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Are your health teachers asking for new resources? Take a look at Learning List’s review of McGraw Hill’s Glencoe Health McGraw Hill’s Glencoe Health is a comprehensive program to support health instruction in high school. The product is available in English and Spanish, in both print and digital formats. The material intends to enable students to practice making healthy, informed decisions while learning important concepts and skills about their health. Throughout the program, students have numerous opportunities to develop critical thinking and decision-making skills and are consistently encouraged to talk to a parent or trusted adults about health matters. Materials to support instruction about sexual health and wellness are included within the core instruction The material provides instruction through video- and text-based content. Teachers can customize assessments and assignments, as well as grade assignments and provide students with feedback from within the platform. Students can submit most assignments online. Read Learning List’s Editorial Review to learn more about the ways in which Glencoe Health supports the specific learning needs of students. Learning List has also completed a standard-by-standard review of the alignment of the material to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) and a review of the product’s technology compatibility. To access these reviews, contact Learning List for subscription information. About McGraw Hill * McGraw-Hill Education’s mission is to accelerate learning through intuitive, engaging, efficient and effective experiences – grounded in research. By partnering with educators around the globe, McGraw-Hill learning engineers, content developers and pedagogical experts are developing increasingly open learning ecosystems that are proven to improve pass rates, elevate grades and increase engagement for each individual learner while improving outcomes for all. *Information in this section is provided by or adapted from McGraw Hill Education .

Questioning has a significant impact on critical thinking and student learning.  In the article, “ Questioning in the Classroom: An Updated Guide ,” Terry Heick outlines the strengths and weaknesses of questions. Good questions:   Encourage further inquiry and learning Reveal subtleties in students’ understanding Promote personalized learning (Heick, 2022). Whereas, weak questions “imply answers, which imply stopping points and ‘finishing’ over inquiry and wisdom.” We have all have been in classrooms where questions are asked and then answered one right after the other, leaving no think time or opportunity for follow-up. According to Jackie Acree Walsh, noted author and speaker, quality questions have four characteristics: Connect to content , Are purposeful , Are at varied and appropriate cognitive levels Are clear and concise (Walsh et al., 2018). Effective questioning takes planning on the part of the teacher with careful consideration of the instructional purpose, content, and goals of the lesson. Thoughtful scaffolding of questions during lessons enables teachers to gauge student learning and provides opportunities for feedback. “Questions are the pulse of any critical thinking classroom” (Heick, 2018). We often think of questioning techniques in a purely pedagogical sense. However, instructional materials influence the types of questions teachers use. What types of questions do your instructional materials encourage? A mismatch between the instructional material’s approach to questioning and the district or campus philosophy could be a barrier to reaching instructional goals for two reasons. First, inexperienced teachers often rely on questions provided by their materials. Second, an inconsistency between the type of questions asked in the classroom versus the types of questions assigned as homework in the instructional material may inhibit development of critical thinking skills.  In our reviews of instructional materials, we have noted a great variation in the approach to questioning, from materials that focus on closed questions to materials that provide mostly open-ended questions. How well do your materials support critical thinking through questioning? Consider the following: Are there a variety of question types supporting scaffolding and differentiation? Do questions align to the instructional purpose and content of instruction? Do questions represent thinking across Bloom’s Taxonomy or Webb’s Depth of Knowledge? Are there open-ended questions with multiple possible answers? Are there opportunities for students to reflect on their strategies? Are there opportunities provided for student-generated questions? Do the teacher materials provide guidance regarding questioning, student discussions, or strategies such as think-pair-share to engage all learners? 