The new teaching resource, Beyond Textbooks, was first introduced to the Fountain Hills Unified School District last year at the high school level. The resource proved its worth and now the district is expanding its use to the middle school.

Fountain Hills Middle School Principal James Carrick believes that a lot of people have misconceptions about what Beyond Textbooks is. Many people want to look at it like a program when, in reality, it is much simpler.

“Beyond Textbooks itself is nothing more than a scope and sequence of the state standard,” Carrick explained. “It is not a curriculum or a program. It is strictly that we have identified the most essential state standards and then we unwrap those standards to talk about the other relevant standards underneath them.”

An example of what scope and sequence means can be seen in one of the website’s math standards.

“For instance, if you are going to teach fractions,” Carrick said. “It is a ten-day standard in which you’ll do two formatives to check that students are learning and understanding and then, assuming everyone understands, you move on to the next standard.”

Formatives are small quizzes that Beyond Textbooks uses as a way of checking to make sure students comprehended the material taught and that the teacher’s method of instruction was effective.

Depending on how students score on the formative, the instructor might decide to reteach the standard or offer enrichment materials.

“Based on how students do, that will determine our next step as teachers,” Carrick said. “Do we need to go back and reteach part of this information or do we need to enrich, go well beyond? So you are serving both sides of the spectrum.”

Beyond Textbooks’ main hub of access for teachers is their website, beyondtextbooks.org, where teachers from the 113 districts across several states share lesson plans, teaching tips and strategies.

“It is a partnership between a bunch of districts,” Carrick explained. “It started with Vail and Benson School District when they wanted to figure out how they could improve their students, specifically with state tests. So they developed collaboration for teachers to share lesson plans, ideas and resources. So it is not just one teacher in the classroom trying to figure it out.”

Carrick pointed out that the access to the amount of resources Beyond Textbooks provides means that if a teacher needs to reteach a student a standard, they can switch their approach to teaching it based on what other have discovered works well for various types of students.

“Sometimes it is just as simple as something like a worksheet that a teacher says is really good for reinforcing this standard,” Carrick said.

With this being the first year Beyond Textbooks is at the middle school, there has been some adjustments that need to be worked out, such as the right balance between Beyond Textbooks and traditional teaching resources.

“You hear the phrase, ‘well, that is how we have always done it’ in education a lot,” Carrick said. “So really, the challenge is just finding the right balance. Of course we are not getting rid of textbooks; we’re just looking for other resources.”

One big help for FHMS teachers in this transition is having help from teachers in the high school who, just a year ago, were in their shoes.

“Having teachers that just went through what the middle school teachers are going through is very helpful,” Carrick said. “It adds one more voice to the thousands available to them to help guide them through this process.”

Carrick said he is excited, along with the rest of the teaching staff, to see how the resource develops over time.