Chapter 10
Selecting and Evaluating Instructional Materials and Technology Resources
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Focus: Chapter ten centers on helping teachers, reading specialists, literacy coaches, and district reading supervisors work collaboratively to select high quality effective reading materials for language arts curriculum.
Although the task is daunting and can be cumbersome, Vogt and Shearer provide a 20 point checklist to help in evaluating different materials. This checklist serves as a guide to help you discern between the large amounts of materials that can all seem to look very similar, “and determine whether the materials are really appropriate for you students, the district and school reading philosophy” (p. 170).
Although the task is daunting and can be cumbersome, Vogt and Shearer provide a 20 point checklist to help in evaluating different materials. This checklist serves as a guide to help you discern between the large amounts of materials that can all seem to look very similar, “and determine whether the materials are really appropriate for you students, the district and school reading philosophy” (p. 170).
Questions to ponder while
analyzing language arts materials
- What would an ideal set of reading/language arts instructional materials look like?
- How does the scope and sequence of this program/series, grade level by grade level, stack up to your district and state standards?
- What kind of research evidence is available to support the claims of the publishers?
- Who are the authors? Are they established educators and researchers?
- How much explicit instruction and modeling are included in each lesson?
- How many opportunities do students have to actually read and write?
- Are there supportive activities that are meaningful for English learners?
- What are the expectations of what children know and can do?
- Is there a variety of text structures and genres?
- Are the supplements for struggling readers and accelerated readers appropriate and doable?
- Is the instructional plan sound?
- Is the instructional plan appropriate for a variety of teachers’ skills, experiences, and abilities?
- Are the learning goals and objectives clearly stated and assessed?
- Do supplemental materials support and extend instruction, while providing opportunity for meaningful independent practice?
- Which of the supplemental materials are truly supplemental, and which are necessary for the program to run smoothly?
- Are the pacing suggestions appropriate for you student population?
- Are there extra handbooks or other resources that contain important instructional plans for students needing additional support?
- What is the role of assessment?
- Is there appropriate balance between seat/skill work and authentic opportunities to respond to text?
- Is the teacher encouraged to use a variety of grouping configurations throughout the week’s plan?
Technology and the Literacy Classroom
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“Technology will increasingly define what literacy is and what it means to be literate” (p. 183). The rapid development and growth of technology continues at speeds we just try to keep up with in the classroom. There are many effective ways to incorporate technology into your language arts curriculum. It is important to educate yourself on the technology available, so you are better able to choose devices, programs and activities that will be the most effective in stimulating the literacy development of your students.