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. Reference articles: Heick, T. (2018, March 2) What is the Purpose of a Question , TeachThought. https://www.teachthought.com/learning/what-is-the-purpose-of-a-question/ Heick, T. (2020, November 3). An Updated Guide to Questioning in The Classroom . TeachThought. https://www.teachthought.com/critical-thinking/questioning-guide/ Heick, T. (2022, May 17). The Difference Between a Good Question and a Bad Question , TeachThought. https://www.teachthought.com/critical-thinking/the-difference-between-a-good-question-and-a-bad-question/ Walsh, J.A., Sattes, B.D., Quality Questioning: Research-Based Practices to Engage Every Learner, 2 nd ed., (2016). The Main Idea (2018). https://vpaonline.org/wp-content/uploads/principal_resources/Quality_Questioning_.pdf Walsh, J. A., Sattes, B. D., Quality Questioning: Research-Based Practices to Engage Every Learner, 2 nd . Ed. , The Main Idea (2018).   https://vpaonline.org/wpcontent/uploads/principal_resources/Quality_Questioning_.pdf

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 . (1) Determine which of your  existing  materials are aligned to the standards students are struggling with. Using the publisher's correlation documents, make a grid with (a) the standards your students are struggling with listed vertically down the page, and (b) the titles of the materials you have for the grade level/subject listed horizontally across the top of the page. Identify which of your existing materials addresses each of the standards your student(s) are struggling with. ( 2) Make a list of citations from those materials that you can use to reteach each standard: Using the grid and the publisher's correlation for each material, identify three of four citations (lessons, activities, quizzes) in each material that you can use to reteach the standards students are struggling with. Make sure that students have not already seen the lessons, activities, quizzes you are listing. Also consider whether the material has the adaptions your student(s) need. (3) Check the alignment of those citations before using them for tutoring . In order for students to learn the knowledge and skills they are lacking, the citations used for tutoring must be aligned to the standards being retaught. We often find that publishers correlation documents include citations that are only partially aligned to the standards. Therefore, before using the citations you have listed for tutoring, check to make sure that they teach all of the knowledge and skills the standard requires students to know. This can be a time-consuming process. However, once you have completed it, you can use the grid and list of citations to deliver targeted, effective tutoring for as many students as need it. Contact us if you need 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.  This fall, a state education agency hired Learning List to review 83 core digital materials across the four core content areas to determine the extent to which each material supports remote instruction. One of the goals of these reviews was to determine whether the materials provide a similar and equitable learning experience for students learning remotely and students in the classroom. For this analysis, we examined four aspects of each material: Which components of each digital material were printable?  It is especially important for the core instruction (i.e., lessons, texts, activities, and quizzes) to be available offline or printable. Which features did the digital material include to make the remote learning experience similar to the experience of learning in the classroom?  We looked for features like hyperlinked glossaries, interactive activities with automated feedback, instructional videos, online labs, and/or virtual field trips. Did the material's platform allow students to complete and submit their work online? Did the material's platform allow teachers to review students' work online and provide feedback?  We recognize that many districts integrate their digital materials into a Learning Management System (LMS), and students and teachers rely on the LMS' tools to submit assignments and review student work. However, not all districts have a LMS, and a material's platform may not be compatible with the district's LMS. So, we examined whether the material's platform provided this type of functionality.  Did the material's platform allow students to interact with one another and/or with the teacher in real-time?  In class, students communicate with one another and with their teacher. If an online material is going to provide a similar learning experience, it needs to provide students and teachers the opportunity to communicate synchronously.  We found that many materials rely on LMS tools to support communication; however, some materials' platforms contained discussion boards and other communication tools.   Whether or not your district will not have to provide widespread remote instruction in the future; there are several other circumstances, such as during severe weather events, student illness, or other long-term student absences, where the district may want to rely on remote, asynchronous instruction for individuals or small groups of students. Keeping these criteria in mind will help you purchase materials that will support all students with an equitable learning experience.

