Curriculum Pathways Adds Middle School Resources, Common Core Standards Alignment
- By Mike Hohenbrink
- 08/22/11
SAS has announced the inclusion of middle school resources and added mapping to Common Core State Standards to its Curriculum Pathways.
The product provides free online resources for grades 6-12 and is in use by more than 50,000 teachers in 12,000 schools. The resources are designed to assist instruction in a number of classroom areas, including English, mathematics, science, social studies, and Spanish.
"With SAS Curriculum Pathways, teachers can easily integrate engaging content into instruction while meeting Common Core State Standards," said Bruce Friend, Director of SAS Curriculum Pathways.
The product, previously aligned to state standards, is now also mapped to Common Core Standards for English and math. Usability and design have also been improved with searchable and resizable resources, integrated professional development, social media sharing and best practices for teachers. In addition, the product offers 200 interactive tools, 200 guided questions, 600 Web lessons and 70 audio tutorials.
New features include:
- The exploring poetry series of interactive tools teach poetry analysis and interpretation with subjects such as sports, families, and nature;
- New social studies audio tutorials focusing on Australia, New Zealand, and the islands of Oceania with Audio, images, and illustrations to teach about geography, history, flora, and fauna;
- Punctuation Rules!, with humorous audio, animated text, interactive activities, and quizzes;
- The Spanish writing tablet with interactive templates;
- Spanish language builders--grammatical elements is a resource providing an aid to verb and adjective review;
- Flash cards--integers 0 to 12, decimals, is part of the new middle school offerings;
- Virtual lab--seasons, allows students to investigate how Earth's motions cause seasons, observe how these motions affect our view of the sun, and examine seasonal changes, and events through simulations, the collection and analysis of data, and questions;
- Tool-based lessons incorporate interactive tools, such as the writing reviser and the interactive atlas.
The interactive tools are designed to promote higher-level thinking and problem-solving skills. The writing reviser, for example, is a resource designed to help students learn to ask the kinds of questions writers with more experience ask.
More information can be found at sas.com.