Back to School.

Renaissance has also curated fun, engaging, and helpful resources for its products to help ensure a strong start for both educators and students as they are together again in the new school year.

Streamlining the lesson planning process

To better connect assessment, instruction, and practice, Star Assessments users now have one-click access to Nearpod’s lesson library and learning resources within the Star platform. This streamlines the lesson-planning process and helps educators to more easily differentiate instruction for individual students, small groups, and entire classes in both literacy and mathematics. Educators who are using Nearpod Math have access to additional content and tools within Star to support students’ math achievement.

In addition, Renaissance is thrilled to introduce two foundational literacy assessments for the new year:

• Star Phonics is the first and only web-based assessment of 12 phonics categories and 102 essential skills. Focusing on these critical categories and skills saves educators time and ensures students are secure in the phonics patterns they’ll need and use the most.
• Star CBM Lectura is an assessment of literacy development in Spanish for K–6 students in bilingual and dual-language programs. Star CBM Lectura provides screening as well as real-time data on foundational literacy components in Spanish, which is data many teachers have never had access to before.

Star Phonics and Star CBM Lectura complement the company’s other assessment offerings, providing educators with detailed insights on students’ achievement and instructional needs.

Renaissance is also releasing a number of impactful product features for the new school year, including:

• Student-recorded read-aloud in the myON digital platform, to provide new opportunities for oral reading practice and to build reading fluency;
• A Parts of Speech domain in Freckle for ELA, to provide students with in-depth practice on essential components of grammar;
• A Biliteracy Report in Accelerated Reader, to help educators monitor emergent bilingual students’ reading practice in English and Spanish; and
• The ability to use Star Early Literacy scores to automatically match students with foundational literacy lessons in Lalilo.

Supporting teachers first and foremost

“This is the biggest Back-to-School product release in Renaissance’s history, and we’re excited for educators and students to take advantage of the new products and new functionality this year,” said Todd Brekhus, chief product officer at Renaissance. “Our company mission is to accelerate learning for all, and we’re proud to offer so many new ways of engaging students and supporting the important work that teachers do every day.”

To further support educators and students during Back to School, Renaissance has curated product-specific checklists, step-by-step instructions, rostering information, and more for each of its products. Educators can access this information on the new Back-to-School 2022 resources page. This webpage also provides access to new Student and Family Engagement Kits for Accelerated Reader, Freckle, Lalilo, and myON for the 2022–2023 school year. In each kit, educators can find fun activities and resources that help keep students motivated to learn in any environment this school year.

To kick off the new school year, Renaissance will host a LinkedIn Live event on Tuesday, September 20, to showcase the new product features and share strategies for accelerating student growth this school year. All educators and administrators are welcome to attend this special presentation.

About Renaissance As a global leader in assessment, reading, and math solutions for pre-K–12 schools and districts, Renaissance is committed to providing educators with insights and resources to accelerate growth and help all students build a strong foundation for success. Renaissance solutions reach more than 40 percent of US schools and more than half a million students in other regions across the world. Our portfolio includes solutions for assessment (Star Assessments, Star Phonics, and myIGDIs for Preschool); practice (Accelerated Reader, myON, Freckle, and Lalilo); data-driven insights (Schoolzilla); and teacher-facilitated instructional delivery (Nearpod).

Featured image: Chinnapong, iStock.