Freckle Education

Freckle Education is an online learning platform for K-12 students which inlcudes ELA, Math, Science, and Social Studies. I used the online learning platform this past summer while teaching summer school in a 2nd Grade class.This website was primarily for K-5 but they have been updating the platform with content for grades 6-12 recently. Being a summer school second grade teacher allowed me to use the teacher edition for free, this was paid by the district in which I worked. I had access to many features of the website and was able to assign work to students based on their level.

When students are navigating the Freckle website, there are endless topics in which are adapted to their level. The ELA section especially has some strong content. How Freckle works is that it assesses the skills of students individually and adjusts the level of the content accordingly. ELA is broken down into the areas, Word Work and Reading Comprehension. Depending on the grade level of a student, these two areas are then further broken down. For example, students in grades K-2 are able to work on sight words and phonics decoding. When working on Reading Comprehension, students read a short passage and then answer questions related to the passage. One of the amazing qualities of Freckle is that students initially take diagnostic assessment in which the program then offers various versions of the same reading passage depending on a student's reading level. The word study area is also adaptive. Words are sorted and classified according to their spelling patterns.

The Math area is adaptive as well and relies on diagnostic tests to determine the content in which a student will be working on. One of the most valuable assets of the Math area is the practice that is aligned to common core math standards which ranges from kindergarten to the12th grade. Students are given math problems and if they answer incorrectly, Freckle will provide an explanation or a video tutorial. Teachers are able to determine how their kids are doing by gaining access to data and reports, this is only available with the paid school edition. This allows a teacher gain access to feedback about student performance. Based on the data, teachers can then determine how to provide support and intervention where needed. From my experience this summer, my students enjoyed the online learning platform. They enjoyed the learning content as well as the virtual coins they would earn when answering questions correctly. Students can then use these coins when visiting the Piggy store to buys clothes and accessories for their character. Overall, Freckle is a well designed platform that is not only enjoyed and appreciated by teachers, but students as well. It may seem overwhelming to navigate the website at first but once you get started, you will learn to appreciate its features. Teachers who do not have access to the teacher edition can get their students started with a free account which does not require any form of payment.