Is your district looking for materials to support credit recovery and independent learning in ELA? Take a look at Learning List’s review of Edgenuity’s English I-IV. Edgenuity’s English platform provides comprehensive, online courses intended to support students in developing the skills required for high school English. Courses can be used for original credit or credit recovery in a variety of blended learning and self-paced environments. Each course can be formatted as a complete course for original credit or as a credit recovery course that addresses only the concepts the student failed to master on a pre-test . The program is self-paced and designed for students to work independently; however, teacher involvement supports students in engaging in critical thinking. Lessons focus on developing student mastery of ELA skills through the use of video and other multi-media tools. The material includes many of the texts students typically read in high school English courses. The platform translates the material into multiple languages, including English and Spanish. Students and teachers receive immediate feedback on student performance. The Edgenuity Learning Management System is easy to use and navigate. The Lobby houses the students’ course list, course information such as grades, course progress, upcoming assignments, and communications between the teacher and student.  Read Learning List’s full Editorial Review to learn more about the rigor of the material and how the Edgenuity LMS supports differentiated instruction.  Learning List has also completed a standard-by-standard review of this material’s alignment, and a review of its technology compatibility and support for remote learning.  To learn more about this product and thousands more PreK-12 instructional materials, contact Learning List for subscription information.  About Edgenuity* Edgenuity provides engaging online and blended learning education solutions that propel success for every student, empower every teacher to deliver more effective instruction, and enable schools and districts to meet their academic goals. Edgenuity delivers a range of Core Curriculum, AP®, Elective, Career and Technical Education (CTE), and Credit Recovery courses aligned to the rigor and high expectations of state, Common Core and iNACOL standards and designed to inspire life-long learning. * The content in this section is provided by or adapted from Edgenuity .

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:  Daily or almost daily tutoring is one of the most effective interventions for struggling students.  A 2016 study provides strong evidence that frequent tutoring is especially effective at increasing the achievement of low-performing students. Studies have shown tutoring produces big gains in student scores when it occurs  daily  or  almost every day ; less frequent tutoring showed lower gains and was not as helpful as other types of interventions. In the studies, successful "high dose" tutoring was delivered by specially trained tutors who adhered to a detailed curriculum and received coaching. The best results occurred when the tutoring took place at school during the school day.  The Science of Catching Up ,  The Hechinger Report, August 25, 2021. While online tutoring companies claim that online tutoring is effective, an independent, comprehensive study is needed.  Two recent studies (2020-21) of online tutoring of low-income, immigrant, middle school students in Italy showed that when students received  four hours  of online tutoring per week, their scores increased; when online tutoring was provided for only  two hours a week , it was more than 50 percent less impactful.  A January 2022 study of online tutoring of low-income middle schoolers in Chicago by volunteer, university students showed no gains. While the students were supposed to receive 30 minutes of tutoring twice a week during the school day, they received far less due to technical glitches, poor attendance, difficulty recruiting volunteer tutors, and vacation breaks. While these studies looked at the effectiveness of online tutoring, under which conditions and for which students online tutoring is effective requires further study.  Proof points: Uncertain Evidence for Online Tutoring , The Hechinger Report, February 14, 2022. Programs that rely on volunteer tutors were less effective than programs that use paid, paraprofessionals (teaching assistants).   Research has shown that tutoring does not have to be delivered by teachers to be effective. Research on struggling elementary and secondary readers and on elementary math programs showed that tutoring delivered by paraprofessionals (college educated teaching assistants) was at least as effective as tutoring by teachers in both one-on-one and small group settings. Additionally, volunteer tutors were less effective than paraprofessionals or teachers, even when volunteer tutors were provided with extensive training and supervision and structured materials.  New Findings on Tutoring: Four Shockers ,  Robert Slavin's Blog, April 5, 2018. Effective tutoring programs rely on just-in-time review . Effective tutors do not simply reteach the same lessons from the year before. Rather, they provide additional practice on the topics being discussed in their students' classes that week, or they review pre-requisite topics. Additionally, while studies have shown that teachers do not have to deliver the tutoring for it to be effective, curriculum experts need to create materials to guide the tutors on how to diagnose students' knowledge gaps and determine what to teach each student.  The Science of Catching Up ,  The Hechinger Report, August 25, 2021. To that end, our recent  blog post  suggests three tips for identifying content in your  current  materials that you can use for tutoring.

