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Test Designer is now Help Teaching

We’re excited to announce that Test Designer is now Help Teaching!

Why We’re Changing our name to HelpTeaching.com

TestDesigner.com launched in 2005 as a test maker tool, with a little over 100 questions across a dozen subject areas. When we first launched, we faced a classic chicken-and-egg problem – the platform needed content to be successful but didn’t yet have users to add that content. Fast forward to 2011 – the site had over 50,000 public questions across more than 300 topics and over 100,000 users worldwide. With all of the questions we had, we thought it only made sense to create a library of free printables. To give back to the community, we added free printables in December 2011. Printables, of course, turned out to be hugely popular with our members. So in the last 18 months, we have added hundreds of new worksheets and activities to our site.

Due to our expanded offerings, the original site name no longer represented all we had to offer and didn’t connect with our primary audience. Test Designer now offers numerous resources for teachers, homeschoolers and educators of all types designed to help them with teaching, hence the new name – Help Teaching.

What’s Next?

Where to begin? With the Common Core State Standards, of course! We are working aggressively to align our existing content to the CCSS and adding new content across the ELA and Math standards. We have an ambitious goal to have all standards covered for the start of the 2013-2014 school year.

And we’re not stopping there! We thought, “Why not use our extensive library of images and add other resources besides worksheets?” As a result, we will be adding study guides, games and lesson plans in the coming months.

We would like to take this opportunity to say thank you. Thank you so, so much for helping us grow by providing your feedback and offering your support over the last 7 years. Test Designer was something special, and, with your continued help and support, Help Teaching will be something even more special. As always, you can find us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest, or just send us an email to support at testdesigner.com

With hugs, love, and gratitude,

Lilia Tovbin

Founder, Tribrio Inc.

Announcing New Premium Worksheets

The Common Core State Standards are one of the current hot topics in education. As schools across the country have begun to adopt the standards, teachers must find new ways to assess the critical and higher order thinking skills they measure. Test Designer’s members can now find ways to assess the Common Core State Standards directly through standards-aligned worksheets on HelpTeaching.com.

Worksheets aligned to the Common Core English standards can already be found on Test Designer. As soon as you open a Common Core aligned worksheet, a new module on the print preview page allows you to instantly see the standards the worksheet is aligned with.

One of the first subject areas of Test Designer to be aligned to the standards is language arts. Many of the worksheets you will find in the reading strategies category have been designed to include the in-depth analysis, reasoning and comparison and contrast skills that the standards promote. Students will also be introduced to longer reading passages and associated questions, similar to what they will find on many standardized exams. For example, eighth grade students can analyze President Roosevelt’s Pearl Harbor Address to the Nation in the Analyzing a Speech worksheet and fifth grade students can analyze characters in popular short stories. Common Core aligned worksheets are also available for grammar instruction. Instead of simply identifying the parts of speech, students can put them to use combining sentences and correcting punctuation. Many of the Common Core Standards for language are already represented through worksheets available on the Test Designer site.

English teachers are not the only ones who can access standards-aligned worksheets. Worksheets are also available for math for grades two through five on topics such as money word problems and for grades six to eight on topics such as the Pythagorean Theorem and Geometric Solids. While the Common Core Standards do not cover general science and social studies skills, teachers can also access premium worksheets in these areas. These premium worksheets, such as one Muscular System Anatomy, feature high-quality images and content.

Throughout the summer, Help Teaching team plans to add worksheets covering nearly all Common Core standards and content areas. However, access to these Common Core aligned worksheets and future worksheets is only available by subscribing to Help Teaching Pro.

Member Groups Launched

Member Groups is a premium feature we have enabled for Group Pro members that allows them to invite colleagues to join their group and share content. If a user is a member of a group, they can view, and print tests or worksheets shared by other members of the group, while maintaining their own private tests and worksheets. This is the ideal solution for schools, colleges, or learning institutions.