If you’re an educator of any kind, you know, that instructional materials matter. Educators crave those high-quality, easy to find instructional materials that help supplement vastly different curriculums to help accelerate learning and bridge gaps. Supplemental materials can be hard to find, vet, and use in the classroom.
Cue INFOhio.
At INFOhio there are videos, instructional web tools, lesson plans, and eBooks, along with other instructional materials for educators to use with their own curriculum.
Education doctoral candidate Waneta Hebert recently teamed up with INFOhio's vendor partner Infobase. In her blog post Leveraging Supplemental Resources for K-12 Schools & Districts, Hebert plans for four outcomes when using supplemental materials in teaching and learning:
• Engage students with the power of choice.
• Empower students to explore their interests.
• Elevate struggling students with additional support.
• Extend high-achieving students to new heights.
Using the “four Es,” this blog series will help educators support their diverse learners and allow for continuous learning.
Students typically don’t get the option of what they learn about. However, a good educator knows that there are many ways for students to learn the standards. Here is where Universal Design for Learning (UDL) comes into play. “UDL is a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn, and these guidelines offer a set of concrete suggestions that can be applied to any discipline or domain to ensure that all learners can access and participate in meaningful, challenging learning opportunities.” (UDL Guidelines) This allows educators to let students be a part of their learning. The first guideline is engagement where providing multiple options for choice is optimal. Students are more likely to be invested in the “why” of their learning if they are involved in choices within their learning.
Using Capstone Interactive eBooks to Supplement Curriculum
INFOhio has purchased more than 1500 Capstone Interactive eBooks for all Ohio schools and families. Capstone provides students and educators with a variety of science and social studies eBooks appropriate for grades 3-6. Educators can apply Hebert’s 4 Es to Capstone Interactive eBooks to create intentional learning activities for each student in their class. Capstone Interactive eBooks also has books leveled by Guided Reading, Lexile, and Accelerated Reader (ATOS).
The Capstone Interactive eBooks platform has a colorful and easy to navigate homepage showing each book and its covers for students to choose from. It has a search box where educators or students can search by type including fiction, graphic novels, or nonfiction titles or topics.
Engage with the power of choice, by letting students choose part of their learning. Educators can give students a choice on which book they would like to read when finished with their work. If your classroom was learning about the topic ‘oceans of the world’, you could have students log in to Capstone Interactive eBooks and type ‘ocean’ in the search box. Teachers can let the children choose from two of Capstone Interactive nonfiction or fiction eBooks to read when finished with their work as one of their choices. This allows children to make choices based on their preferences while learning about a specific topic.
When given a choice to explore their interests, students feel empowered and in charge of their learning. To continue with the ocean theme, students can choose a specific ocean they would like to research and learn more about including the Atlantic, Pacific, Arctic, Indian, and Southern oceans. You can let students research the ocean of their choice first.
Allowing students the choice to explore their interests empowers them to take ownership of their learning. Using Capstone Interactive eBooks, students can look up titles on each of these oceans. Then students could create a short video, podcast, public service announcement, or illustrated text of what they learned.
Children all learn differently, just like adults. Teachers can elevate struggling students with some additional support on a topic. Accessibility features included in Capstone Interactive eBooks provide support for all learners using different modalities for learning. For example, an educator could be intentional about having Capstone Interactive eBooks for the student, letting a student read it on their own, or having the book play out loud and read to the student.
At the bottom of each eBook, slide the Autoplay toggle to enable the read aloud feature. It gives the reader a chance to follow along with the text on the screen by highlighting and underlining each word as it is read aloud.
It also has bolded words within the text which are important vocabulary terms. Each bolded word is found in the glossary at the end of the book with the definition. This allows for students who may need additional support with vocabulary in the reading text to be able to practice these words along with learning their meanings.
Teachers can list the bolded vocabulary words found in the glossary as seen below
and have students play a Vocabulary dice game using the terms for extra practice.
When educators want to challenge their students, providing eBooks at grade level and higher can push achieving learners with more complex text. Another part of this resource is Capstone Connect and it’s located in the top right corner drop-down menu.
Here you can search by standard or title under Capstone Connect.
Teachers can find supplemental materials for students to extend their learning including articles, eBooks, activity plans, and instructional materials. Finding instructional materials on oceans brings you more than 22 search results including this connecting literacy resource.
Capstone Interactive eBooks are available to all educators in Ohio at no cost.
So, what are you waiting for?
Jill Finnan joined the INFOhio team in 2022. She focuses on early learning initiatives and supporting educator professional learning. She has more than 16 years of experience which includes crucial work in professional development for educators, Quality Rating & Improvement Systems (QRIS) leader and coach in both Ohio and Arizona, and as a teacher and administrator in childcare centers, preschools, and elementary schools. Jill received her B.S. and M.Ed. in Early Childhood Education. Her passion lies in helping early learners thrive and succeed.
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