Choosing Teaching Resources
A colourful worksheet, polished slide deck or new digital activity can look ready for a lesson while doing little to clarify its central idea. Teachers need to decide what a resource helps learners understand and what demands it adds. The most useful choice supports the intended teaching in this particular class.
Choosing resources is part of planning learning. A short text can provide evidence for comparison, a diagram can make a relationship visible and a practice task can reveal which decisions learners can make independently. Each needs a purpose that is clear before appearance, convenience or novelty becomes the main reason for using it.
For IM MORE, Discover, Believe, Become provides a practical connection. Discover the knowledge and access needs involved, build belief through materials learners can use and help them become more capable through meaningful application. Reviewing resources carefully can make those aims more concrete in everyday teaching.
Begin with what the resource must help teach
Write a short statement about its purpose. You may need learners to compare explanations, follow a process or select evidence for a claim. This makes it easier to decide whether an existing worksheet fits or whether a shorter extract would be more useful.
Examine the thinking the resource actually requires. A worksheet about a topic can still focus mainly on copying when the lesson goal requires explanation. Ask what learners must decide to complete it and what their responses will tell you.
Keep the task proportionate to the available time. A large pack may contain useful material, but completing it is not automatically the right goal. Select the part that serves the lesson and leave enough time for explanation, practice and checking understanding.
Check subject accuracy first
Read the resource as a subject teacher. Check examples, answer keys and instructions that could mislead learners. A calculation may be correct while its diagram suggests a different relationship. A simplified explanation may remove a condition that matters.
For material found online, establish who produced it and whether the information is appropriate for the course. Follow source links where accuracy depends on a factual claim. If you cannot verify an important detail, replace it with something you can explain confidently.
Work through any problem yourself. Check units, labels and assumptions, as well as the final answer. An answer key that contains one mistake can create unnecessary confusion for learners and make feedback harder to interpret.
Examine what the material assumes
Identify unfamiliar vocabulary, notation and background information. A task about evaluating an argument may require knowledge of the subject as well as an understanding of evidence. If those foundations have not been taught, learners may struggle for reasons unrelated to the intended challenge.
Decide what you will explain beforehand and what the resource should supply. A short glossary or introductory example may be enough. Avoid adding so much support that the page becomes difficult to navigate or the task no longer requires the intended thinking.
Use a short preliminary check when starting points are uncertain. Learners’ responses can help you choose between versions, prepare a clarification or decide that another resource is needed. Familiarity with the class is valuable, but it should remain open to fresh evidence.
Make the layout serve the explanation
Keep related information close together and make the reading sequence clear. Learners comparing two passages should be able to find both without repeatedly searching across several pages or screens. Place labels where they clarify the relevant part of a diagram.
Remove decorative elements that compete with the task. Colour can help identify corresponding parts when used deliberately, but meaning should not depend entirely on colour. A tidy page still needs to be tested with the learners who will use it.
The Education Endowment Foundation’s cognitive science evidence review offers school-focused background on approaches to learning and their limitations. For a resource decision, ask a concrete question: does this layout make the intended relationship easier to understand in this lesson?
Review accessibility and reading demands
Use clear sentences and explain necessary technical terms. Consider font size, spacing, contrast and whether a digital resource can be navigated with the access arrangements and technology learners use. Check that a PDF contains readable text rather than relying entirely on images of text.
Provide an appropriate alternative when the format creates an unnecessary barrier. Someone may need a readable text version, captions for spoken material or a clearer verbal explanation of a visual comparison. Follow agreed individual arrangements and check that they work in practice.
Keep the learning goal in view. If reading itself is the target, learners still need suitable instruction and practice in reading. Supporting access requires a considered response to the task, rather than removing every demand that could be difficult.
Choose examples that fit young adult learners
Use contexts that learners can understand without assuming a shared background. A workplace scenario can be useful if all necessary information is supplied. It should not require every learner to have held a job already.
Choose adult-appropriate presentation for adults studying foundational skills. Straightforward content does not require childish imagery or language. At the same time, avoid making the scenario so elaborate that it hides a simple concept under unnecessary details.
Offer ways to ask for clarification without public disclosure. A learner should not have to explain a personal circumstance to make sense of a fictional exercise. Respectful examples allow people to concentrate on the learning.
Check what technology contributes
Ask what a digital tool adds. It might make a process visible, provide useful practice or let you examine responses more quickly. Identify that contribution before choosing the tool. A digital version can also introduce login difficulties, unfamiliar controls or access barriers.
Test the actual activity on the devices learners will use. Check whether they are practising the subject decision or mainly learning to operate an interface. Prepare an alternative when technical access is uncertain so the lesson can continue.
Do not judge the resource by animation, scores or immediate enthusiasm alone. Look at learners’ explanations and subsequent work. Enjoyment may support participation, but it does not by itself demonstrate that the intended understanding has developed.
Compare two resources against the same goal
Imagine preparing a lesson on selecting evidence for a paragraph. One worksheet contains a lengthy text, several decorative images and broad questions. Another gives two shorter extracts and asks learners to choose a detail for a particular claim. Compare both against what learners need to understand.
The shorter resource may be more suitable for the first explanation, but length alone does not settle the decision. Check the accuracy of the extracts, the reading demands and whether the question requires learners to explain relevance. A brief task can still be poorly designed.
After guided practice, provide a fresh extract for an independent response. Review whether learners can select and explain evidence without the original prompts. The choice becomes defensible through the thinking it supports, rather than the amount of content on the page.
Check the practical arrangements
Before the lesson, confirm that printed material is readable at the size supplied and that the class has the equipment needed. A diagram that looked clear on a monitor may lose its labels when reduced for printing. Check the actual version learners will receive.
For video or audio, test the sound, captions and length. Identify where you will pause for explanation or practice. Avoid spending the opening of a lesson troubleshooting a resource that could have been checked beforehand.
Keep an alternative that preserves the learning purpose when practical arrangements fail. This might be a printed extract or a teacher demonstration. The alternative should serve the same central idea, while recognising that the activity may need adjustment.
Share resources with enough context
When passing a resource to a colleague, include its intended purpose, assumed knowledge and any adaptations. A worksheet that worked well after a detailed explanation may be confusing when used without that preparation. The resource is only one part of the teaching sequence.
Share a short account of what learners found difficult and which change helped. Avoid presenting one successful lesson as proof that the material will work unchanged with every group.
Store the current version where colleagues can identify it, and retain attribution and permissions information. A simple version label can prevent an old error or inaccessible format being reintroduced into later teaching.
Review practice and adapt deliberately
Look at how practice questions develop. Early items may rehearse a newly taught step, while later ones require learners to choose or apply a method. Check that the change in difficulty is deliberate and does not assume knowledge learners have not yet studied.
Review answer guidance as well. A final answer alone may be insufficient when learners need to understand an explanation. Plan the feedback you will give and how learners will act on it.
Reuse suitable material when it serves the lesson. Clarify an instruction or remove an irrelevant section, while respecting the conditions attached to published resources and retaining useful attribution. Keep a note of meaningful changes so colleagues can understand the version they are using.
For the next lesson, select one resource and work through it from the learner’s position. Then observe what happens when the class uses it. Ask where the task became unclear and review the responses. The best reason to keep a resource is the learning it helps learners carry out, supported by evidence from their work.
Where previous setbacks have affected confidence, IM MORE’s article on unemployment and self-worth offers related reading for a separate conversation about personal value.
