Curriculum-Aligned Resources: Powerful Support for Student Progress
Emily is a third-grade teacher who’s passionate about her work. She loves seeing each student make progress on foundational skills throughout the school year, and she puts in extra time and effort to ensure that everyone can. While she likes the curriculum and resources provided by her school, sometimes she has to find and adjust additional resources to meet individual needs or change things up in her classroom.
Derek is a seventh-grade math teacher who enjoys using real-world problems to bring relevance to concepts discussed in his classroom and to show students the importance of math in life. Working from the district-adopted core curriculum, he has assembled a set of instructional resources that he can draw from, but he wants to incorporate current events and use new activities to prevent student boredom.
Though Emily and Derek have very different teaching responsibilities and challenges, they share a need for resources that can help them drive student learning more effectively. While they are willing to spend the time and effort to identify and modify more resources on their own, this may be difficult and stressful in light of their typically heavy workloads.
One way district leaders could address this is by offering high-quality curriculum-aligned resources to their teams. Let’s explore what we mean by this, why these resources matter, and what adoption mistakes districts should avoid.
What Are Curriculum-Aligned Resources?
Curriculum-aligned resources are resources like instructional materials, strategies, and supplemental tools for teachers or content students access directly, such as videos, interactives, or hands-on activities, that directly connect to learning objectives and outcomes in accordance with the adopted curriculum’s content and pedagogy. Teachers can use curriculum-aligned resources to enhance unit topics, review skills, or find instructional strategies to meet individual student needs—whatever it takes to support effective learning.
Key Factors in Positive Student Outcomes
Ultimately, all the work that educators put into each classroom, school, and district is designed to set students up for academic and career success. Recent studies and surveys reveal that the use of high-quality instructional materials (HQIM), accompanied by professional learning, is instrumental in boosting student achievement.
Standards alignment also plays a key role. EdReports’ State of the Market report says: “Teachers using aligned materials are more likely to implement high-impact instructional practices, such as engaging students in scientific models or justifying mathematical solutions. These practices promote critical thinking and deepen student engagement across subjects.” Plus, districts using aligned materials see less variance in teacher efficacy and are better able to support all of their students.
The best curriculum-aligned resources will include or support HQIM and align to state standards without requiring extra effort from teachers. This not only increases teacher satisfaction but also improves the quality of their teaching, leading to greater student performance gains.
Curriculum Alignment Is More Than Content
The content that curriculum-aligned resources provide may be a primary consideration when searching for and choosing them, but you need to determine whether a particular resource meets your expectations for learning. For example, the ISTE Standards* give educators and education leaders a framework for evaluating types of learning (creativity, collaboration, authentic problem solving, etc.) within digital tools that’s research based. And don’t forget interoperability: look for proof that curriculum-aligned resources will actually integrate with your other tools and systems, including your LMS and assessments.
*For over 20 years, the ISTE Standards have been used, studied, and updated to reflect the latest research-based best practices that define success in using technology to learn, teach, lead, and coach.
Curriculum-Aligned Resources Adoption Considerations
Curriculum‑aligned resources can become essential components of coherent, equitable instruction across the schools in your district. When you’ve adopted the right program, you can see the results in higher student achievement and teacher satisfaction. However, make sure you avoid these five adoption mistakes that can impede your success:
- A tech‑first, curriculum‑later approach: This can lead to misalignment, require teachers to find workarounds, and limit the impact of the resources.
- Minimal teacher voice involved: Teacher buy-in and fidelity could be significantly affected.
- “One‑and‑done” professional development: Orientation does not support the same success as ongoing professional learning.
- Ignoring interoperability: Hidden integration costs may be expensive, and data silos can interfere with a real understanding of student progress.
- No plan to evaluate effectiveness: Without quantitative and qualitative measures of usage and efficacy, funding may be wasted on subscription renewal.
More Impact with Discovery Education Experience
Experience combines ready-to-teach lessons, activities, and engaging content with research-backed instructional strategies and user-friendly tools. In its Curriculum Aligned Resources section, teachers will find content directly aligned to popular K–8 literacy, math, and science curricula. Each curriculum has resources that are thoughtfully organized by grade level and unit, making it easy to find age-appropriate content to meet student learning needs.
Suggested resources vary depending on what point of the curriculum a teacher is in, but they often include a mix of instructor and student resources. Choices may include:
- Ready-to-teach lessons
- Reading passages
- Videos
- Activities
- Interactives
- Curated content channels
- Research-based instructional strategies
- And more!
Finding the perfect curriculum-aligned resources in Experience is faster than ever with Personalized Content Recommendations, so whether teachers can get right to extending content, building background knowledge, or reteaching. It also includes customizable assessments and connects to a variety of LMS’s.
Why not try our interactive demo today to explore Experience’s curriculum-aligned resources in more detail?