Does your district own Holt McDougal Biology ? If so, take a look at Learning List’s reviews, which include a review of alignment to the streamlined science TEKS. Holt McDougal’s Biology is a comprehensive program designed to support Texas high school Biology. The content is available in print and digital formats, in both English and Spanish. While this material is no longer sold by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt , Learning List recently reviewed the digital version of the material to meet subscribers’ requests. The material focuses on providing resources to support students as they deepen their understanding of scientific concepts in preparation for the Texas Biology End-of-Course exam. As such, the program includes end-of-course practice materials in each chapter. The online resources are housed on the Holt McDougal Online platform. Resources include English and Spanish versions of the text, as well as projects to support “Pre-AP” students and ideas for differentiating instruction for special populations. Teachers can customize most activities and assessments. Read Learning List’s complete Alignment Report to learn more about the degree to which the material aligns to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) for Biology. Learning List's alignment reports do not only inform selection decisions, they facilitate instructional alignment and curriculum mapping with the reviewed materials, as well. Learning List has also completed an instructional quality review, and a review of the material’s technology compatibility and support for remote learning.  To learn more about this product and thousands more PreK-12 instructional materials, contact Learning List for subscription information.  About Holt McDougal* Holt McDougal is a division of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is a global learning company committed to delivering integrated solutions that engage learners, empower educators and improve student outcomes. As a leading provider of K–12 core curriculum, supplemental solutions and professional learning services, HMH partners with educators and school districts to uncover solutions that unlock students’ potential and extend teachers’ capabilities. HMH serves more than 50 million students and 3 million educators in 150 countries, while its award-winning children’s books, novels, non-fiction, and reference titles are enjoyed by readers throughout the world. Information in this section is provided by or adapted from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

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.  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. Those materials reflect the question format in Texas’ current state assessments. However, would they prepare students for the new state assessments?  If your state has implemented widespread changes to the state assessment, here are four questions to help you evaluate whether your current materials will prepare your students for success on a revised state assessment:   Does the material contain  instructional content  aligned to the new standards?  Does the material contain a sufficient number of activities and assessment questions for the  standards that are eligible for assessment?  Do the material’s activities and assessments represent the  types and frequency of questions  included in the new state assessments?  Does the material include activities and assessments at the  level of rigor  specified by the standards?   If you find gaps in your current materials, check to see if the publisher has made updates or published a new edition of the material. If not, consider revising your district’s curriculum to make up for the materials’ deficits in order to prepare your students for success on the new state assessments.

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. (1)  Establish a common definition of alignment . When we began Learning List, we surveyed educators and publishers to find out how they defined a lignment . Not surprising, publishers generally defined the term more liberally than educators did, but there were many shades of grey in the definitions provided by educators, too. At Learning List, we consider a citation (i.e., a lesson, activity, quiz) to be aligned to a standard if the citation addresses the content of the standard, the cognitive rigor of the standard, and the context of the standard. It is a good idea to begin a curriculum alignment session by discussing what alignment means and what it looks like in your district. (2) Identify the standards that must be taught in each curriculum unit.  Most district curricula are recursive, meaning that the same standards are repeated across several curriculum units. Before you begin looking for citations in the material, it is helpful to know which standards must be taught in each curriculum unit. It is equally important to identify how many times each standard is repeated across all of the district curriculum units. (3)  Become familiar with the material . Before jumping into the alignment process, take time to become familiar with the material and the publisher’s correlation. Peruse the material to determine the topics covered, the progression of units/chapters, the pattern and structure of lessons, as well as the types and location of the material’s supplemental resources. Is the correlation a document or an online search function? How is it organized, and how many citations (lessons, activities, quizzes) are listed for each standard? Understanding the product’s correlation, design, and structure will make it easier to find citations in the material to check for alignment.  (4) Identify where each standard is listed in the district curriculum (scope and sequence) and addressed in material . In the prior blog, we discussed how to map citations in the material to the district curriculum: select a standard; identify citations in the material that achieve mastery of that standard; map those citation(s) to the district curriculum unit where mastery of the standard is required; then, use the other citations in the material (that introduce and scaffold instruction of that standard) to backfill the other district curriculum units that include that standard. A word of caution : since publishers and educators often have very different definitions of alignment , it is critical that you verify the alignment of the citations before you list them in the district curriculum. (5) Match the pacing and context of the citations in the material to the pacing and context of the district curriculum units . As you determine where to map each aligned citation, it is important to match the pacing of the material to the pacing of the district’s scope and sequence. For example, if a standard occurs in units 2, 3, 4, and 5 of the district’s scope and sequence, look for citations that align to that standard in the  early  units of the material. Citations that occur in the later units of the material (e.g., 6, 7, 8) may assume pre-learning that will not yet have occurred early in the school year when units 2,3, and 4 of your district curriculum will be taught. Make sure that you are also considering the context of the district curriculum unit.  For example, if a standard stating “compose literary texts such as personal narratives, fiction, and poetry using genre characteristics and craft,” is listed in several units of the district curriculum, a citation addressing composing poetry would be aligned to that standard in the curriculum unit addressing  poetr y. However, that same lesson would  not  be aligned to the same standard in the curriculum unit addressing  personal narrative .  Easier said than done, right? Tune in again next week for more “helpful” hints about mapping resources to your district curriculum.

