You may have heard in December of 2024 year two parents filed a class-action lawsuit against renowned early literacy educators Calkins, Fountas and Pinnell, along with their publishers, complaining that their texts and pedagogical approaches were failing kids. According to the lawsuit, use of products created by the three defendants led to early literacy outcomes failing to meet grade-level expectations, resulting in significant reading difficulties for students.

Although the case is yet to be resolved, the question raised focuses on the pedagogical approach of specific materials school districts purchase to be used in instruction. In this case, the lawsuit questions if the materials support effective learning outcomes while alleging the products were promoted and adopted on a broad basis because of deceptive and fraudulent marketing practices.

As language educators we know that the time between new materials adoptions is often extremely long. When you have the chance to purchase new materials you want to be sure you’re getting the best possible, knowing that you and your students will have to use them for many years—and it’s important to remember that just because a product has a brand-new copyright date doesn’t mean the content is more than 25% “new.” So how do you know if resources are up-to-date, instructionally-sound and research-based? As a language teacher, here are some important things to look for:

Alignment to National Standards and Performance Descriptors

As a teacher you have to teach to your state’s standards, and you need resources that align. Different states have different standards—and some are more dated than others—but for world languages all states align to ACTFL’s World-Readiness Standards for Learning Languages (dated standards still align to the WRSLL, just an older version).

Many resources available for purchase were not created with the ACTFL standards in mind; they were created and then “correlated” to the standards after the fact. This is very different from actually aligning to standards, where resources are designed and developed specifically to meet the standards. Wayside’s resources are created by teachers for teachers. Therefore, authors and contributors have always been very conscientious from the outset to align directly to the ACTFL standards throughout the resource creation process.

Performance Assessments and Proficiency Outcomes

All of us can finish this sentence, having heard it so many times: “I took four years of French in high school but I…” I don’t need to complete the sentence because you already know how it ends. Memorizing lists of vocabulary and verb conjugations doesn’t lead to uptake (acquisition). If it did, scores of generations of people who took four years of French in high school would be able to use the language.

For students to acquire language, resources have to support teaching for language proficiency (real-world use beyond the classroom). But how do you as a teacher know what your students can actually do with the language? This is where performance assessments come in. By organizing instruction to give

students ample opportunities to use the target language meaningfully in all three modes, you will be able to assess their progress based on what they are actually able to do, as opposed to what they’ve memorized. Sound performance assessments should tie back to the essential questions of a unit and provide communicative tasks in all three modes of communication—giving students a fair chance to show you what they can do with the language acquired during instruction of a unit (and building their own confidence in the language as they can see for themselves what they are able to do). Performance assessments and their rubrics can be time-consuming to create, and we all know teachers have very little time. I was delighted the first time I opened a Wayside product and saw that all of the performance-based formative and summative assessments were already created for teachers, as well as the rubrics for grading. Brilliant. I’ll give you time to applaud.

Real-World Communication

A few years ago, I was beginning my journey toward gaining proficiency in Swedish and was supplementing my learning with various resources. One particular resource had me reading and speaking about purple turtles—very early on. With the exception of many delightful drawings made by imaginative elementary students, there are no purple turtles anywhere in the world. Beyond that I was wondering why I needed to learn the word turtle so early in the first place? Since at the time I was a novice-low Swedish learner, my time would have been better spent learning useful structures and vocabulary to introduce myself to others, ask and answer basic questions about myself and others. This would have been far more relevant and would have shown me I was learning to communicate using the target language (if you’re curious, lila sköldpadda is “purple turtle” in Swedish).

Sound resources should support you as a teacher in providing relevant, real-world input in all three modes of communication through various tasks and activities, while supporting you with robust teacher’s notes, tips and suggestions. One feature I particularly like in Wayside’s Learning Site is the Instructional Strategies Toolkit, where I can search 205 different strategies to use in the classroom. Furthermore, I can filter my search by mode of communication, proficiency level, activity type, learning style, Bloom’s taxonomy, and more—I can even search for strategies to use specifically at the opening, middle, or closing portion of my class period.

So, ask yourself—does this resource help me provide opportunities for students to communicate meaningfully and with spontaneity, using real-world communication? If the answer is “no,” I’d suggest moving on and not wasting any more of your valuable time.

Authentic Resources

“Is Harry Potter in Spanish an authentic resource? It’s a real book in Spanish.” Your intentions are good, Muggle, but Harry Potter in Spanish is not an authentic resource. An authentic resource is created by native speakers for native speakers. Advertisements, news articles, menus, songs, real estate listings, television commercials, infographics are all examples of types of authentic resources and are fun and engaging to use in instruction. That said, it can be time-consuming to find authentic resources at the appropriate level to use with students. And once you do identify resources you want to use, you still have to spend yet more time creating tasks and activities for them.

A high-quality, research-based product will have ample authentic resources throughout, and range from print, audio, and video. One thing I love about the new edition of EntreCulturas is that there are 272 different authentic resources in the series—98% of them are brand new. Why are they important? Here are some reasons:

• Student Engagement: Reflect topics and themes of interest, expose students to artifacts they would encounter in the real world.
• Critical Thinking: Requires students to analyze, reflect, interpret and infer meaning.
• Cultural Connections: Helps students to compare and contrast cultural elements, making meaningful connections and developing cultural competence.
• Real-Life, Real-World: By native speakers for native speakers, real-world artifacts that would be encountered in the host country.
• Alignment to 5 Cs: Integration of Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons and Communities.
• Proficiency-Based Instruction: Ideal for alignment to proficiency targets, naturally include types of text for various proficiency levels.
• Language in Context: Exposure to authentic language in an authentic cultural context.

Interculturality at the Heart

Many resources available to teachers present culture as a standalone, separate from the language learning; for decades culture has been taught as something “apart.” Interculturality involves students investigating cultures other than their own and interacting in culturally appropriate ways using culturally appropriate language. With this approach, not only are students able to delve deeper into cultural aspects, but they’re able to apply their understanding of cultures while using the language. After all, isn’t that our goal for students? A high-quality resource will support you in bringing interculturality to the heart of your classroom while also providing opportunities to investigate, understand, apply, and interact.

As a co-author of the NCSSFL-ACTFL intercultural can-do statements, interculturality is near and dear to my heart. That’s one unique feature of Wayside’s products—interculturality is within each unit, interwoven and integrated with the language learning, rather than relegated to a few pages at the end of each unit as we so often see. Even better, Wayside includes communicative and intercultural can-do statements so learners can reflect on their progress, set goals, and see their growing proficiency—all the while accessing individual portfolios where they can track progress and upload evidence to demonstrate their skills.

The People Behind the Resource

Our team at Wayside has former educators on staff with over 400 years of combined experience in education. In other words, we take very seriously the quality of the resources and professional supports we provide for teachers—knowing that to empower teachers means empowering learners. Understanding from our own classroom experience what challenges teachers face and how we can help them overcome those challenges has always been a guiding vision for both our Product team and our Professional Learning team, which is why our resources and professional learning supports are backed by research, up-to-date, and fully align to ACTFL’s World Readiness Standards for Language Learning. Because we care enough to want to truly help you. We’re all in it together in service to younger generations of learners.

Hopefully these key points will help you and your colleagues better evaluate the quality of instructional resources you’re considering for purchase, with the goal of you getting the best materials available for your students. If you would like to digitally sample Wayside’s products to see more, go here.