Resource Use
Amara4education is a division of Amara Publishing, and it provides supplemental classroom resources created by Amara’s curriculum writing team. The curricular products incorporate a spaced repetition and spiral review methodology. Students encounter a specific skill several times over the course of the year, ensuring threshold practice and student mastery. The daily resources cover the majority of grade level standards of all fifty (50) states including Common Core State Standard (CCSS) and Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) and are available in both English and Spanish. Each fall or spring resource packet contains daily student-learning opportunities with an answer key to each daily exercise. The accompanying answer key not only provides solutions to each problem, but also provides notes to assist teachers in pedagogy to enhance student learning. The primary grades (first and second) curricular resources are consistent throughout the school year in their design and composition; however, the spring resources in the intermediate grades (third through sixth) are designed to provide students with exposure to elements expected within a specific standardized state assessment.
Resource Structure
The math daily supplemental resources are designed so a student can complete a daily learning opportunity within 15 to 25 minutes. This way, a classroom teacher has ample time for their 45 to 60-minute daily core math lesson.
The math daily resources are separated into three (3) distinct sections:
numeracy development
application practice
reflection and conceptual understanding
for a comprehensive student learning session each day. The first section on each daily learning opportunity focuses on ‘numeracy development.’ This content is the fundamental building block of mathematics and provides the foundational skills for the ‘application practice.’ The application section provides a daily learning dose of 4 to 7 word problems. The last section entitled ‘reflection and conceptual understanding’ emphasizes reasoning, rationale, and understanding of arithmetic principles.
Providing Student Feedback
Teachers can provide student feedback a number of ways using the daily learning opportunities and accompanying answer sheet. The exercises can be checked individually in real time by monitoring students as they complete each problem. Or, the teacher can conduct a whole-class corrective review after all students have completed all of the exercises. The daily learning opportunity provides individual accountability of specific content, and it also provides an easy observable diagnostic of student work in specific content areas. With this information, teachers are aware of skills that may or may not require additional student practice. Amara also provides a skill support packet available for purchase for each fall or spring math supplemental resource.
Printing the Resource
When the Amara curricular math resources are implemented consistently each day, all children are offered an equitable opportunity for learning since every teacher – regardless of experience – can be equally successful in the classroom with this resource. The learning opportunities are published specifically so that each student can be provided their own bound copy. If this is done, a teacher will not have to worry about making copies and distributing loose papers each day. Finally, the spirally bound resource also provides a running record of student performance which is very useful for parent-teacher conferences and other progress monitoring needs. The resources are inexpensively priced at a one-time expenditure; accordingly, a school can easily afford the resource, and it may be used school year after school year. The learning opportunities are published specifically so that each student can be provided their own bound copy, printed directly from the digital file.