High-quality instructional materials (HQIMs) create coherence, offer consistency across all learning environments, and support student voice and social-emotional health. The predictable structure of coherent, consistent instructional materials and content are foundational for teachers and students alike. High quality instructional materials also reflect students’ cultures, languages, and lived experiences and help them build deep content knowledge.
- HQIMs facilitate the acceleration of student learning by supporting a focus on essential content, providing tools to diagnose unfinished learning, and assisting in adapting your scope and sequence/pacing guide.
- To support school district/school systems as they plan for academic instruction, the Collaborative for Student Success collected Curriculum Publisher Information to Support Learning during COVID from some of the nation’s publishers of highly rated instructional materials about the adaptations, programs, and resources developed to support learning acceleration.
- Leverage available resources, including the Nebraska Instructional Materials Collaborative and tools from TNTP and EdReports to assess the quality of your materials. The Nebraska Instructional Materials Collaborative also includes guidance for the selection and implementation of HQIMs for ELA, mathematics, and science.
- Consider using ESSER II or ESSER III funds to select and purchase high-quality instructional materials. These funds can also be used to support high-quality, ongoing, instructional materials specific professional learning for teachers and school leaders to support the implementation. High-quality, instructional materials specific professional learning providers may be highlighted in the Professional Learning Partner Guide.
- Utilize available tools, such as the Nebraska Essential Instructional Content for 2020-2021: ELA/Literacy and Mathematics, to identify the essential content that should be the focus of grade-level instruction aligned to college- and career-ready standards to support acceleration.
- In ELA/Literacy, essential best practices include a focus on Foundational Skills, Complexity, Knowledge, and Evidence Base in reading, writing, and speaking
- In Math, standards-aligned content should include a structure of Focus, Coherence, and Rigor
- Appendix A in Teaching and Learning in the 2020-2021 School Year: Instructional Materials and Instruction provides “Essential Content Headlines” that can be utilized in this next school year.
- The School Renewal and Acceleration Professional Learning Series includes archived webinars, along with tools and resources that can be used with educators and school leaders to support renewal and acceleration planning.