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. (6)  Citations should specifically identify the aligned content . Pages (physical or online) in a material often have several subsections. To be most useful to busy teachers, the citations listed in the district curriculum should pinpoint the portion of the page where the standard is aligned. While teachers will likely use other parts of the page or surrounding pages too, it important for them to know precisely where alignment exists so that they do not inadvertently skip the aligned portion of the page. (7)   Look for additional citations in the material’s supplemental components/resources.  When doing curriculum alignment, first verify the alignment of citations listed in the teacher’s guide, because those are designed to align to standards fully. However, if a standard is repeated, and you do not have a sufficient number of aligned teacher guide citations, check the alignment of the material’s supplemental resources, such as graphic organizers, anchor charts, rubrics, and leveled texts. In our experience, supplemental resources are likely to be only  partially  aligned to the standards, but they may provide valuable instruction and/or practice. If you cite  partially  aligned citations in your curriculum documents, be sure to provide guidance about what teachers need to do to fill in the resource’s gaps. (8)   Consult external resources when struggling with an alignment decision.  Our reviewers and Directors are highly experienced educators who are very familiar with the standards. On occasion, however, reviewers disagree about whether a citation is aligned to a standard  within the context of the particular curriculum unit . In those instances, we consult external resources, such district or state vertical alignment documents, released assessment items, and other explanatory resources. Seeing a different explanation of the standard often helps reviewers reach consensus about the citation’s alignment to the standard within the context of the curriculum unit. (9)  Avoid reusing text-dependent citations.  This tip is particularly relevant when mapping English Language Arts and Reading materials but may also have cross-curricular applicability. Identify whether the citation you are reviewing requires students to read or refer to a particular text. If so, the citation is text-dependent and should only be cited in a  single  curriculum unit, otherwise, students will have to re-read the same text multiple times throughout the year. While text-dependent citations should only be mapped to a one curriculum unit, non-text-dependent citations (e.g, “paraphrase the text” or writing  process  exercises) can be cited in multiple curriculum units, because teachers can use these types of citations with a different text each time. (10) Expect Gaps . No matter how diligent you are about looking for citations that align to each of the standards in your district curriculum, you should expect gaps. The material may have been written to align to the state’s standards, but it was not written to align to your district curriculum. The curriculum may repeat certain standards more often than the material envisioned. The curriculum may emphasize standards for which there is insufficient content in the material. The goal of the curriculum alignment exercise should not be to try to  force  the material to cover all of the standards in the curriculum, but rather to identify where gaps exist in the material when examined through the lens of the district curriculum. Those gaps do not mean the material is weak; rather, they just identify where additional resources must be used to supplement the core material in order to fulfill the mandates of the district curriculum. We hope that these pointers prove useful during summer curriculum writing. While easy to explain, this work is difficult and time consuming. If you need more support, consider our online professional learning courses that help cultivate the skills needed for successful curriculum writing: What Alignment Means, Why It Matters, and How to Do It , and Mapping Materials to the District Curriculum . We also offer curriculum alignment services tailored to meet districts’ unique needs. Contact us for more information.

