Learning List Blog

Are you teaching a new grade level or subject this year? If so, you likely do not feel like you have had enough time to plan.  Three years into my teaching career I moved between campuses and inherited a book cart full of textbooks and supplemental materials for my new assignment. I had no idea whether the materials were current or well-aligned to the current standards for the course! To make things more difficult, I was a singleton teacher and had no one to ask.  It took me

Have you ever purchased K-12 textbooks or online instructional materials that are not well-aligned to the standards? Where are those materials today – on a bookshelf, in a closet, in the district’s warehouse? Selecting new instructional materials or even deciding which existing materials to use in a lesson can be a daunting task. Learning List was founded 10 years ago to help teachers, instructional coaches, principals, and district curriculum leaders choose high-quality mat

In our high-stakes testing and accountability environment, academic success is rooted in students’ mastery of the state standards. State standards dictate what students must know and be able to do by the end of each grade level. Preparing all students with the content knowledge and skills contained in the standards requires campus and district leaders to be focused on aligning instruction with the state standards. Have you built a culture of standards alignment in your dist

IXL Learning is a supplemental online program providing content for grades PK-12 that includes language arts, math, social studies, and science. Learning List recently reviewed the content for Algebra, which provides math practice problems, explanations, and video- and text-based instruction. The program intends to offer a personalized learning experience to meet students’ individual learning needs. IXL Math is an adaptive program that uses continuous diagnostic assessment t

This is the second of two blog posts about mapping instructional materials to a district curriculum. The first blog discussed developing a common definition of alignment, becoming familiar with your materials, and important considerations when identifying citations (lessons, activities, quizzes) in your materials to map to the district curriculum. This blog contains five more tips.

As you may have experienced, curriculum mapping can feel like you are trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. In this blog, we shared five important tips for mapping instructional materials to your district curriculum. Since that blog was published, we have helped many more districts with various curriculum alignment tasks. In this two-part blog series, we share a few more tips from our experience.

State departments of education generally revise state assessments when the standards for the content area have been revised. In such circumstances, districts generally purchase new materials. However, as this blog post discusses, several forces may cause state education leaders to implement widespread changes to state assessments, as recently occurred in Texas. Starting with the spring 2023 administration, the Texas state assessments will be administered online and will inclu

Holt McDougal’s Biology is a comprehensive program designed to support Texas high school Biology. The content is available in print and digital formats, in both English and Spanish. While this material is no longer sold by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Learning List recently reviewed the digital version of the material to meet subscribers’ requests. The material focuses on providing resources to support students as they deepen their understanding of scientific concepts in prepar

Newsela is a digital platform that provides diverse content, lessons, and activities intended to supplement core curriculum in English Language Arts (ELA), social studies, or science. Learning List recently reviewed the content for ELA. The program intends to provide engaging content and lessons that offer relevance, choice, and skills practice to complement districts’ ELA instruction and core materials.  The platform provides an abundance of diverse texts across genres, inc

Daily or almost daily tutoring is one of the most effective interventions for struggling students. A 2016 study provides strong evidence that frequent tutoring is especially effective at increasing the achievement of low-performing students. Studies have shown tutoring produces big gains in student scores when it occurs daily or almost every day; less frequent tutoring showed lower gains and was not as helpful as other types of interventions. In the studies, successful "high

Is your district looking for materials to support credit recovery and independent learning in ELA? Take a look at Learning List’s review of Edgenuity’s English I-IV. Edgenuity’s English platform provides comprehensive, online courses intended to support students in developing the skills required for high school English. Courses can be used for original credit or credit recovery in a variety of blended learning and self-paced environments. Each course can be formatted as a c

Do your digital materials support an equitable learning experience for students participating in remote instruction? You may consider adding this question to your selection rubric as you consider which materials to continue using or purchase next year.  This fall, a state education agency hired Learning List to review 83 core digital materials across the four core content areas to determine the extent to which each material supports remote instruction. One of the goals of th

Repurposing your existing materials for tutoring has several advantages: it saves the district money, and it saves students and teachers the stress of having to become familiar with a new material. The challenge in repurposing your materials for tutoring is identifying suitable content that you have not already used.  Learning List's alignment reports and Alignment Comparison tool make it easy to identify content in your current materials that you can use for tutoring.

Is your district looking for ways to make mathematics relevant for students? Take a look at Learning List’s reviews of NS4ed’s Pathway2Careers. NS4ed’s Pathway2Careers is an online mathematics and CTE program intended to support mathematics instruction for grade 8, Algebra I, Geometry, and Algebra II mathematics courses. The material focuses on helping students find a purpose in learning mathematics skills and concepts by helping them make connections between mathematics con

Are your health teachers asking for new resources? Take a look at Learning List’s review of McGraw Hill’s Teen Health McGraw Hill’s Teen Health is a comprehensive program to support health instruction in grades 6-8. The product is available in English and Spanish, in both print and digital formats. The material intends to enable students to practice making healthy, informed decisions while learning important concepts and skills about their health.

Are your health teachers asking for new resources? Take a look at Learning List’s review of McGraw Hill’s Glencoe Health McGraw Hill’s Glencoe Health is a comprehensive program to support health instruction in high school. The product is available in English and Spanish, in both print and digital formats. The material intends to enable students to practice making healthy, informed decisions while learning important concepts and skills about their health.

Is your district offering African American Studies? Take a look at Learning List’s review of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s African American History. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s African American History is a comprehensive program designed to support the Texas high school African American Studies course. Content is available in print and digital formats, and is intended to support a semester-long course. The materials are available in English. Online resources are housed in Houg

NoRedInk is a supplemental, fully digital English language arts program for students in grades 4-12. The program provides a free version and a subscription-based version. Learning List recently reviewed the free version of the program. The material focuses on developing students’ writing skills, and includes practice exercises, scaffolded writing activities, and assessments. The design of the program allows teachers can customize assignments, and students complete the work t

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