Read About Our Latest Instructional Materials Reviews

New Review: Sadlier’s From Phonics to Reading

February 22, 2023February 8, 2023

Are you searching for instructional materials to support foundational skills instruction? Take a look at Learning List’s review of Sadlier’s From Phonics to Reading.

Sadlier’s From Phonics to Reading is a comprehensive phonics program, intended to supplement literacy instruction in Grades K-3. The core instructional material consists of teacher and student books, available in print or eBook format, and additional digital materials provided on the program platform.

The goal of the program is to support students as they become readers by providing explicit and systematic foundational skills instruction. The material provides explicit and systematic phonics instruction reflective of the Science of Teaching Reading. It employs consistent instructional routines and lesson sequences, beginning with alphabetic knowledge and progressing to more advanced foundational reading skills, such as encoding, compound words, and suffixes and prefixes.

Will Districts Succumb to State Pressure Over the Adoption/Use of Instructional Materials?

April 17, 2023January 19, 2023

If you have perceived an increase in state control over the adoption of instructional materials, you are not alone. This blog explains the reason for the shift away from districts’ control over the selection and use of instructional materials. In a recent EdWeek article, education leaders who shaped the standards movement argue “that states should be doing more ‘quality control’ when it …

4 Steps For Overcoming Curriculum Chaos

January 12, 2024December 19, 2022

Over the last three years, yours, like most districts, likely scrambled to meet students’ needs in lots of new ways. The district may have purchased new materials to support at-home learning. Teachers may have subscribed to online resources individually. And, since students returned to school, intervention, and tutoring resources have likely been purchased.

When you analyze the current list of materials in your district, do you have an abundance of instructional materials? If so, are all being utilized, and are they meeting the needs of your students and educators?

When Selecting K-12 Supplemental Materials, Does the Alignment % Matter?

February 22, 2023December 9, 2022

Image of a supplemental material for mathematics

When purchasing supplemental materials, how much weight should you give to the alignment percentage? In this blog, we explore the differences between comprehensive and supplemental materials when it comes to assessing alignment. Educators in every district are working hard this year to close students’ Covid-19-related learning gaps. Consequently, many campuses and districts are selecting supplemental materials. This blog discusses important differences between supplemental and …

K-12 Curriculum Reviews: What Sets Learning List Apart?

December 2, 2022

Learning List's Curriculum Review Service 10-Year Anniversary Image with gold baloons

Does the following scenario sound familiar? The state’s math standards recently changed, and your district purchased new instructional materials for mathematics. Teachers use the materials for a few months, but when students struggle to master the content, the teachers grow skeptical about the material’s quality. Increasingly, they turn to lesson resources they have developed themselves or borrowed from their colleagues. …

Selecting Supplemental Materials? Here’s a Process to Help You Pick the Best Materials for Your Students

January 26, 2023November 30, 2022

In the first two blogs in this series, we offered guidance for planning an instructional materials adoption and customizing a rubric to reflect your district’s priorities. Generally, districts would use that information when selecting core materials. Supplemental materials are most commonly selected at the campus level, and campus leaders typically rely on word of mouth (Wang et. al., 2019) when …

Customizing an Instructional Materials Rubric To Reflect Your District’s Priorities

November 17, 2022November 17, 2022

This is the second blog in the series about effective strategies for reviewing and selecting instructional materials. Our first blog discussed planning a successful adoption, which included distributing and aggregating the results of a needs assessment. Now it is time to develop a rubric for the adoption. Developing a rubric from scratch can be daunting. More often, educators look for …

8 Steps to Planning a Successful Instructional Materials Adoption

October 11, 2022October 11, 2022

adoption planning - four people sitting around a table looking at wall with post it notes

If your district or campus will be adopting new materials this year, someone in your campus or district is probably starting to plan the adoption process. Over the last decade, Learning List has assisted hundreds of districts, both formally and informally, with instructional materials adoptions. Based on research regarding selecting and implementing high-quality instructional materials and our own observations of …

Are Teachers’ Doubts About The Alignment of Their K-12 Materials Correct?

February 22, 2023October 5, 2022

Standards alignment percentage of supplemental materials

According to the 2021 Survey Results of the RAND Corporation’s American Instructional Resources Surveys, over 90% of the teachers surveyed consider standards alignment an important characteristic in their district-provided instructional materials (question 34). Yet, only between 36-41% of the surveyed teachers (depending on the content area) perceive that their district-purchased materials help their students master their state’s math, English language …

New Curriculum Review: Accelerate Learning’s STEMscopes Math Grades 6-Algebra I CCSS

October 21, 2022September 25, 2022

Does your district need math materials to support critical thinking in math? Take a look at Learning List’s review of Accelerate Learning’s STEMscopes Math.

Accelerate Learning’s STEMscopes Math is a comprehensive mathematics program for grades K-Algebra I. Learning List recently reviewed the content for grades 6-Algebra I for Common Core State Standards. The materials are digital, with the option of printing PDF documents for most program components.

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