Teaching tools

Everything to ensure outstanding live instruction, every day

We believe outstanding daily instruction in English Language Arts and math is the core of any effective distance learning program. The National Summer School Initiative equips your teachers with exceptional resources—everything they need to lead classes focused on critical thinking and intellectual discovery.

Scope and sequence

Our curriculum is rigorous, relevant, and engaging. In math, our scope and sequence combines cognitively based instruction centered on real-world story problems with fluency practice and mastery-based teaching. In ELA, students explore culturally responsive, award-winning works of literature for rich class discussion.

I asked my students to rate the novel One Crazy Summer on a scale of 1-5, where 5 is the best book I ever read. It got mostly 5s. I will definitely teach it again. —Avery Koosman, 3rd grade ELA, St. Augustine Prep

Lesson overview

The daily Lesson Overview guides teachers through the necessary intellectual preparation to teach each lesson. Both math and ELA Lesson Overviews include key understandings, lesson flow, and common misconceptions. ELA lessons offer vocabulary, reading questions, and discussion and writing prompts; math lessons present a story problem, comprehension questions, equations and strategies, and fluency routines.

I love the rigor! I didn't think my kids could handle it but they stepped up. They are really producing good work. —Olyvia Kozicki, St. Augustine Prep

Flow decks

The flow deck contains, in one place, everything the teacher needs to prepare for the lesson and readily deliver it:

  • intellectual preparation and background

  • likely student misconceptions

  • examples of exemplary student work in the lesson

  • question sequences

  • student-facing slides

  • embedded video segments of the Mentor Teacher's delivery that can be played in class

It was super helpful to have all that work done for me. I had the videos and slides. The National Summer School Initiative built the plane and I got to fly it. –Quincy Barnes, 4th grade ELA, Hawking STEAM

Mentor teacher videos

Like sitting in the back of the room of their strongest colleagues, teachers can watch the day's entire lesson taught by dynamic and effective mentor teachers to their own showcase students. They learn how to navigate the lesson themselves. And they may choose to share key portions with their class.

My mentor teacher was so transparent. She would tell us about mistakes she made during the lesson and what to do instead. I always followed her suggestions. —Avery Koosman, 3rd grade ELA, St. Augustine Prep

Student-facing materials

In addition to all the curricular materials to prepare the teacher, we also provide student workbooks with reading and discussion questions for ELA and story problems for math.

I really liked the program because I got a lot of chances to put my ideas into the conversation. I never felt shy about asking questions. Sometimes when I got stuck she gave me sentence starters and that really helped me get my ideas out. I know I’m a better writer. –Aniston Clemings, 8th grade student, Ben Holt College Preparatory School

© National Summer School Initiative 2024