Selection/Adoption Process

3 Critical Facts To Help You Get the Most Instructional Value from Your Materials

August 29, 2022March 25, 2020

Person using publisher's correlation to makes notes

As you consider using unfamiliar materials, we offer these tips to help you get the most instructional value from your materials:

If a material does not provide a correlation to your state’s standards, it probably was not designed with your state’s standards in mind. Thus, the material likely will not cover all of the content knowledge and skills your standards require students to learn. Using a material without a correlation will cause you more work in planning instruction to ensure that your students have the opportunity to learn everything the standards require. Consider using such resources for engagement or enrichment rather than as the primary resource for the course.

When Selecting Materials, Relying on Numbers Is Not Enough

August 12, 2022March 3, 2020

At Learning List, we are often asked, “Which material is the best?” While some organizations rank and/or rate materials, we do not. We do not sum a review up in a number or set of numbers or tell you which materials will be best for your students, because many variables affect the efficacy of a material. For example, how the material will be used, whether the material has the adaptions your students need and whether the district’s technology will support the full implementation of the product are all variables that affect which product is “best” for your students.

Factors to Consider When Selecting Intervention Materials

July 12, 2022February 19, 2020

When our Learning List team talks to district staff, we hear a variety of responses to the question, “How are you currently selecting resources to support Tier I intervention?” Answers range from systemic processes with district-wide solutions to teachers each selecting their own materials from multiple sources. The results of intervention are equally varied. Ensuring successful intervention requires consideration of multiple factors that can be addressed by answering the following questions:

3 Ways to Use Our Reviews and Tools to Facilitate Your Adoption

August 12, 2022December 3, 2019

Learning List’s editorial reviews reflect feedback from multiple Learning List reviewers. Our reviewers are highly qualified, experienced educators who are certified to teach the courses and have experience teaching the standards of the products they review. Each editorial review aggregates feedback from multiple reviewers, as well as from Learning List’s Director of Editorial Review, who verifies the reviewers’ observations and adds additional information from her own reviews of the material.

What Learning List’s Reviews Tell Educators

August 12, 2022October 17, 2019

Learning List’s three professional reviews provide a multi-faceted perspective of each material:

Spec Sheet – provides an overview of the material’s key instructional features and technology compatibility. We test the key instructional components of each material to identify which devices and operating systems the material works on, as well as other interoperability information. This review helps educators eliminate from consideration products that clearly will not meet their students’ instructional needs or work with the district’s technology infrastructure and hardware.

5 Things to Look For If Selecting Online Materials

July 15, 2022August 28, 2019

Recently, at a friend’s birthday party, the conversation quickly turned to back-to-school issues. Several friends began discussing their school district’s continuing adoption of online materials. One friend commented that when her older son’s school had moved to online materials almost exclusively last year, he did fine in his Economics class but really struggled in Physics. She told him to check out a textbook for that course, and almost immediately, his grades improved. My friends then began comparing how their children each learn and debating the relative virtues of printed versus online materials.

That conversation reminded me of the blog post we published recently about a Hechinger Report article titled, “A Textbook Dilemma: Digital or Paper?” Several of the points in this article align with distinguishing features we observe in our reviews of online materials.

Print Versus Digital Materials: What the Research Says

March 29, 2023August 23, 2019

If your district is gearing up for an adoption this year, part of your selection calculation likely will be whether to purchase print or digital/online materials. An article in the Hechinger Report titled, “A Textbook Dilemma: Digital or Paper?” may be useful.

The article discusses Patricia Alexander’s review of research on this topic. Ms. Alexander is an educational psychologist and a literacy scholar at the University of Maryland. Despite numerous (878) potentially relevant studies on the topic, Ms. Alexander pointed out that “only 36 [studies] directly compared reading in digital and in print and measured learning in a reliable way.” Despite the need for further research on this topic, Ms. Alexander found that numerous studies affirm the finding that: “if you are reading something lengthy – more than 500 words or more than a page of the book or screen – your comprehension will likely take a hit if you’re using a digital device.” This pertained to college students as well as students in elementary, middle, and high school.

Adopting New Materials This Year? Some Food for Thought

July 22, 2022September 1, 2018

Districts across the country are preparing to adopt new materials this school year. We thought we’d share some important considerations to help you implement an efficient and effective adoption process. Following are questions to help you define the scope of your adoption: What subjects and grade levels will you be adopting new materials for? Are you adopting the primary material for the subject …

Effective Implementation: A Key to Success

August 23, 2022May 15, 2018

Image: Effective Implementation: A Key to Success The effective implementation of a material is as critical to student success as the material’s alignment to standards. Learning List’s editorial reviews empower districts with information they need to not only to select materials but also to implement materials more effectively. They provide a qualitative analysis of each material’s instructional content and design. They point out the critical components of the product and the value each provides in the instructional process. They highlight the supports available for teachers and point out deficits in the material’s offerings.

For example, the editorial reviews explain whether teacher resources include background in content and pedagogy, provide pacing information and/or lesson plans, and offer guidance in differentiating instruction. They explain the professional development opportunities in the material and note when a product contains additional supports for novice teachers, such as comprehensive discussions of the required content knowledge and pedagogy, and detailed lesson plans to support instruction.

Learning List’s alignment reports guide educators in their selection and use of standards-aligned materials. Our editorial reviews help educators understand the intended use and instructional components of each product so they can implement the product effectively. Together, these reviews empower educators to choose and use materials to fuel their students’ success.

**A recent example of implementation gone wrong … and how reading our reviews could have lead to success!**

An assistant superintendent of a subscribing district called to let us know that her high school math teachers believed that our reviews of a particular material were too generous to a publisher by failing to mention the material’s lack of rigor. They felt the material did not provide practice exercises necessary to allow students to develop mathematical proficiency.

Rigor is an attribute we review materials for both in our alignment methodology and in the editorial review. So, after the call, we reviewed our alignment reports and editorial reports for each applicable grade level.

Our alignment reports revealed the following information about the material:

The material was aligned to a high percentage of the relevant state standards, meaning that we found at least one aligned citation for the majority of standards in each grade level. [Read more…]
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What to Expect From and Look For When Buying Comprehensive Materials

August 12, 2022January 16, 2018

Comprehensive Materials Checklist A comprehensive material is designed to support students in learning all of the knowledge and skills for a grade and subject. Thus, a comprehensive resource should be highly aligned to the standards for the grade level and subject. It should provide both direct instruction and practice opportunities to support students in achieving the depth of knowledge and understanding the standards expect by the end of the grade level.

Comprehensive materials differ in their level of rigor, coherence, adaptions provided for special student populations and instructional resources included for students and teachers. For example, more robust comprehensive materials contain resources to support direct instruction, guided and independent practice, formative and summative assessment, re-teaching and progress monitoring. Teacher’s guides may include resources for planning differentiation and intervention. [Read more…]

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