Study Island Feature Focus: Practice Mode, Game Mode, Group Sessions, Printable Worksheets

Whether you’d like to offer students structured independent practice, or you’re looking for ways to engage large or small groups at one time, Study Island includes a collection of engaging session types to support your formative assessment practices. Test mode, game mode, group sessions, and printable worksheets can help you offer something for everyone. Let’s explore each a little further!

Practice Mode:

Practice mode offers students a structured learning experience. By default, all Study Island questions are in this format. Within practice mode, students can alter font size, utilize the scratch pad, and use highlighters to identify main ideas, find key words, and narrow down answer choices.

Game Mode:

Game mode gives students a little extra motivation while working through their math, ELA, science, or social studies practice. Whether you use it during the school day, limit use to extra practice after school, or require a specific threshold to be achieved in practice mode first, game mode is a great incentive for your students.

“Study Island’s educational games and Khan Academy videos, which support core content within Study Island, have helped our students understand the material better," said Luke Berry, Student Assessment Specialist at Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School.

This session type helps students work towards mastering state standards while staying motivated and engaged with a variety of short, interactive games that display after answering a question correctly. What’s more, game mode includes the same great content, features, and question types that are available in practice mode.    

Group Sessions:

If you haven’t seen group session yet, we’d highly recommend checking it out! This feature is great for both whole class and small group instruction. Whether you’ve implemented a 1:1 initiative, you have a laptop cart that transitions from classroom to classroom, or you have dedicated computer lab time, group sessions is a great opportunity to work through specific topics in Study Island as a group. You also get the same great reports and progress monitoring that you would receive utilizing practice mode or game mode! With group sessions, students can answer multiple-choice and technology-enhanced questions via tablets, mobile devices, laptops, or desktops on any Study Island topic. 

Printable Worksheets

Printable worksheets are a great resource to use as extra practice during small group meetings, station time, or for homework after teaching a specific topic. You will receive a student and teacher copy (with an answer key and brief explanations) for each worksheet. What’s more – printable worksheets include the same great items that you have come to expect through our practice mode, game mode, and group sessions!

Time to put all of these session types into action! Give these strategies a try:

• Start your day or end a lesson with group sessions. Using your classroom projector and set of classroom laptops from the school’s laptop card, work through a set of ten Study Island questions with the whole class. You can even make it fun by letting students work in pairs or working through correct answers as a group. Within the group sessions interface, you can easily print off a session worksheet, see how students answered, and display a brief explanation for the group.
• During station time, give students the opportunity to work independently and hone in on specific topics that require extra practice using practice mode. As the teacher, you can either assign specific practice assignments to your students, or you can allow students to choose where they’d like to focus for the day.
• End your day by assigning extra practice in Study Island as homework. You can motivate students to work through their assignments by allowing them to utilize Study Island’s game mode after school hours. For each correct answer, students are rewarded with a brief game.
• Even if your students don’t have internet access at home, they can still make use of Study Island! Simply print off a printable worksheet and then review your homework assignment as a group the next day using group sessions.

Want to learn more about the variety of tools in Study Island to help you engage and meet the needs of all of your students? Check out these Top 10 Features You Might Not Know About!