Elevate Learning Outcomes Through Flexibility and Customization

By Michelle Nicolosi, Customer Success Specialist, McGraw Hill

Special thanks to Henrico County Public Schools for their contributions

All students deserve a high-quality education that is carefully crafted to meet their needs. The world of education is full of daunting challenges that educators must tackle head-on and overcome heroically every day.

From curriculum to pacing, or the need to scaffold instruction while also exposing students to rigor, effective educators must think flexibly and maintain a growth mindset while choosing to be solution-oriented. When it comes to meeting the needs of teachers who strive to meet the needs of their students, a static curriculum will not suffice. Content and materials that are fixed, pre-planned, and unable to be modified, as well as outdated materials that do not evolve and adapt to ever-changing classroom needs, will stifle learning gains.

Educators who are given autonomy to design instruction for their unique learners strategically are both empowered and effective. When given the freedom to take ownership of instructional resources and assignments, educators can carefully craft and design tasks to meet the needs of all students, leading to higher learning outcomes. Dynamic and interactive digital programs like Actively Learn, our 3–12 ELA, Science, and Social Studies tool, offer educators the resources and tools needed to cultivate their own curriculum and customize their plan and pacing. Let’s examine five challenges educators face and how Actively Learn provides the necessary solutions.

Accessing Standards-Aligned Texts

One challenge educators face is gaining access to high-quality, state-standard-aligned texts. Curricula often fall short, and while the internet is full of articles and resources, regularly sifting through vast amounts of content to ensure it meets all the requirements is not feasible.

In speaking with educators, we have found that the majority of teachers believe the ELA curriculum materials provided by their district are inadequate in helping all students master their state’s ELA standards. But ensuring high-quality articles are readily accessible for student consumption is essential to elevating student learning outcomes.

Actively Learn offers an expansive catalog of digital assignments aligned to state standards, including a vast library of novels, short stories, poems, videos, explainers, speeches, essays, dramas, excerpts, articles, and more.

Dr. Lesley Hughes, Chief Learning Officer of Henrico County Public Schools, shared:

“We use Actively Learn as our primary textbook in our ELA classes. The beauty of Actively Learn is that it provides high quality, authentic text for students and a wide variety of texts. On any given day, a teacher can find text that meets students’ interest, meets a student need, but all aligned to our state standards.”

Having access to a wide range of texts and assignment types enables educators to ensure high levels of learning and foster growth.

Attaining Options and Flexibility

Another challenge that educators must strategically work to overcome revolves around the need to offer options and provide meaningful flexibility. Teachers and students alike crave and require variety, choice, and options that resonate with them, their needs, goals, and areas of interest. Furthermore, versatility and adaptability are key in learning environments where needs are ever-changing as educators guide students toward proficiency. In speaking with educators, we have found that the majority of teachers believe the ELA curriculum materials provided by their district are inadequate in making learning more engaging for students, and many consider engagement to be one of the top five factors in determining which materials to use.

Actively Learn allows educators to adjust text selections and lesson pacing to meet individual class and student needs. Filtering and assigning text that resonates with students to keep them engaged and motivated is pivotal.

Dr. Ingrid Grant, Chief of School Leadership in Henrico County Public Schools, shared:

“The level of engagement has been a game changer for our students and our teachers. Our students are actively engaged with Actively Learn and it meets each individual child’s needs based upon where they are.”

In Actively Learn, the built-in flexibility of options and ability to adjust and adapt date ranges as pacing needs change make it easy for educators to craft and customize instruction and assignments as needed. We understand the importance of flexible lesson pacing for teachers. Students thrive and learning outcomes are elevated when educators can offer options and flexibility in the classroom, all while continually adjusting the pace in response to student needs.

Overcoming Time Constraints

The third challenge both new and seasoned educators face is a lack of time to craft high-quality instructional resources. There is a need for teachers new to the profession to have access to vetted, evidence-based, pre-developed curriculum resources that they can rely on to implement strategically during their early days in the classroom. On the other hand, veteran teachers need resources that save time by allowing them to easily adapt, modify, and build upon what is already provided, thus ensuring high-quality instruction that maximizes and honors everyone’s time and expertise.

Most ELA teachers spend between two and five hours in a typical week finding materials and creating lesson plans. Many educators feel that the ELA curriculum materials provided by their district are inadequate in offering lessons that are easy for them to implement in the classroom. This is a challenge that must continually be addressed.

