Creating interactive lessons with Boardworks

Hartland Consolidated School District, in Michigan, USA, aims to provide a positive environment for the development of lifelong learners. In particular, they wished to find a digital solution which would ensure that teachers were no longer having to use their time to find high-quality resources online.

That’s why they chose Boardworks, an online learning platform packed full of curriculum-aligned content that can be edited and shared across classrooms for greater consistency.

Creating interactive lessons

David Minsker, Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction:

We already have a set curriculum in place and Boardworks is a supplement to that. When we saw Boardworks, we thought it was an opportunity to give our teachers a resource to be able to find lessons and interactive tools that are a lot better prepared than the ones that we have been seeing. Before Boardworks, teachers created or found their own materials, and it’s been a hodgepodge of content. The mini-lessons have been the same across grade level in terms of messages, but the content has been missing the interactive component.

Engaging students and differentiating learning

With Boardworks, I can see it growing into something where teachers are able to use those slides and have a consistent presentation not just across the grade level, but across buildings and across the district. These slides are way better than anything I have seen: the interactivity of it, the fact that you can manipulate it easily, it’s visually-appealing, it’s kid-friendly… These are features teachers are really going to appreciate.

Like every school, we try to differentiate within our classroom, but sometimes it is hard to find enough content because you have kids coming in at different levels. If you have a student who let’s say is in fourth grade, but could be doing eighth grade work, the K-12 Boardworks resources being available for all teachers gives us an opportunity to use these slides for our gifted kids to be doing higher level stuff. This allows us to keep pushing kids.

Challenging students

Scott Usher, Director of Technology:

We are very excited about the flexibility that Boardworks gives us. One of the beautiful things is that all of the resources are available for any teacher in any grade. If middle school resources were only available for middle school, we may have a middle school science kid whose capabilities are way above and beyond their current grade.

The cool thing about this is that our teachers have the ability to access the high school Boardworks resources and then start challenging their kids using it. It can be used in the opposite direction for remedial work as well. That’s why I like that the teachers can self-serve and access the software that they want across any grade.