Tuesday, November 12, 2019
Whether your school or district is in the process of adopting new instructional materials or you need to find out how your current materials rate, there are growing efforts to support the thoughtful adoption and implementation of high-quality instructional materials and professional learning.
EdReports is one free tool that can be used to determine whether instructional materials are aligned to Wisconsin’s academic standards in English language arts and mathematics. Its rubrics provide ratings of specific materials for K-12 English language arts and math, as well as 6-8 science. Some materials are even open education resources, which means they are free, or mostly free.
However, if your instructional materials are not included in EdReports, the Instructional Materials Evaluation Tool from Achieve for English language arts and math is another resource that can be used to analyze alignment to the standards. Both tools better inform educators and stakeholders in the process of adopting new materials or revising current ones.
Recently, two Wisconsin teachers were featured on Achieve the Core, a national site that provides classroom resources to support standards-aligned instruction and materials. Both teachers used Achieve’s enVision Math 2.0 Materials Adaptation Project to implement high-quality instruction.
Melissa Reed, a second-grade teacher from Milwaukee Public Schools is featured in a video teaching her class about subtracting with 100. The video follows the entire lesson, and the instructional practice toolkit and corresponding guidance documents are available for educators to learn how she aligned instruction with standards.
Jim McClure is another teacher from Milwaukee Public Schools highlighted in a video on Achieve the Core, teaching his kindergarten class about comparing numbers between one and 10. He also used the enVision Math 2.0 Materials Adaptation Project to ensure instructional materials are aligned with standards.
Both teachers were supported within their schools in the work of analyzing current materials to implement them alongside standards and create meaningful lessons with appropriate scaffolds to address any unfinished learning.
More information about connecting standards, instructional materials, and professional learning for equitable outcomes is available on the DPI Instructional Materials and Professional Learning web page.