What happens when your students consistently experience engaging instructional materials? What happens when they don’t?

/ mkessenburg
I want students to flourish in terms of helpful resources. My deep hope is that students are experiencing…
(1) Engaging instructional materials (see Construct: Resources, p. 17).
(2) Qualified, joyful, Christ-centered staff who have a best-practice mindset (see Construct: Qualified Staff and Best Practice Orientation, p. 17).
(3) A living curriculum (staff) that models the value of helpful resources. 

This blog post focuses on #1 above.

Photo by Ben Mullins on Unsplash

Get students consistently experiencing engaging instructional materials! Why?

(1) Because engaging instructional materials help students flourish. Engaging instructional materials help students flourish by priming them for meaningful learning, deepening their learning, and helping their learning “stick.”  

(2) Because engaging instructional materials spark curiosity, demonstrate relevance, invite all learners, and utilize current understandings of how children learn. 

(3) Because instructional materials that are outdated and/or unappealing spark boredom, demonstrate irrelevance, invite only some learners, and utilize out-of-date understandings of how children learn.  

(4) Because using engaging instructional materials is a best practice.

Note: While this doesn’t mean you absolutely have to have all of the latest, coolest instructional materials, it does mean dated, unengaging materials can actually dampen learning. Here’s my story:

I was in 4th grade (school year 1974 – 1975). I was reading this line in my science textbook: “Someday people might even go to the moon!” This did not inspire the awe it was intended to. People had walked on the moon in 1969—I guffawed. Unfortunately, my teacher didn’t comment on the dated material, and after that, I didn’t really take seriously anything else that my science textbook said. Who knew–it could be just as outdated! 
 
Years later, I heard the same guffaw from a group of students gathered around a world map on the wall of my classroom. Someone had just pointed out that the map still had Czechoslovakia as a country. The group quickly lost interest and dispersed. I took the map down that day, and the wall stayed bare until the new map I ordered came. The new map was smaller, but at least the information on it was reliable! 

Photo by Ishaq Robin on Unsplash

Question: For you, what are engaging instructional materials? What comes to mind for me includes:

(1) Materials with current information and attitudes—meaning, textbooks that don’t contain outdated information, world maps that don’t split Asia in order to center America, literature selections that introduce students to the experiences and thoughts of more than just white Americans and Europeans.

(2) Materials where students see themselves represented: Both girls and boys, as well as all the cultures represented at my school, should routinely see themselves in library books, class reading selections, current events, math lessons using the host country’s currency, and posters of famous people.  

(3) Materials that are attractive and well-cared for: We say, “You can’t judge a book by its cover,” but in fact we do make that judgment all the time. Books that are dusty, discolored, and/or torn do not invite students to explore them. They say, “No one has used this for a long time, and it isn’t necessary for you to, either.”  

(4) Materials that use current understandings of how students learn: These are textbooks or supplementary materials that give students a variety of ways to access and process information, for instance, reading, pictures, graphs, graphic organizers, demonstrations, videos, case studies, experiments, manipulatives, writing, and group work. 

(5) Internet that is fast and reliable: Teachers can take students on a virtual museum visit, use a YouTube video to build background knowledge for reading, demonstrate a chemistry principle from Khan Academy, or show real footage of historical events like Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, etc. Simultaneously, other classes can have all students working online. 

(6) Hardware that enables teachers and students to infuse teaching and learning with technology— projectors and staff computers so teachers can use the internet to illustrate and elaborate lessons (see above). Enough devices that students can explore interests, practice digital literacy skills, collaborate using Google Docs, and create better work using digital documents to produce multiple revisions. Document cameras so teachers can share models such as journal entries or math problems.  

(7) Classroom libraries that give students immediate access to good books and get them reading: Public libraries, school libraries, and online libraries are all great. And if we really want to support student reading, classroom libraries are the way to go. Certainly in elementary classrooms and English language arts classrooms. Ideally, in every classroom. Why? “[S]tudents who have physical books within reach read more – they read up to 60% more in classrooms with libraries” (Does Your School Need a Literacy Check-Up?). 

Here are some related resources:

What about you? What happens when students experience engaging instructional materials? What happens when they don’t? What are some unengaging instructional resources you have experienced? What comes to mind when you think of engaging instructional materials?  

Get flourishing!

Kim