The month of February is dedicated to celebrating Black History Month! As you discuss this important month with your students, we want to highlight a new downloadable activity that we encourage you to incorporate into your classroom. 

“The Hill We Climb” by Amanda Gorman 

As part of the inauguration of President Joe Biden on January 21, 2021, poet Amanda Gorman read “The Hill We Climb,” the poem she composed for the occasion. Amplify and Poetry in America are proud to announce a new set of lessons teaching this amazing poem. Once your students have completed the illustrated frame, post images to social media and tag us @Amplify.

Download the student lesson and teacher materials, poster, and Zoom background. 

Upcoming improvements designed for you 

We've recieved a lot of great feedback that you need better insights into student usage. For back to school 2021, your daily login calendar will include daily usage, you'll be able to filter your view into usage across different time frames, you can see Quest completion at the class level, and more! Take a look at what exists and what is coming to better support you. 

Let us know what else you'd like to see in the fall!

Weekly usage tracker

We understand how important it is to track students’ time spent in Amplify Reading. For back to school 2021, this will be embedded in multiple aspects of your reporting. For now, we have created some helpful resources. 

Caregiver reports 

Share progress and insights from the Teacher Dashboard with caregivers. The new Caregiver reports feature allows teachers to create PDFs to easily share with caregivers to keep them informed about their students’ growth progress through Amplify Reading. 

Learn more. 

Amplify Platform Reliability Office Hours 

Join Aaron Harnly, Amplify’s Chief Technology Officer, as he discusses the steps we are taking regarding our platform reliability and our commitment to improving the student and teacher experience with Amplify. There will be an opportunity to ask questions at the end of the webinar.

• February 25 at 4:30 p.m. ET 
• February 25 at 6:30 p.m. ET

Register now to join Afrika Afeni Mills—Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion with BetterLesson—as she discusses reimagining learning in a post-COVID world.

• Holding space for recovery, reflection, and dreaming
• What do we mean when we say learning loss?
• How can we acknowledge COVID-related losses and honor student learning experiences?
• How do we make sure to ground our work in relevant instructional practices as we move forward?

By registering for this VIP event, you will receive a complimentary registration for the Built for These Times: Making the Shift to the Science of Reading symposium on the following day. 

A program built for these times: Register for a webinar on how Amplify Reading empowers students and keeps them growing as readers, no matter their learning environment.

Did you know we have a help website to share information with you about new and updated features? Visit the website and search for help articles. 

We are committed to reliability and communicating clearly and transparently with you when there are issues that affect your experience. Historical uptime for Amplify Reading during the month of January was 99.77%. Click here for more information on uptime and how to stay informed.

We want to hear from you! Answer the questions below and we’ll share the results with you next month.

What will you continue doing in post-pandemic teaching and learning?

We want to hear from you! Have your students said something funny, cute, or heartwarming in your remote, in-person, or hybrid classrooms? 

Click here to tell us something they’ve said!