Spend more time teaching.
Save up to 10 or more hours each week on lesson preparation and instructional guesswork.
Our Teaching Approach
We designed our curriculums around the way students with academic barriers learn best.
Most curriculums focus on what to teach. Manus Curriculums goes further by building into every lesson strategies that facilitate fluent learning and minimize the effects of barriers.
Lessons are carefully sequenced and supported with practical teaching tools that help special educators teach with greater confidence and students learn successfully.
What educators experience with Manus Curriculums
Teach with greater confidence.
Know exactly what to do when students do not respond successfully to instruction.
Build a more consistent and predictable teaching practice.
Use one tightly integrated instructional system across a range of subjects and skills.
Help students achieve observable success.
Create the conditions for helping students enter the learning zone, during which they fully engage and learn well with reasonable effort.
“As a homeschooling parent, Manus Curriculums gave me the tools to educate my child with ease. The materials are user-friendly, systematic and comprehensive. My child can experience success without frustration, even in more challenging subjects.”
Our curriculums and built-in 4-step process help you guide students into the learning zone.
Students with learning barriers are most successful when instruction is delivered under the conditions in which they learn best. The learning zone is that mental state in which students:
- fully engage in the lesson
- meet the lesson’s challenges with reasonable effort
- enjoy the activity for its own sake
- are largely unaware of the passage of time
- successfully tune out distractions
- make mostly correct responses at mostly fluent speeds
- feel a sense of control and success
A student in the learning zone
The result is strong academic progress.
“As a parent, I like the materials because they are user-friendly, systematic and comprehensive. My child likes the materials because he can achieve success without frustration, even in subjects that are more challenging for him. I highly recommend Manus Curriculums as a resource.”
Our 4-step process
Our customized instruction supports each stage of the diagnostic-prescriptive process.
Effective special educators routinely assess skills, analyze barriers, develop instructional plans and monitor progress.
We provide unique and valuable tools to help you carry out these tasks more efficiently:
Step 1
Assess skills to determine the starting points of instruction.
Start lessons at the right level by giving each student a placement test.
Tools included
- Placement tests for word decoding, fluency and spelling; grammar; vocabulary; written expression; and math
- Placement tests for science and geography
- Learning goals and objectives checklists for each skill or subject
Correctly determining the starting points of instruction in each basic skill is essential. To help you determine these points, we provide you with placement tests for reading, spelling, grammar, vocabulary, written expression and math. Test items correspond to the learning goals and objectives that accompany each curriculum. This allows you to determine that point at which the student’s learning starts to break down, or the point at which you begin instruction.
The placement tests for science and geography contain questions about the content. The student’s responses to these questions give you a sense of the level at which to begin instruction.
Step 2
Analyze the student’s strengths and barriers.
Understand at a granular level those barriers each student will likely experience before you start your lessons. Remove any guesswork and have a more granular understanding of what learning barrier your student is battling before you start your first lesson.
Tools included
- Learning strengths and barriers analyses for word decoding, fluency and spelling
- Handwriting
- Written expression
- Reading comprehension
- Math
- Science and social studies
Learning each subject and skill requires the use of certain brain functions. For example, the top three functions involved in learning to decode and spell words are:
phonemic awareness
paired-associate memory
orthographic mapping
Key functions in math are:
concept understanding
paired-associate memory for math facts
long-term memory for rules and computational sequences
visual-spatial organization
strong attentional control
Each student brings to the lessons varying abilities to meet these demands. In completing our “Learning Strengths and Barriers Analysis” for the skill or subject you are teaching, you can determine those demands each student can and cannot easily meet, and consider this information when completing the next step.
Step 3
Develop and deliver a customized instructional plan.
All the tools you need to customize your instruction are built into our curriculums, thereby reducing your workload.
Tools included
- Templates on which to record a detailed instructional plan and others for follow-up reviews
- List of suggested accommodations for different barriers
An effective instructional plan for the skill or subject you are teaching has 4 main parts:
Learning goals and objectives — ones that are explicitly written, presented in small, manageable steps, arranged in a hierarchical sequence and measurable.
Curriculum — one in which the lessons are directly aligned with the goals and objectives, teaches the content using science-based practices and assesses the student’s proficiency at the end of each section or lesson.
Intensity of practice — instruction and practice that is concentrated enough to ensure satisfactory progress; includes the frequency and duration of instruction and, in some skills, the number of responses the student produces in a single lesson, week and month.
Accommodations — includes the environment in which you will deliver instruction (e.g., one-to-one in a separate room, small-group) and additional adaptations beyond those provided in the curriculums.
Step 4
Monitor progress and adjust instruction as needed.
Your students’ progress is not left to chance. We provide you with the tools to identify factors that facilitate or hinder each student’s progress and report this progress to others.
Tools included
- Initial Review of Student’s Instructional Plan
- Follow-Up Review of Student’s Instructional Plan
- Updated “Learning Goals and Objectives” for the given skill or subject
- Updated “Instructional Plan” showing any adjustments
- Student’s Academic Journal
- “Weekly Progress Report” template
- “Quarterly Progress Report” template
To determine the degree to which the student responds to the instructional plan for each skill or subject you are teaching, you record at given intervals the student’s practice intensity (e.g., number of practice exercises or lessons completed), then the goals and objectives he or she learned from this work. You then determine if the student’s rate of learning the goals and objectives is satisfactory or not, and adjust various parts of the instructional plan as needed.
To help you determine those factors that facilitate or hinder the student’s progress, you write daily or weekly notes in the student’s academic journal. To report each student’s progress to others, you might follow the templates for organizing and phrasing weekly and quarterly progress reports.
“The lessons are carefully structured, with built-in cumulative review and ample opportunities for practice and reinforcement. This helped students retain previously learned skills while steadily building new ones.”
See Our Teaching Approach Inside a Real Lesson
Get a free lesson and see how structured instruction, built-in accommodations and practical teaching guidance come together in every Manus Curriculums lesson.
Sample lesson mockup