Blog posts about how to implement instructional materials effectively to support the district’s curriculum and/or instruction
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 include 14 new types of questions, cross-curricular passages, and evidence-based writing.
Late last month, U.S. Secretary of Education Cardona set out his Vision for Education in America. He discussed the importance of keeping schools open and strategies for helping students catch up and succeed, including targeted, intensive (high-dose) tutoring.
Much attention and many resources have been focused on providing tutoring to help close students’ learning gaps. What are the ingredients of a successful tutoring program? Several studies provide guidance:
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.
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. However, here are three steps for accomplishing this task without our tools.
Over the last year, many of our subscribing districts requested reviews of adaptive materials. The concept behind adaptive materials is admirable: different content is presented to each student based upon the student’s performance on each task or assessment. In essence, these products offer the promise of an individualized instruction for each student.
However, districts should not assume that “adaptive” means “aligned to standards.” Many adaptive materials assign content based on skill mastery rather than mastery of the standards. Based on our experience, districts would be advised to carefully review the alignment of adaptive materials to the standards they are needed to support before using them.
As we near the end of the school year, your focus may be on intervention and testing. We offer three suggestions to help you prepare your students for end-of-year success.
Make sure your intervention materials are aligned to the standards you are reteaching. Using tightly aligned materials will reduce your workload and make intervention more effective. Many intervention materials are not designed to align to 100% of state standards. Make sure the material(s) you are using for intervention are aligned to the standards you are re-teaching. Verify that the citations (e.g., lessons, activities, assessments) you plan to use address both the content and rigor of the standards your students need to learn.
When implementing an instructional material during in-person instruction, teachers can adjust instruction, add instructional strategies, and differentiate instruction for their students. During remote instruction, however, teachers may not have as many opportunities to adjust instruction to meet their students’ needs. Therefore, the quality of instructional materials used for remote instruction is more important than ever.
Learning List has reviewed thousands of instructional materials, and we consider many factors in our qualitative reviews. In previous blogs, we have written about considerations for selecting materials to support continuous learning and things to look for if selecting online materials. This blog takes a deeper look at assessing the quality of instructional materials used for remote instruction.
As schools are tackling all of the demands of educating students during Covid-19, teachers continue to focus, and re-focus, on building relationships with students and providing supportive environments. Part of providing a safe, supportive learning environment is providing a culturally responsive classroom. “Culturally Responsive” is a term frequently heard in educational circles today. It goes beyond building relationships to ensuring academic growth for all students. While culturally responsive teaching is a complex topic, there is one piece of it that does not have to be challenging. Consider how you would answer this question: “Do students see themselves in the instructional materials I am using?” In formulating your answer, think about the following factors:
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