FAQs for Fishtank Plus Users

Your school has a designated Team Leader who manages your Fishtank Team. Check your email for an email invite from the leader with the subject line “Fishtank Plus Invite [Action Required]”. Click the link within that email to accept the invite.

If you already have a Fishtank account (one that’s associated with the email where you received the invite), simply log into your Fishtank account. The Fishtank Plus courses that your school purchased for will automatically be attached to your account.

If you do not have a Fishtank account, click the email invite link and create a new account. The Fishtank Plus courses that your school purchased will automatically be attached to your account.

When you are signed into your account and have an active Fishtank Plus subscription, you will see a teal plus sign added to your profile icon.

If your profile icon does not have a teal plus sign that means you either are not logged in or you are logged into an account that does not have Plus access.

Once you have an active Fishtank Plus subscription, you will see Plus features throughout the unit and lesson pages, denoted by a light gray box, a teal Plus icon, or a Fishtank Plus content label.

Note: You do not need to click the Fishtank Plus link in the top navigation of the website. This is a set of promotional pages.

If you’ve forgotten your password, on the login screen you can click “Forgot Password.” 

Then provide your email address and click reset password.

If you do not get an email or you still have trouble resetting your password, you can email [email protected].

If you navigate to the unit page there is an option for you to download the unit in its entirety. This download includes the unit plan and the lesson plan and materials for each lesson. On the unit page you also have the option to select which materials you want to download, by clicking Customize Download.

On the Customize Download page, you can specify which materials from the unit you want to download. For example, you can choose to just download the unit plan, or all of the Target Tasks from the unit, or just lesson 5.

Additionally on each lesson page, you have the option to download a zip file of the lesson plan and materials you are currently viewing.

Fishtank Unit Launches a mini, on-demand professional learning modules, which provide you with an opportunity to intellectually prepare the content of the unit prior to teaching it. Unit Launches contain videos and short readings, as well as opportunities to respond to guided reflection questions. 

Each Fishtank ELA unit in Kindergarten-10th Grade includes a Unit Launch. These are accessible from the unit page.

Each ELA Unit Launch explores the elements of complexity present in the core text(s), the unit Essential Questions which ground the unit goals, the key reading and writing standards, and the unit assessments. Throughout you will be prompted to consider what supports students will need, as well as what additional activities or texts you might layer in to build background knowledge and ensure that students can make meaningful connections to the unit.

Most Fishtank Math units in 3rd-8th Grade include a Unit Launch. These are accessible from the unit page.

Each Math Unit Launch explores select standards from the unit to gain a better understanding of what students will be expected to know and do. You’ll also investigate 1-2 Big Idea, with videos that guide you through the development of the concepts through key Anchor Tasks and Target Tasks selected from lessons. Finally, you'll look at how the unit’s content connects to students’ prior understandings as well as their future work in your grade and beyond.

We view this as an incredibly valuable process that helps teachers think deeply about how they will support their unique group of students as they engage with the concepts and skills of each Fishtank unit.

As you complete a Unit Launch, there are spaces for you to document your responses to reflection questions. After responding to each question, be sure to click Save Response.

After clicking Save Response, you will have the option to update your response or to view/print your responses.

Additionally, after saving each of your responses and eventually completing your Unit Launch, whenever you navigate back to your Unit Launch your responses remain on that page. They also remain there year after year, as long as you remain a Fishtank Plus user.

At the end of the Unit Launch, clicking Submit makes your responses visible to your Team Leader and any additional Team admins, who then have the option to provide feedback.

The number of lessons can vary from unit to unit. You can see the number of lessons for each unit on the grade-level course page.

Additionally, if you click the pacing guide link on the grade level course page, you can find information regarding the number of lessons and total instructional days for each unit.

These numbers serve as a guide. As you intellectually prepare for each unit by completing the Unit Launch, you may find that based on the needs of your students, you may want to extend a lesson or add in an additional lesson. Note: We don’t recommend adding in more than 5 lessons to any unit.

To access and edit student handouts, click Create Slides and Handouts.

Each student-facing part of a lesson can be downloaded as a PDF, edited on the Fishtank website, or sent to Google Drive where you can edit the materials to best serve the needs of your students.

In ELA lessons, slide decks are offered as editable Google Slides. Currently, math lesson slide decks are not editable.

At the unit level, all math assessments are also editable. 

Lesson annotations offer teachers and leaders the option to make personalized notes throughout their lesson plans that capture the curatorial and adaptive decisions they have made about how they will teach the lesson. This feature is available only to Plus users that are part of a school team.

Each section of a lesson page offers the option to Add a Note. When you click the plus sign, a box will open to allow you to add an annotation/note to that section of the lesson plan. Once you save an annotation, you will see a number appear next to the Add a Note link. You can re-open the note and click the three dots to either edit or delete the annotation.

Click the Download Notes button in the note pop-up to generate a PDF of the lesson plan with your annotations incorporated. A “Download Page with Annotations” link will appear. In the PDF, a sticky note will appear with each added annotation.

Fishtank ELA is designed to empower you to make the decisions that are going to best serve the needs of your students and ensure that all students have access to a complex, grade-level curriculum.

Our curriculum is most effective when you intellectually prepare at both the unit level and the lesson level. Using the Unit Launches can help you to plan at the unit level for the types of support your students may need in order to access the text and grapple with the unit content. Enhanced Lesson Plans suggest many possible supports and scaffolds that you may decide to use with some or all students. 

You can also explore our library of ELA Teacher Tools. There you will find further resources, templates, and routines that can help you support your students. As you begin the year with Fishtank, a Teacher Tool that you may find helpful is Preparing to Teach Fishtank ELA, which touches on topics of supporting all students and internalizing the content of an ELA lesson.

In July 2023, we adjusted the presentation of our 1st–5th Grade ELA sequence. We have selected six units to comprise a recommended scope and sequence that balances literature and informational texts across a variety of genres. Teaching the units in this order ensures that the students engage with grade-level reading, writing, language, and speaking and listening standards in a coherent sequence that builds appropriately over the course of the school year. If you would like to continue using the parallel sequence of literature and science & social studies units, you can reference this guide to the former sequence.

Fishtank Math is designed to empower you to make the decisions that are going to best serve the needs of your students and ensure that all students have access to a rigorous, grade-level curriculum.

Our curriculum is most effective when you intellectually prepare at both the unit level and the lesson level. Using the Unit Launches can help you to plan at the unit level for the types of support your students may need in order to access the unit content. The Unit Prep section of each unit page also offers a variety of information to support your preparation, including the models you will use in the unit.

In each Fishtank Math lesson, you’ll find Tips for Teachers that identify areas and concepts that you may want to consider as you the teach the lesson to students.

Additionally, for many of the Anchor Tasks/Problems, the Guiding Questions and Notes sections can help you facilitate the problem in such a way that all students can access and find success with the task.

You can also explore our library of Math Teacher Tools. There you will find further resources, templates, and routines that can help you support your students. As you begin the year, you may find the Preparing to Teach Fishtank Math section helpful. We also offer guidance for Supporting Just-In-Time Instruction and Supporting Special Populations.

Math games are a perfect way to spark classroom conversations, student curiosity, and a little friendly competition, all while keeping the focus on academics and boosting fluency skills.

Fishtank Math fluency activities library has dozens of games that can be facilitated with your whole class, or through centers, independent, or partner work. The activities are aligned to 3rd-6th grade standards, but can be modified to scale up the difficulty or used as they are with middle school students for a low stakes way to review previous grades’ content.