Current research suggests that high-quality instructional materials (HQIM) together with an understanding of research-based instructional strategies (RBIS) can have a positive impact on student learning.
While HQIM ensures full coverage of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), RBIS articulates the key instructional shifts necessary to bring rigorous instruction to life for students. These ideas are based on the belief that all students, including emergent bilingual students and students with learning differences, can access rigorous learning and deserve daily opportunities to engage with grade-appropriate assignments.
Let’s take a closer look at the role of HQIM and RBIS in the classroom.
What are High-Quality Instructional Materials (HQIM)?
Teachers can spend hours each week searching for or creating instructional resources, many of them untried or unapproved by district curriculum guidelines.
When teachers don’t have access to strong high-quality instructional materials, substitutes can often lead to inconsistent quality or weak alignment to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS).
TEA defines full-subject high-quality materials as those that ensure full coverage of Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), align with research-based instructional strategies (RBIS) in each subject area, and support all learners.
HQIM provides educators with a full set of instructional materials that include scaffolds for all student populations.
What is Considered “High-Quality?”
The Texas Education Agency (TEA) and the State Board of Education (SBOE) are currently developing rubrics to formally define what HQIM includes.
As these agencies work together to finalize the rubric, HQIM is currently defined as curricular resources that:
- Ensure full coverage of TEKS.
- Are aligned to evidence-based best practices in the relevant content areas of RLA and Math.
- Support all learners, including students with disabilities, English learners, and students identified as gifted and talented.
- Enable frequent progress monitoring through embedded and aligned assessments.
- Include implementation support for teachers.
- Provide teacher and student-facing lesson-level materials.
How does HQIM help?
HQIM allows students to engage in a more meaningful way with the TEKS. HQIM also supports teachers in ensuring all students have access to high-quality and challenging grade-level content.
Student outcomes improve when they have greater access to:
- Grade-appropriate assignments
- Strong instruction
- Deep engagement; and
- Teachers with high expectations
HQIM provides equitable access to strong instruction for all students. Some of the ways this happens are by providing consistent and daily exposure to comprehensive, grade-level content to all students. Next, HQIM also allows all students to access the same materials across classrooms in a local education agency (LEA). Finally, by streamlining the data collected from formative and summative assessments to better understand where students are at, teachers have a greater understanding of how to work with their students to master grade-level challenges.
Where do Research-Based Instructional Strategies (RBIS) fit in?
As part of the broader strategy to significantly increase the number of students in Texas who have access to HQIM, TEA has developed a set of RBIS to explain the important shifts in instruction that are required for high-quality, rigorous lessons.
RBIS is described as:
- A set of research-based practices that highlights common misconceptions in the field.
- Topics that require conceptual or philosophical changes in approach to instruction.
- A set of practices that are supported by research and should be present in classrooms, regardless of instructional materials.
- The science of how students best learn math and reading in K-12.
The RBIS also demonstrates why HQIMs are important and what is required to implement them well.
How can Region 13 Support with HQIM and RBIS?
ESC Region 13’s HQIM team is here to support you in every phase of your HQIM journey,
Including:
- Research-Based Instructional Strategies (RBIS)
- High-Quality Instructional Materials (HQIM) Product Training
- Implementation Support for Leaders, and
- HQIM Grant Information.
RBIS workshops explore essential best practices in RLA and Math with content-specific strategies that are supported by research. These practices should be present in all classrooms regardless of instructional materials.
For districts adopting Amplify or Eureka, our certified product trainers provide professional learning in a variety of ways. Teachers and instructional coaches are able to enroll in Product Academy courses to complete asynchronously through TEALearn. Region 13 specialists are eager to present this content in a live setting either at your location or here at ESC Region 13.
In addition, we offer administrator-facing training providing product overviews and classroom “look-fors” to support strong implementation.
Now help is available if your district is considering HQIM or just wants to establish a vision for content instruction supported by the RBIS. Our specialists provide support in developing Instructional Frameworks for both RLA and Math. Furthermore, an instructional framework can lead to more effective implementation even when HQIM is already present. Finally, grants are regularly available from TEA to support districts in this work.
Contact the Region 13 HQIM team by visiting our webpage. For more information on Region 13 training opportunities, visit our E-Campus catalog.
Ami Courville
Ami Courville is the HQIM Implementation Specialist (ELAR K-R) for ESC Region 13.
Jill Bodling
Jill Bodling is the HQIM Implementation Specialist (Math K-5) at the ESC Region 13.
Bridgette Arnold
Bridgette Arnold is the HQIM Implementation Specialist (Pre-K) at the ESC Region 13.
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