Why we love Lumio for Learning Quests
Our goal as The Core Coaches is to always provide YOU the teacher with the best resources that support you and your students in the classroom. This includes creating resources that are engaging for students while still maintaining rigor to address the core standards. It also includes creating resources that are EASY to implement and READY to use!
Your role as a teacher should include the ability to enjoy teaching!
One of our most popular resources (and definitely one of our favorites) are our learning quests! Learning Quests embody all of the things we want from our resources. All of our learning quests engage students through digital activities that deliver rigorous instruction. Compatible with Google Slides, you just assign them and they are ready to go.
So, how do you make an already easy to implement resource even easier, more engaging, AND with the option to adapt for different student needs? Lumio!
Lumio is the newest in digital learning tools and the perfect digital platform for our learning quests! 
What are Learning Quests?
A learning quest is a set of several different activities that teach students about a specific topic. We have dozens of quests that teachers can use throughout the year. Learn more about learning quests. Many of our learning quests are developed around yearly events or topics that are often taught in first and second grade:
- Growth Mindset
- Bats
- Turkeys
- Christmas Around the World
- Snow
- Groundhog Day
- St. Patrick’s Day
- Earth Day
- End of Year
The great thing about learning quests is that we have created them using a predictable format. This helps support the independent learning aspect of the resource because once you have taught your students how to complete a learning quest, they can complete ANY learning quest independently – yes, even first graders!
How do Learning Quests work with Lumio?
If you have been following The Core Coaches for awhile, you know that we are all about engagement! We believe student engagement is one of the most important things when it comes to student learning and classroom management. That was one of the reasons we were so excited to learn about Lumio – it is the best way to engage students digitally that we have seen!
When we saw all the ways that Lumio allows for teachers to create engaging digital lessons, we couldn’t wait to see how it could improve our learning quests. It surpassed our expectations!
Engagement during direct instruction
The ultimate goal of using learning quests in your classroom is to provide you with a complete resource that teaches and supports independent learning. Students need support in getting to that point though!
Rather than just showing students a learning quest, use Lumio to engage them in learning about the topic. The activities are already loaded into Lumio for students to access on their personal devices. Lumio allows students to access the lesson through a browser, Google Drive or Microsoft Teams.
Audio and moveable pieces offer support during independent learning
An important part of creating independent learners is to support them along the way. With first and second graders, this means giving students tools to help them access new materials easily.
Lumio offers an audio component that reads to students, which we love! The basis of each learning quest is the informational text for students. Lumio supports young learners by reading the text to them, so they can follow along. Lumio also supports activities that have moveable pieces. This is one of our favorite ways for students to demonstrate their comprehension, so we love to see Lumio offering this option!
Perfect for Group Work
Learning quests were designed to encourage and support independent learning. However, this doesn’t mean students have to work by themselves! One of the main benefits of the Lumio platform is that you can create collaborative group workspaces for any lesson – with just a few clicks. This collaboration option is not only a great way for students to work together, but it creates SO many opportunities for you to easily engage your whole class in the activity.
In Lumio you have access to a teacher dashboard that provides you with real time insight into your students’ progress in learning. Combining this element with the collaborative work groups provides you with several ways to adapt instruction to support students.
Add Additional Assessments
In our learning quest we provide a final quiz at the end, along with formative assessments throughout. In Lumio, you have the option to add in additional checkpoints or assessments. By monitoring each student, you can quickly assess individual students and determine who needs support right away. You can pull those students to work with you individually or in small groups.
Small Group Work
Use the information provided by the assessments in one learning quest to create small groups for the next learning quest. Since each quest assesses similar comprehension skills, you can use a new topic to help students work on skills from the previous one. You can set-up students into collaborative groups in Lumio and have them work together according to proficiency levels. You can also choose certain groups who need more support to work with you.
Differentiate Instruction
With the ability to add in your own assessments or activities through Lumio, you can easily adapt each learning quest for different proficiency levels. Create one lesson where you add additional support activities for struggling learners. In another lesson, include a learning game from Lumio for more advanced students who may finish before others, to help them stay engaged. With how easy it is to upload lessons into Lumio, you can use the same learning quest and simply upload it multiple times and modify as needed, making it seriously one of the easiest ways to effectively differentiate!
Lumio Gives You Choices
Every classroom is different and we love tools that allow teachers to add their own personal touch to a lesson. Lumio truly offers you so many tools to make each lesson exactly what you need for YOUR students. Combining Lumio with our learning quests provides you and your students with dozens of choices on how to learn throughout the year. The best part? Even with all those choices, it is still SUPER simple to use!
Checkout some of our most popular learning quests that are up on Lumio now!
If you’re looking for more information about our Learning Quests you may be interested in these blog posts such as:
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We'd like to send you a free interactive read-aloud that is easy to use in either a print or digital format!
