In need of K-8 math lesson plans? Struggling to find material suitable for your students who are English learners, or have learning or attention disabilities? IBM’s Teacher Advisor With Watson provides instructional materials for math teachers via their free web tool and explains their new functionality in a recent press release below:

Teacher Advisor With Watson, launched in September 2017 and now helping nearly 12,000 elementary teachers improve their teaching skills, is adding new content and functionality in time for the upcoming school year. With a goal of better serving more teachers, Teacher Advisor has added new instructional materials and features to support grades 6, 7 and 8 math teachers and, importantly, now offers specific resources focused on the needs of students with learning and attention issues.

Teacher Advisor is an IBM Watson-powered web tool designed in partnership with educators that is intended to save teachers valuable time as they plan highly effective lessons, with the end goal of raising student achievement. This philanthropic resource has over 8,000 quality lesson plans, student-facing activities, and classroom strategies, all vetted by high performing educators and math coaches.

To enhance the offering, the IBM Foundation partnered with the National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD) to create a set of custom math modules for grades K-5. These resources provide teachers with evidence-based strategies to help them meet the needs of students with learning and attention issues, the majority of whom spend 80 percent or more of their time in general education classrooms. “The strategies we at NCLD are providing through Teacher Advisor With Watson will not only help the one in five students with learning and attention issues succeed, but they are actually effective for all kids,” said NCLD President and CEO Mimi Corcoran. “We know teachers are hungry for this information, and we are so excited to be partnering with the IBM Foundation to infuse these evidence-based strategies into general education materials for teachers across the country.”

Learn more from a Teacher Advisor With Watson webinar here or from the following slides.

Yasmin Bendaas

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Yasmin Bendaas is a Science writer.  A North Carolina native, she received her master’s degree in Science & Medical Journalism at UNC Chapel Hill, where she was a Park Fellow. She received her Bachelor of Arts in anthropology in 2013 from Wake Forest University, where she double-minored in journalism and Middle East and South Asia studies. As an undergraduate student, Bendaas gained insight into public health when she interned at the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust, a statewide grantmaker focused on rural health, including access to primary care, diabetes, community-centered prevention, and mental health and substance abuse. 

As a journalist, Bendaas has been funded twice by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting for fieldwork in Algeria — first to cover a disappearing indigenous tattoo tradition, and again to look at how climate change affects rural sheepherding practices.