Overview

Membean combines differentiated instruction, personalization, active memory reinforcement, and insightful teacher analytics into a single unique learning environment. In this article, you will learn about Membean's philosophy of vocabulary education and the features that turn that philosophy into an engaging, effective vocabulary program.

Membean's Philosophy 

At Membean, we strive to move beyond teaching words and toward building word consciousness, which involves curiosity and interest in learning and using words well, knowledge of how words work, and disposition for learning new words. Learn more about how Membean accomplishes this in our Word Consciousness Webinar. 

Genuine curiosity about words stems from the differentiation, personalization, and rigor built into the core of Membean. Students build confidence and competence with words when they are learning in their zone of proximal development, or, as we like to call it, their Goldilocks Zone. When students feel both challenged and successful, they are more likely to be excited about and take ownership of their learning. 

Learn more about Membean by watching this short video.

Membean Features that Support Rigorous Vocabulary Development

We all know that there is a difference between a teaching philosophy and the implementation of an effective curriculum. Here are some of the main features that create a rigorous and personalized learning environment to build students' word consciousness.

Training Features

  • Multimodal Learning: Each Word Page offers many ways to learn the word, providing multiple opportunities to understand and strongly encode the word in memory. Videos, striking images, spoken audio, and fun memory hooks capture and retain student attention and motivate them to learn. The ability to select from a menu of options provides learning autonomy and develops an appreciation for the richness and complexity of each word.
  • Adaptive Reinforcement: Membean uses advanced algorithms that reinforce words at the ideal pace for each student. Our adaptive reinforcement engine is based on brain science and updates word strength for every word for every student every 24 hours. With regular training, students will remember words, not just the following week, but for the long-term.
  • Differentiation and Accommodation: Not all students in the same class have the same vocabulary knowledge or learning needs. Therefore, students begin their Membean training by calibrating onto one of our carefully curated word lists. Teachers can also personalize class set-up and student preferences to accommodate unique learners. Membean can therefore be used to challenge students of all levels.
  • Scaffolded Questions: Students work their way through increasingly difficult questions as they train. There are a variety of question types which allow increased rigor as students gain familiarity with the words.
  • Curated Content: Membean content is not generated from Internet searches. Each context paragraph, example sentence, image, video, and question is carefully crafted by a dedicated Content Team composed of excellent writers, many of whom are English teachers. Content is created and vetted to be appropriate for and interesting to middle and high school students.
  • Root Resources: We have almost 1000 Greek and Latin word root trees and many free educational podcasts. Students are asked questions about the top 100 roots during their training.

Classroom Features

  • Customizable Training Expectations: What works for one class may not work for another, so Membean offers teachers the ability to customize their training expectations to meet their needs. We also provide recommendations for teachers, so they know how much students need to train to get optimum benefits. 
  • Personalized Assessments: Teachers can quickly and easily issue assessments to their students. Each assessment is created from the student's Quizzable word list, so to prepare for assessments, all students need to do is train. Quizzes are graded automatically, giving immediate feedback to students and saving teachers time.
  • Customizable Assessments: In addition to being personalized, teachers can customize assessment difficulty by choosing how many select-all-that-apply (SATA) questions to include. SATA questions increase rigor and encourage students to learn the subtle nuances of words.
  • Writing Assignments: Stronger vocabulary means better writers. Teachers can choose from four different flavors of writing assignments to help students practice using their words in context. Three of these options require students to build on cue sentences, promoting creativity.
  • Student Tracking: Student sneezed during training? We'll let you know. Kidding aside, you can monitor all student activity easily from your dashboard with customizable reports. Membean is meticulous about record keeping, so teachers can trust their reports and students can trust that their minutes will be recorded.

Training and Support

  • Extensive Knowledge Base: Teacher time is precious, so we have an extensive Knowledge Base that is easy to search. Teachers can find answers to their questions quickly, so they can move onto one of the other thousand things they need to get done. They can even access this resource without leaving their dashboards by using our Support Widget.
  • Quality Webinars: We provide live and recorded webinars for teachers who are looking for training on how best to use Membean. Whether it's a school just getting started on a pilot or a teacher who has been using the program for five years, we make sure we have something for everyone. These webinars are created by former teachers who used Membean in their classrooms. They are hosted live periodically, and they can be accessed at any time on our Webinars Site. 
  • Responsive Support Team: The Membean Success and Support Teams are composed of former teachers who understand the challenges of the classroom and who will listen to your suggestions and act on them. From resetting a password to brainstorming solutions for a particular set of students, the Membean Team is available and eager to help in whatever ways you need.

Download this brochure to see how Membean helps create better readers and writers.