McGraw-Hill Adds SyncBlasts to its Inspire Science Curriculum for Middle and High School Students

NEW YORK (September 11, 2019) – McGraw-Hill today announced a new collaboration that will integrate StudySync®’s SyncBlasts™ into McGraw-Hill's acclaimed core science curriculum, Inspire Science. The addition of SyncBlasts to the Inspire Science curriculum will allow students to connect what they are learning in the classroom to their lives outside of school, encouraging curiosity and deep, relevant discussion. Similar to SyncBlasts for other subjects, SyncBlasts in Inspire Science will draw upon recent news about topics students are studying in the classroom, such as the reported decline of the honeybee population and the publication of the first-ever images of a black hole.

SyncBlasts lessons—which have been integrated into McGraw-Hill’s Networks Social Studies and IMPACT Social Studies programs since 2018—are designed to make common classroom subjects more relevant to students’ daily lives, drawing clear connections between core content standards and the world that students experience. Through the latest integration, teachers using Inspire Science in grades 6-12 will now have the option to select weekly SyncBlasts reading and writing assignments that help students think critically about high-interest science topics. Students will explore a robust library of multimedia content to learn about each topic and then complete assignments within SyncBlasts’ engaging, social media-like platform. 

“McGraw-Hill’s Inspire Science has always been focused on sparking curiosity and empowering students to think more critically, and our expanded partnership with StudySync helps us achieve those objectives more effectively than ever before,” said Kelly McGrath, Chief Academic Officer at McGraw-Hill. “Through this collaboration, we’ve taken the strongest core science curricula that McGraw-Hill has developed to date and made it even more relevant for students.”

Built based on the Next Generation Science Standards, Inspire Science provides an in-depth, collaborative and project-based learning experience designed to help spark students’ interest in science and the world around them. Through inquiry-based, hands-on investigations of real-world phenomena, students can construct explanations for scientific phenomena and design solutions for real problems. Inspire Science is also built with the proven "5E" instructional framework, an inquiry-based method helping students to engage, explore, explain, elaborate and evaluate like real-world scientists and engineers, and to apply and transfer their knowledge to new situations along their individual pathways to career and college success.

“For today’s students, it’s absolutely crucial that classroom lessons make connections to students’ daily lives,” said McGrath. “By adding SyncBlasts to Inspire Science, students will have more options for sustained engagement with the most pertinent issues in the world today, while reinforcing and practicing their reading, writing and research skills on a platform managed by teachers.”

Providing a variety of rich multimedia, including Preview Videos, links to Case Studies, Explainer Videos, and The Point News Show, SyncBlasts challenges students to:

• Build vital research, writing, and critical thinking skills while providing an easy entry point for peer review.
• Develop informed opinions on high-interest topics of cultural significance.
• Express their opinions succinctly, in a familiar format.

SyncBlasts also saves teachers time, offering hundreds of curated articles and videos that are aligned to science content standards, with content channels that are updated and expanded regularly with new articles and media. Teachers control the deployment of SyncBlasts, and the platform allows teachers to leverage the power of social learning in a safe, mediated environment. Every SyncBlasts assignment is available in multiple Lexile® levels and scaffolds to ensure English Learners and approaching-grade-level learners can access every lesson. A selection of SyncBlasts assignments is available in Spanish as well.