The Essential Components of the Manus Curriculums Materials

The Manus Curriculums system consists primarily of "how to" teacher-training manuals and student practice packs in: literacy; math; study, organizational and time management skills; and life skills. It also contains other resources for parents and teachers that help them improve students' abilities to learn.

Teacher-Training Manuals

• explain what is required to master given skills
• explain why some students have trouble learning them
• explain what educational research tells us about how to teach effectively, particularly students with learning barriers
• walk teachers through each step of the instructional process prescribed for each skill
• show teachers strategies to use when students do not respond satisfactorily to the instruction
• contain appendices with master goals and objectives checklists that break each skill into small, cumulative steps and other useful forms and charts
• contain quizzes for teachers to check their knowledge of the essential information
• contain numerous practice exercises that allow teachers to master the teaching strategies

Student Practice Packs

• break the targeted skill into small, manageable steps with each step an extension of the preceding ones
• contain numerous practice exercises to ensure skill mastery
• contain cumulative reviews to ensure skill retention, integration and fluency
• contain goals and objectives checklists that cover the skills students learn in the practice packs
• contain charts and/or graphs to record, monitor and communicate student progress

To view sample pages of specific training manuals or practice packs, please click the “Click here to view sample(s)” link under each product in our catalog.

How to Use Our Products

Using the Manus Curriculums teacher-training manuals and practice packs is easy. Just follow these four steps:

Step 1

Read the teacher-training manual that covers the skill you want to teach (e.g., How to Teach Reading and Spelling or How to Teach Math). Complete the training exercises and take the quizzes to check your knowledge of the essential information.

Step 2

Determine the level at which you will place your students in each practice pack and begin instruction. You can determine placement by grade level (e.g., a fourth-grade vocabulary practice pack for a fourth-grade student) or by skill (e.g., Phonics, Level 1 for a beginning reader). To determine each student's skill, you may use the results of your own standardized tests or the results of the placements tests that we provide for some of the skills, such as reading, spelling and math.

Step 3

Begin teaching your students following the procedures explained in both the training manuals and in the practice packs.

Step 4

Record and monitor each student’s progress in basics skills, such as word decoding, fluency, spelling and math facts, following this process:

• At the end of each day’s lesson, have the student chart the number of practice exercises he or she completed in the given skill.
• At the end of each month, help him or her graph the total number of exercises he or she completed that month.
• With the student, record those skills he or she mastered that month on the goals and objectives checklist for that particular skill. (You’ll find these charts, graphs and checklists in each practice pack.)
• With the student, compare the number of practice exercises he or she completed to the number of objectives he or she mastered.
• Determine if the student’s performance and progress is satisfactory.
• Increase, decrease or maintain the intensity of the daily practice, as needed, to achieve maximum progress. (To increase the intensity of instruction and/or the student’s focus during instruction, you may need to make certain accommodations that further minimize the impact of the student’s barriers, change the learning environment in which you deliver instruction and/or increase the duration and/or frequency of the lessons. For example, you might deliver the lesson in a one-on-one rather than small-group setting, schedule the lesson later in the day rather than during first period and extend it from thirty to forty minutes a day.)

Who Uses Our Products

Our products and strategies have been successfully used by teachers who work with students with academic barriers, either in small groups or one-on-one and from grades kindergarten through twelve. Our customer base includes special education teachers who serve as consultants in the regular classroom, resource-room teachers, educational specialists and tutors in public school and private practice, home school teachers/parents and teachers of regular education.

Our customers report that they can easily adapt the materials to suit their students’ needs and their instructional delivery process. We believe this adaptability is essential considering that our mission is to help teachers improve their students’ ability to learn with the resources they have.

Our most important market, our students, routinely report that participating in our instructional programs has put them on a productive path – a path of successful and “feel good” learning.