Looking to Strengthen Your Lessons?

There are so many lessons available to teachers - it can be both a blessing and a curse.  Finding different resources allows educators to personalize the learning - both for their students and themselves.  How do you know whether the lessons are high-quality?  What might work well in the lesson?  What might need to be revised to better fit your needs?  Rubrics might be one way you can use to help you preview lessons you find and determine how they might best fit your needs.

I have been so fortunate to work with Achieve's EQuIP (Educators Evaluating Quality Instructional Products) over the past year.  Our group is comprised of 55 educators from across the country.  We look at lessons for mathematics and English language arts.  Using the EQuIP rubric, we review lessons and units, giving feedback to the developers about what works well within the lesson/unit and what might be improved.  During our meeting in Washington D.C. this summer, the Teaching Channel came to record our work.  You can see more about Achieve's work here: https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/better-common-core-lessons-equip

If you are interested in using the rubric, here is a link to the EQuIP rubric:
http://www.achieve.org/files/EQuIPmathrubric-06-17-13_1.pdf (for mathematics)
http://www.achieve.org/files/EQuIP-ELArubric-06-24-13-FINAL.pdf (for ELA/literacy)
http://www.achieve.org/files/K-2ELALiteracyEQuIPRubric-07-18-13_1.pdf (for K-2 ELA/literacy)

Lessons and units that are judged to be "Exemplary" or "Exemplary if Improved" are shared on the EQuIP website and are free for anyone to use.  When developers submit lessons to Achieve, they agree that their work will be shared with others if it receives the "E" or "E/I" rating.  You can find those lessons here: http://www.achieve.org/EQuIP

Ohio has created a similar rubric, based on the EQuIP rubric, to help educators evaluate lessons they might use in their classrooms.  You can find the Ohio Quality Review Rubric for mathematics here: https://education.ohio.gov/getattachment/Topics/Academic-Content-Standards/Mathematics/Resources-Ohio-s-New-Learning-Standards-K-12-Mathe/Mathematics-Quality-Review-Rubric.pdf.aspx

I hope that you will use some of these tools to talk with your colleagues about the lessons you are teaching.  Many teachers no longer use textbooks and these rubrics are one of several available tools to help teachers know that they are using high-quality resources.