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New Product Review: Exploros English Language Arts/Reading

August 12, 2022August 20, 2018

Exploros is an open-educational resource (OER) that provides comprehensive products that support instruction in the social studies and English language arts/reading (ELAR) core content areas. Exploros is available at no cost. Content is available online and facilitates instruction in teacher-led, technology-based learning environments, such as 1:1 programs and flipped classrooms. This review is of ELAR resources for grades 4-8. At …

New Product Review: EMC Mirrors & Windows: Connecting with Literature

August 12, 2022August 13, 2018

EMC’s Mirrors & Windows: Connecting with Literature is a comprehensive resource to support English language arts instruction in grades 6-12. The program includes print and web-based resources. In the middle school grades (grades 6-8), instruction uses the theme of “mirrors and windows” to help students use literature to reflect on their own lives and to connect with people from different …

Defining Roles: Standards vs. Curriculum vs. Instructional Materials

August 24, 2022June 18, 2018

Educators and publishers often use the terms “standards,” “curriculum” and/or “instructional materials” interchangeably. Moreover, many educators consider their instructional materials to be their curriculum. However, each of these terms represents a distinct component of an educational program. In the sections that follow, we provide explanations of each of these terms to differentiate their meanings in the context of PreK-12 education. …

Changes to the Lexile Framework

November 12, 2017

The increased emphasis on ensuring that all students are able to read and understand complex texts has prompted MetaMetrics, the developer of the widely used Lexile Framework for text complexity, to extend the Lexile scale to enable more precise measurement of text complexity in grades K-2. In the past, the Framework identified texts with Lexile levels below zero (i.e., 0L) simply as Beginning …

A Thank You to My Teachers

May 13, 2017

During Teacher Appreciation week, I often hear of the amazing teachers that turn lives around. I read stories that inspire and motivate. But, there are many more untold stories of the impact that a good teacher has over the span of their career in education. And as I reflect on my experience as a student, I would like to thank …

The Ripple Effect of Supporting New Teachers

May 12, 2017

One teacher I would like to thank is Ms. Anita Johnson, who taught English at Dallas ISD’s J.L. Long Middle School in the 1980s. Ms. Johnson was my supervising teacher when I completed a semester of student teaching in 1986. Ms. Johnson taught me how to structure a lesson, plan for contingencies, and use an overhead projector. More than that, …

A Lasting Impact

May 11, 2017

I started high school in a class of over 800 students, a shocking transition from attending a small junior/senior high school on a military base. I did well in school, but stayed under the radar. I had a few teachers who took the time to push and challenge me, but none as much as my art teacher, Mrs. Stephens. She …

Things ALWAYS Happen for a Reason

May 10, 2017

I attended Westwood Elementary School in Friendswood, Texas during the late 1970’s. The school had a traffic signal light in the cafeteria. When the light was green, students could talk; yellow meant students could whisper; but when it was on red, no one dared to speak. Unfortunately for me, I was known as a motor mouth and would always talk …

Three Critical Trends in Instructional Materials: #1 Observations about RtI Materials

November 7, 2016

We recently gave a presentation about three trends we are seeing in instructional materials. This blog post discusses the first: trends we are seeing in RtI materials. The goal of Response to Intervention (RtI) is to bridge the gap between the breakdown in a student’s understanding of concepts or skill development and current grade level expectations. We have observed that …

The Three Cs of Alignment

October 10, 2022November 1, 2016

One of the topics we are often asked to present at conferences is how to align a material to state standards. Before you begin the hard work of aligning instructional materials, you must ensure that teachers understand the knowledge and skills each Student Expectation requires students to learn. Each Student Expectation contains three parts, which we call the “Three Cs of …

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