Searching the Lesson Library
Discover a comprehensive library of educational resources and learn effective strategies to quickly search and find the perfect lesson for your classroom.
To understand how lessons appear in the lesson library, you first need to have some familiarity with Compass Curriculum lesson formats. Please see this article for an overview of these lessons.
Lesson Data
Lessons in Compass Curriculum are categorized by various pieces of meta-data which allows you to sort and filter each one. The most important types of metadata are:
Title
The title is one of the most important pieces of meta-data and conveys what the lesson is about. This is the most common type of data to search for with the keyword search:
One thing to keep in mind is that the keyword search will look for exactly the word that you type into it. So often... less is more with the keyword search. For example, if I was looking for growth mindset, I might use the word "grow" to find everything that mentions growing, grow, and growth.
Or, I might be more specific and just type in "Growth Mindset" to ensure I'm only getting lessons with that exact phrase:
Description
The description of the lesson allows for more robust keyword searching as there will be some lessons where a concept is discussed but the title doesn't reflect that. For example, if I was looking for lessons about growth mindset, the lesson "Learning to Love Your Failures" would not show up on a title search because growth mindset is not in the title. However, growth mindset is part of the description.
In Compass, the Keyword search takes into account the Title and Description.
Curriculum
The curriculum corresponds to the Compass program that each lesson was created for.
Please Note: Just because a certain lesson was created for a purpose (i.e. tier 1 SEL) doesn't mean that the lesson can't be used for another reason (i.e. Tier 2/3 intervention). Each program is purchased separately, but when multiple programs are being used, each lesson can be used for any student and any reason.
The curricula are:
Student
Compass Curriculum for Student is the core SEL part of the Compass library and is the most popular Compass program. Most schools/districts utilize Compass Curriculum for Student as a Tier 1 SEL education program for every student.
Intervention
These lessons are available for Tier 2/3 behavioral intervention modules for students who have exhibited repeat and/or undesirable behavior in the past.
Mental Health
These lessons are specifically about mental health (as opposed to broader SEL) and there are state-level specific curricula to support mandated mental health instruction:
Family
These lessons are available for families to engage with in an elective library and can be assigned to families if needed.
Staff
These lessons are meant to teach SEL to staff as well as address certain staff level challenges.
Character Ed
These lessons are specifically for those schools/districts that are looking for a less comprehensive character ed program than schools that are implementing Compass Curriculum for Student.
Grade
Each lesson has a specific target grade or grade band. This allows lessons to be used every year without students needing to repeat lessons. That said, any lesson within a grade band is typically appropriate for other grades within that same band. Therefore, the filters are by grade band:
Theme
Each lesson is tagged with a theme in Compass. These themes are meant to allow teachers/staff to find lessons that relate to one another. For example, if I found a lesson in Grade 6 about a topic that I wanted to convey to my 3rd graders, I might search that theme in a younger grade.
Please note: the filters in the lesson library "stack" on top of each other. When you have ALL of the filters on, it will restrict your search. We recommend that you use EITHER the theme search or the keyword search, but not both. If you are not seeing any results, it is likely because you have a too narrow filter selected. Remove something from your filters to broaden your search.
CASEL Competency
The CASEL competency corresponds to the 5 CASEL competencies. Each lesson in the library is focused on a single competency and our assessment questions are all tied to a competency. If you have students with low scores in a particular competency and you are looking to re-teach that particular competency, we recommend that you start your search with lessons tied to that competency.
Now your turn
The best way to get familiar with the lesson library is to search it! Remember, the more you practice with the lesson library, the better you'll become at finding the lessons that you want for your students.
Here are some sample searches you can do:
Find all of grade 3-5 lessons that relate to the CASEL competency "Relationship Skills" in the Compass Curriculum for Student library
Find all of Grade 6-12 lessons with the keyword "bullying" in the Behavior Intervention library.