Have you ever purchased K-12 textbooks or online instructional materials that are not well-aligned to the standards? Where are those materials today – on a bookshelf, in a closet, in the district’s warehouse? Selecting new instructional materials or even deciding which existing materials to use in a lesson can be a daunting task. Learning List was founded 10 years ago to help teachers, instructional coaches, principals, and district curriculum leaders choose high-quality materials and use them most effectively to help students learn. Once a district or campus subscribes to Learning List, an unlimited number of district or campus staff may have access to the site. This is because Learning List’s reviews and online tools not only inform instructional materials selection decisions, they help educators use their materials to develop standards-aligned lessons, targeted remediation, and personalized tutoring, too. Teachers use our detailed alignment reports and alignment comparison tool to identify lessons, activities, and quizzes in their instructional materials that have been independently verified by Learning List's subject matter experts to be aligned to the standards PLCs use our alignment comparison tool to quickly identify which of their existing materials are aligned to the standards that are included in the unit they are planning Instructional coaches use our alignment reports to coach teachers and write curriculum Principals use our reviews and product comparison tools to vet the alignment and quality of materials their teachers have requested   District curriculum staff use our audit tools to identify gaps in their current materials and find new materials, including open educational resources, to fill those gaps. If you would like to see our full reviews and the tools that make them actionable, contact us to schedule a brief online call. That small investment of time could save your staff and colleagues hours of work and empower them to use the district’s instructional materials strategically to help all students succeed.

Are you teaching a new grade level or subject this year? If so, you likely do not feel like you have had enough time to plan.  Three years into my teaching career I moved between campuses and inherited a book cart full of textbooks and supplemental materials for my new assignment. I had no idea whether the materials were current or well-aligned to the current standards for the course! To make things more difficult, I was a singleton teacher and had no one to ask.  It took me a long time to wade through what I had, and I am quite sure that I was missing components of the material that came with the original purchase. If you are in a similar position, consider these suggestions to help you plan instruction efficiently with materials you have inherited. 1. Get to know the resources you have available to you Identify which of the district’s materials are comprehensive/core and which are supplemental. You will have more success if you use your materials for their intended purpose. As a new teacher for the course, you would likely want to primarily use your comprehensive/core material .  Comprehensive/core materials include broad, deep discussions of content, remediation and enrichment activities, formative and summative assessments, supports for students, and teacher resources. While you may be tempted to use an engaging or familiar supplemental resource  you have access to as the primary material, keep in mind that supplemental materials are not designed to be the sole instructional resource for a course. Rather, these materials intend to complement, enrich, or extend the content of comprehensive resources. For that reason, supplemental products will vary significantly in terms of their alignment to standards. Most supplemental materials are not aligned to 100% of the standards for the course/subject. Even if a material is 100% aligned , it is likely to be thinly aligned, meaning there will not be many aligned citations for each standard. This is because supplemental materials generally are designed for a specific purpose, such as to provide additional practice on a subset of standards that students typically struggle with, or to prepare students to master the standards that are likely to be assessed on the state’s assessment. 2. Identify the other instructional resources that are included with(in) those materials Take some time before school starts to browse through the teacher and student editions of your available materials to identify additional components of the material. In some materials, the additional components, such as lesson plans, leveled readers, simulations, games, and tutorial videos, are easy to see. In others, it may take some digging to figure out how to access those resources. You may also strike instructional gold in the publishers’ “Help” sections.  Additionally, your predecessor may have left you a list of the online resources and consumables he/she used. If not, check with other members of your team to see which resources they use. 3. Identify which of your materials are current Sometimes teachers keep print materials purchased prior to the implementation of the current standards. Such materials could be used to provide additional practice on some standards, but they will certainly not address all of the current standards. Here are two easy ways to determine whether a material left for you preceded your current standards: Compare the material’s publication date to the date the new standards were implemented. If provided, use the publisher’s correlation document to identify which standards are addressed in the instructional material. 4. Identify citations (e.g., lessons, activities, quizzes) that are aligned to the standards you will be teaching When planning your instruction, check that the citation(s) you plan to use is/are aligned to the content, context, and cognitive demand of the standards you will be teaching. Students cannot learn what they are not taught. In order to ensure that your students learn the knowledge and skills your state standards require, your materials must be aligned to those standards. Check to see whether the district has already mapped its resources to the individual units of the district curriculum.  If so, this should save you hours of planning time, as the district curriculum will identify the materials, and hopefully, even specific lessons, activities, and quizzes within each material that is/are aligned to each of the standards in each unit of instruction. Thinking back to my third year of teaching, I would have saved so much planning time if I had known how to check my materials and done so before the school year started. I didn’t.  I hope these suggestions help you prepare efficiently for the new school year so that your students have the best opportunity for success. Have questions? Contact us . We are happy to assist with information about any material we have reviewed.