Elizabeth Hathaway, a Middle School Literacy Coach in Henrico County Public Schools, who has implemented Actively Learn for several years, shared:

“How you want to use Actively Learn is up to you. You might have a PLC of new teachers who may want to utilize the questions that are already preloaded in Actively Learn and aligned to the standards, which is awesome, or you might have a veteran teacher who would prefer to make their own questions, and Actively Learn allows you to do that.”

In Actively Learn, the ability to leverage pre-made Teacher’s Guides for instructional support and guidance for either whole group or small group teacher-led instruction, as well as pre-provisioned notes and standards-aligned questions with aligned Depth of Knowledge levels, allows educators to maximize their planning time and ensure they remain focused on what is most important. Educators must prioritize tasks and enhance productivity to provide the best possible learning experience for their students every day. Dedicated educators know the work is never done, so they must continually leverage the time they do have in a meaningful way to elevate learning outcomes.

Providing Differentiation and Scaffolding

The fourth challenge educators face and must overcome is the need to differentiate and scaffold instruction to meet the complex needs of diverse learners. Educators must regularly adapt their content and processes to ensure gaps are closed and all students achieve learning. Every student deserves to be met where they are and elevated to high levels of learning and mastery.

For example, a teacher could select a different article for various student groups based on topic, interest, Lexile level, length, complexity, or vocabulary. Teachers can also adjust assignments by:

• Customizing assignment directions to guide student interaction with the text
• Add or remove annotations throughout a given article and determine the level of depth and detail needed to encourage close reading
• Ensure a variety of question types are provided that include a variety of Depth of Knowledge levels
• Require students to be active participants by engaging in discussions embedded throughout the assignment

Teachers can scaffold and support assignments for their students by providing temporary or long-term assistance to encourage mastery of specific standards, skills, or concepts.

Actively Learn allows educators to do all of this, and more. For example, teachers can enable the Extra Help setting and encourage the use of the translation tool for multilingual learners, the Define tool, and the Read Aloud tool. Furthermore, teachers can provide real-time, actionable feedback to students and allow them to revise their initial response based on that feedback. Teachers could leverage the duplicate feature to customize a version of an assignment designed to meet the needs of various student groups. Actively Learn is a versatile platform that enables teachers to provide customized and appropriate support to each student.

Increasing Rigor and Stamina

Finally, educators face the challenge of determining ways to increase rigor to build students’ knowledge and their ability to grapple with and comprehend complex texts. Educators are tasked with the responsibility of preparing students to be successful on high-stakes assessments where students will encounter a variety of question types, as well as need to be equipped to respond in a written format to what they have read, oftentimes while locating information across multiple texts. Exposing students to a variety of text types is part of increasing rigor. The ability to offer variety in text types — a mix of primary sources, non-fiction, and literature — is incredibly important to high school teachers.

Dr. Taylor Snow, Director for Secondary Teaching and Learning in Henrico County Public Schools, stated:

“The job marketplace and standardized testing is different. Our questions are more difficult. They place more of a premium on critical thinking and being able to do the things that skilled readers do all the time, so at the end of the day, the information landscape is changing, and we want to make sure that we’re giving students the tools they need to exist in the world and be fluent and informed consumers of information, because that’s going to be the thing that will set them apart in a job landscape that evolves so quickly.”

Actively Learn assignments encourage students to read and engage with high-depth-of-knowledge levels thanks to the short response question format. Additionally, the pre-crafted units and text sets, as well as the Merge feature, enable educators to provide students with assignments that require them to locate textual evidence across multiple texts and text types.

Providing educators with the autonomy to design and modify instructional experiences for their students in a fluid and thoughtful manner, while offering them a dynamic platform to do so, is vital to elevating learning outcomes. The daunting challenges of educating students are reduced when teachers are properly supported and equipped with the tools needed to elicit success. Actively Learn enables educators to craft meaningful learning experiences that meet the diverse needs of all learners with ease and simplicity. Actively Learn provides educators with the tools necessary to develop their own curriculum and tailor their plan and pacing. Even better — all of this can be adapted in real-time as needs and goals shift.

Long gone are the days of a static curriculum. Long gone are the days of limited access to text. Actively Learn offers practical and proven solutions to address some of the daily challenges educators face, thereby enhancing student learning outcomes. After all, every student deserves to receive an education of the highest quality.

Learn more about the program here, or learn more about Henrico’s approach in the video below:

Michelle started her career in the classroom, teaching in Virginia Beach City Public Schools for over a decade. She transitioned to an Instructional Technology Specialist role before joining the McGraw Hill Team in 2022 as a Professional Services Manager, where she currently supports educators as they implement various products from McGraw Hill’s digital supplemental portfolio. Michelle resides in Virginia with her husband, Michael, and their two young children.