Supplementing Instructional Materials with INFOhio

Instructional materials matter. While securing a coherent curriculum and professional development for teachers is the first step in ensuring equity in Ohio’s classrooms, identifying high-quality supplemental materials at grade level for all learners can be helpful in increasing student engagement, meeting diverse needs, and filling instructional gaps.

When paired with a high-quality curriculum, INFOhio's quality eBooks, videos, lesson plans, instructional web tools, and training and support materials can provide engaging and innovative supplements to scaffold student growth and learning.

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 student learning with additional support.
• Extend student learning to new heights.

Using these "four Es," this blog series will explore how educators on teacher-based teams and curriculum adoption committees can use INFOhio's quality digital content and web tools to supplement teaching and support learning for diverse classrooms. 

Using ScienceFlix

INFOhio licenses Scholastic's ScienceFlix for all Ohio students in grades 6–8. ScienceFlix offers more than 80 complete units of study for science, technology, engineering, and math. Each unit includes videos, articles, hands-on experiments, and career exploration. Scholastic provides a lesson plan for each unit offering flexible approaches to integrating the content in the classroom. Lesson plans are aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and correlate to Ohio's Learning Standards and Model Curriculum for Science. Units can be shared with students using Google Classroom. When used together, each unit includes resources and strategies for meeting the four Es.

• Watch It videos establish background content and engage student interest in the topic of the unit. 
• Read It articles elevate student learning by providing access to tools to adjust the Lexile level and language of the text. Articles come equipped with a read-aloud feature. 
• Dive Deeper articles, videos, and interactives chunk the topic and subtopics engaging students as they select content to explore. 
• Explore More articles empower students to browse additional content to learn more about topics and subtopics.
• Science Lab content extends learning outside of the classroom with hands-on science experiments. 
• Careers resources extend learning from the classroom to the real world as students learn about careers in STEM. 

Whether you use entire units or select individual content from ScienceFlix, Herbert's four Es provides educators with a guide on how to use the licensed digital content available to meet the needs of each student. 

Engage

Create opportunities for student choice and autonomy by using digital content from ScienceFlix to support Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in your classroom. UDL is a framework to optimize teaching and learning using scientific insights into how people learn. The guidelines for UDL can be used in any classroom to break down barriers that keep students from learning. The first guideline is engagement where student choice is optimized.

Use the Science News section to optimize student choice and engage learning. Plan time each month for Free Read Friday. Let students select an article from Science News to read. Ask students to complete the accompanying study guide or conduct a Gallery Walk to allow students to share what they learned with their classmates. Science News articles are updated monthly bridging the gap between classroom learning and real-world scientific discoveries.

Empower

When students feel as if their interests are important and part of learning, they are empowered to explore these topics even further. Inspired by Google's concept of 20 percent time, Genius Hour activities empower learning as students select a topic of interest and explore the topic using texts, videos, and interactives. Educators have adapted the practice to develop a plan for implementing creative and engaging research in the classroom. Learn how to use ScienceFlix to bring Genius Hour into your classroom and empower students to select a topic from more than 80 units of study. 

• Essential questions at the start of each unit serve as models for strong open-ended questions to guide inquiry. 
• Dive Deeper provides additional text and videos for curious researchers to explore subtopics. 
• Careers provide content to bridge the gap between classroom learning and real-world career opportunities in STEM. 

Ask students to demonstrate their learning using an experiment or project idea from the Science Lab. Refer students to INFOhio's GO! Ask, Act, Achieve with web-based creation tools to support project creation. Consider pairing GO! and ScienceFlix as you implement a Genius Hour practice in your classroom.  

Elevate

Educators often use supplemental resources in the classroom to help students master difficult content and skills. When a student perceives that the supplemental resource provides them with support, they will continue to use the resource. 

• Search ScienceFlix and select Media to locate instructional materials to provide just-in-time support to students. Use these media supports to reinforce learning at the close of a lesson or activate prior knowledge at the beginning of a lesson. 
• Encourage students to explore the articles in the Read It and Dive Deeper sections. Once students have found an article that interests them, show those who need support how to adjust the article using the Change My Reading Level. 

Extend

Educators can extend learning by challenging students to take their learning outside of the classroom. Engage parents and caregivers in learning by incorporating Experiments from ScienceFlix into your classroom practice. Experiments correspond with topics taught in science classrooms in grades 6–8. Educators can extend the learning by asking students to complete experiments independently at home. 

Every Ohio student deserves the opportunity to learn from high-quality, standards-aligned instructional materials to become a resilient, lifelong learner who contributes to society (Each Child, Our Future). Using INFOhio's quality resources and web tools like ScienceFlix to supplement learning can engage, empower, elevate, and extend students for success. 

Do you have a great way to share how you are using INFOhio resources to supplement your curriculum? Don't forget to share it on social media and use #INFOhioWorks.