How do I use the Teaching Handbook? | Soomo Instructor Support Help Center

Overview

The Soomo Teaching Handbook provides research-informed guidance to help you put active learning into practice. While our instructor guides offer chapter-specific activity and discussion prompts, the Teaching Handbook offers suggestions for planning, structuring, and facilitating those activities successfully.

Inside the handbook, you will find a collection of short, downloadable PDFs with recommendations for effective active learning, whether you’re looking to try something new or refine your current approach.

This screenshot shows the “Teaching Handbook” page. The page features introductory text, a cover preview image, and sections titled “What is active learning?” and “Discussion structures.” Bulleted lists of hyperlinked text appear beneath each section title.

The Teaching Handbook is currently available in Biology: Life at Every Level, Sociology: You Are Here, Psychology in the Real World, Central Ideas in American Government, Civics Reader, and Texas Politics.

Accessing the Teaching Handbook

There are two ways to access the Teaching Handbook in your webtext.

From the Table of Contents

Open the Table of Contents in the upper-left corner of your webtext, and expand the Instructor Guides section. From there, select Teaching Handbook.

Screenshot of the expanded Table of Contents showing the “Teaching Handbook” page within the Instructor Guides section

Within individual instructor guides

Handbook resources are linked within each chapter’s instructor guide so you can quickly access resources while planning.

This screenshot shows a webtext page with chapter resources. Hyperlinks embedded in the text direct users to PDF resources in the Teaching Handbook.

Planning active learning experiences

Successful activities begin before students enter the classroom. The handbook offers practical tips for planning and preparing active learning experiences, including:

Working through activities in advance to gauge timing and define strong answers
Anticipating common misconceptions and preparing follow-up questions
Using student data—such as webtext responses—to inform lesson plans and instruction
Establishing a clear purpose and explicit structure for activities and discussions so students understand the “why” and “how” of what they are being asked to do

Screenshot of a three-column table outlining active learning strategies, implementation methods, and classroom examples

Choosing activity and discussion structures

Different learning goals require different activity formats. The handbook provides guidance and suggestions for matching activity and discussion structures with your instructional goals, including:

Activity structures: concept mapping, collaborative problem-solving, scenario analysis, and connecting concepts to examples
Discussion structures: whole class, small group, and think-pair-share discussions

This screenshot shows a two-column table describing various discussion structures and their specific classroom uses. Rows outline options for whole class, small group, and think-pair-share formats.

Facilitating discussions and activities

Strong facilitation keeps classroom interactions focused on learning. You can explore resources that address key skills, including:

Scaffolding questions to guide student thinking
Using wait time to give students room to process ideas
Responding in real time to extend students’ ideas and maintain momentum

This screenshot shows a three-column table detailing moves for responding to strong student answers with implementation steps and example phrases. Strategies cover recasting student language and acknowledging points to pivot the discussion.

Maximizing Soomo resources

The Teaching Handbook includes dedicated guidance to help you get the most out of your course tools, including:

Using lecture slides to facilitate active learning. Visit our article, How do I download lecture slides? to get started.
Leveraging Analytics data to track student performance and inform how you spend class time. For more information, visit our Analytics Help Center collection.

To explore additional tools and materials—such as test banks and instructor guides—check out our complete Instructor Resources Help Center collection.

If you have any questions, click the Soomo Messenger button in the lower-right corner. You can also contact us using the information below.

(888) 240-0314
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support@soomolearning.com