Looking Forward to Seeing You in Bozeman for the OPI Summer Institute June 20th-24th 
There’s less than one week left before we kick-off the OPI 2022 Summer Institute on the MSU-Bozeman campus June 20-24!
For the first time in the 25 years history of the OPI Summer Institute, there are no registration fees for Montana residents. We are looking forward to seeing you all in person and strengthening our collaborative relationships.
Visit the OPI Summer Institute Conference website to learn more
ELA-Literacy and Related Sessions:
Monday, June 20
Keynotes:
- Tessie Rose Bailey - Lessons Learned From 20 Years of MTSS Implementation
- Bella Bikowsky - Mental Health Embedded into MTSS
Breakouts:
- Content Standards Team: Sonja Whitford, Michelle McCarthy, and Stephanie Swigart - Integrate the Great 8
- Allison Wynhoff Olsen, Kristopher Olsen, Tracy Babcock, and William Fasbender - Amplifying Student Voice Through Silent Films
Tuesday, June 21
- Kate Naughter – Persuasive Projects
- Jioanna Carjuzaa - MontTELLs: Braiding Indian Education for All and Academic Literacy Skills in English
- Sandy Squillace, Cori Krick - Formative Assessments with Tools for Teachers: Math and ELA
- Virg Hale - EdReady 101- Overview & Training on the EdReady Montana Program
Wednesday, June 22
Keynotes:
- Youth Like to Run, Our Elders Know the Path- Montana Youth and Elder Panel
- Peter Liljedahl – Building Thinking Classrooms
Breakouts:
- Kari Patterson - Did I detect some desperation in his voice?
- Dana Haring - Buoyant and Balanced: Keeping Teacher Burnout at Bay
- Beverly Ann Chin - Writing Coaches of Montana—Connecting Students, Teachers, And Community Volunteers
- Jacquie Teasdale-Unpacking EdReady Montana English
- Dana Haring - Reading and Writing Resolutions!
- Stephanie F. Reid - Teaching with Visual and Multimodal Texts in Middle and High School ELA Contexts
- Rachel Gott - Supporting student literacy through a multi-tiered system of support (MTSS) model
Thursday, June 23
- Nikki Vradenburg - Power Up with PBS! Digital Resources for ALL Learning Space
- Beverly Ann Chin - Developing Critical, Creative Readers Through Guiding Questions And Multicultural Text Sets
- Randall Klein - Intervention Games & Activities for Beginning and Struggling Readers
- Beverly Ann Chin - Effective Revising Strategies That Help Students “Write Like A Reader” And “Read Like A Writer”
Friday, June 24
- Content Standards Team-Sonja Whitford, Michelle McCarthy, and Stephanie Swigart -- Don’t STEM-ble! Do it the Write Way!
ELA Standards Overview Documents
Grade Level Standards Documents
Family Roadmaps- Grade to Grade Crosswalks for the MT English Language Arts Content Standards
Involve stakeholders in student learning by providing parents and families with these grade-level guides to the content standards. Each grade level document provides a clear and easy-to-understand overview of what their child will learn and do in their grade. It also includes a side-by-side comparison of vertical alignment with the grade below and grades above to help parents and students understand the subtle differences in ELA skill progression as it is outlined in the standards. Each grade level document is concluded with a section on specific supports families can and should do to help their student meet their grade level ELA goals.
Kindergarten
Grade One
Grade Two
Grade Three
Grade Four
Grade Five
Grade Six
Grade Seven
Grade Eight
High School
Tech Directors: To access a machine-readable version of the official Montana Content Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy, please visit the IMS Global CASE Network site. Create a free login, select Montana Office of Public Instruction, and view or download the standards. The CASE version of the standards can be uploaded to student information systems, curriculum mapping programs, and a variety of other uses. Learn more about the CASE Network or view the CASE Network FAQ
Assessments
Our Montana Comprehensive Assessment System (MontCAS) is carefully designed to help all stakeholders in Montana provide an equal, fair, and quality education for all Montana students. The
Montana Assessment Roadmap outlines the entire process and suite of what our statewide assessment provides for education in Montana.
Formative Assessment
- Tools for Teachers- Teacher-created lesson plans aligned to our MT standards for math and ELA grades 3-12. Includes Formative Assessment Teacher resources and strategies. Provides next steps after administering Interim Assessments with Connections Playlists. Log-in is required but available to all Montana K-12 educators through your school's School Test Coordinator (STC).
- SmART Smarter Balanced Annotated Response Tool- Better understand how student writing is scored on Smarter Balanced assessments and support writing instruction in your school or classroom. Browse a range of response types, explore interactive scoring rationales and rubrics, and practice scoring on your own or with colleagues. Use student writing samples to support instruction and facilitate important writing and revision conversations in your class.
- Smarter Balanced Content Explorer Site: Learn more about Smarter Balanced's blueprints, claims, targets, standards, and sample items.
Interim Assessments
SBAC Interim Assessments- grades 3-12
Summative
Learn more about ELA Summative Assessments on the Statewide Assessment Page:
Helpful Links
Smarter Balanced Resources: Montana
MontCAS Testing Portal
Spotlight: EdReady Montana English Support
EdReady Montana has been serving schools in Montana now for the last 2 years to help students become critical readers and effective writers, for standardized test prep, and supplementing classroom ELA instruction. In that time, we’ve worked with hundreds of schools and teachers. We are here to help educators who are asking important questions as they emerge from the past year and a half of dealing with interruptions to their teaching and student learning and are starting to ask the following question…
How can I use EdReady English to tackle preparing students for ACT, College English readiness as well as shoring up student’s skills for writing across the curriculum?
The team at EdReady Montana is ready to help you with any of the following solutions:
- this Spring to bridge the gap to next year and help avoid erosion of English skills or prepare students for college-level reading and writing.
- this Summer to address gaps in learning and prepare for their next level of English.
- next Fall to efficiently identify gaps and weaknesses then help teachers supplement instruction by utilizing resources within the program to address them.
- More than one or all of the above?
Not only is the program available online to serve a variety of access needs for students and teachers, but our team of Montana educators is here to help you plan, set-up, adopt and efficiently implement the program. Remember that all professional development can also be used for CEUs. Contact us today and we can work together to help get you going this spring, summer or have you ready to go on day one of next fall!
Visit the EdReady Montana website to read about how others are using the program or contact them support@montanadigitalacademy.org| 406-203-1812 for more information.
Find a Book MetaMetrics Reading Challenge
Find a Book is a free, fun and easy way to identify books based on a child's reading level (Lexile© measure) and interests. Find a Book has over 300,000 titles, making it the perfect tool to keep your child reading all summer long.
How it Works:
- Go to Find a Book & enter your child's lexile measure or grade level.
- Pick books that match the child's interests.
- View & refine the search results to create the perfect book list for your child!
Summer Reading Challenge Flyer • Summer Reading Challenge Spanish Flyer
More Reading Challenges & Resources
Summer Reading Program at Your Public Library - Library Directory
Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge
Sync Audiobooks
Barnes & Noble Summer Reading Program
ACT Academy: ACT Academy offers free summer math and English activities for grades 3-12.
For more summer learning opportunities for students, please visit the Summer Learning Opportunities page