Resources

Sharing What We Have Learned to Save Educators Time and Money

Mapping Instructional Materials to Your District Curriculum

March 2023

Having the district’s instructional resources mapped to the district curriculum ensures that lessons and activities from the instructional materials are in sync with the curriculum. Such synchronicity eases teachers’ workloads, facilitates standards-aligned instruction, and supports students’ academic progress. As anyone who has done this work can attest, aligning resources to a district curriculum often feels like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. This white paper offers strategies to help districts and campuses develop a sound process for mapping their instructional materials to the district’s curriculum.



Guidance for Selecting or Curating High-Quality Instructional Resources

January 2023

If you are preparing to manage an instructional materials adoption or you would like to bring order to the teacher-created resources in your district/on your campus, this paper will help! Over the last decade, Learning List has reviewed thousands of materials and assisted hundreds of districts with their instructional materials adoptions. This paper suggests a data-driven process for reviewing instructional materials and teacher-created lesson resources. We share lessons learned from our experiences reviewing materials and assisting districts to help you ensure the quality and coherence of the instructional resources being used on campuses across your district.


Overcoming Challenges to Standards Alignment

January 2023

In our first whitepaper, Navigating to Successful Student Outcomes with Standards-Aligned Instruction, we discuss what alignment means and why it matters. Consider that alignment 1.0. Overcoming Challenges to Standards Alignment is alignment 2.0. In this paper, we discuss how to review the alignment of instructional materials and how to conquer some of the most common challenges Learning List’s reviewers have encountered over the last decade. 


Navigating to Successful Student Outcomes with Standards-Aligned Instruction

November 2022

Covid-19 has made achieving the goal of preparing all students with the skills they need to progress in school and life immeasurably more challenging. Since student progress is most often measured by performance on standards-aligned assessments, delivering standards-aligned instruction paves the road for student success. In this whitepaper, we distinguish the roles of state standards, curriculum, and instructional materials in the delivery of standards-aligned instruction. We then discuss how to build a culture of standards alignment in your district or campus and provide guidance regarding using materials most effectively to support standards-aligned instruction.



Blog

Do your materials support?

Do Your Instructional Materials Support and Reinforce Questioning That Promotes Critical Thinking?

September 22, 2022

Selecting instructional materials that align with campus or district goals for instruction support quality instruction and learning. Next time you are selecting instructional materials, consider reviewing the material’s questions adding as an indicator of quality.


Blog

How Changes to State Assessments May Impact the Efficacy of Your Instructional Materials

May 17, 2022

When state assessments are revised, you undoubtedly consider the instructional implications of the changes. Do you also consider how the revisions may impact the efficacy of your current materials? For example, many instructional materials contain quizzes and tests comprised predominantly of multiple-choice questions.


Blog

Research on Effective Tutoring Techniques

February 27, 2022

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.


Instructional Materials Directory

Instructional Materials Reviews

The Learning List

Updated Monthly

Over the years, numerous subscribing districts have contacted us for help finding instructional materials to consider for a new course they were planning to offer. We would contact other districts that subscribe to our service and compile a materials list for the relevant course. One day, a grateful curriculum director explained that the list we gave her had saved her staff weeks of work. That sparked an idea! We could leverage our relationships with districts and publishers alike to create a robust materials list for the range of subjects and courses schools offer.


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