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CURRICULUM MAP EXAMPLES: AIMS, BENEFITS, AND CHALLENGES INVOLVED IN CURRICULUM
MAPPING

May 18th, 2022

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Kim Tunnell, Ed.D.

Vice President of Educational Operational Services

Curriculum mapping is a method of organizing and aligning instruction used to
determine what is taught and when based upon national and state mandated
standards. These content roadmaps vary based on how the administration or
development team wants to introduce learning targets, practice exercises,
assessments, and remediation, so no two are the same. In addition, this plan can
reveal gaps in the curriculum to help refine a district’s scaffolding plan to
ensure seamless transition with discipline content and throughout grade levels.

Here are some example curriculum maps:

 * Kennett High School

 * Cloverleaf High School

 * Westmont Hilltop High School

 * Cumberland Valley High School

Before the advent of computers and the internet, teachers would design
curriculum maps on paper and poster board. Today, teachers use spreadsheets,
software programs, templates, and online services specifically dedicated to
curriculum mapping to simplify the process.


WHAT DOES A CURRICULUM MAP INCLUDE? 

Usually, a curriculum map includes a complete plan for converting the curriculum
standards into individual lessons. A basic map includes materials, lessons,
assessments, and a chronological sequence of instruction organized by learning
segment (i.e. by semester and further divided into 9 or 6 week chunks).

A basic curriculum map consists of:

 * Standards – State, governmental, or other mandated learning expectations for
   each discipline

 * Sequences – The logical order in which a teacher presents the standards to
   provide seamless instruction

An advanced curriculum map will include the following fundamentals in addition
to basic standards.

 * Content – Subject matter, including the key concepts, facts, and events that
   facilitate instruction

There are three standard categories for content:

 * Discipline-based: focuses on a specific subject

 * Interdisciplinary: focuses on connections between two or more subjects

 * Student-centered: focuses on student-specific interests



 * Skills – Specific target abilities from curriculum standards that teachers
   observe, assess, and document, often expressed through verbs (i.e. write,
   calculate)

 * Assessments – Any number of broad approaches designed to evaluate student
   learning

 * Activities – Specific actions conducted within a classroom to drive student
   mastery in skills and standards

 * Resources – Required materials that teachers can access to supplement the
   student’s understanding of content or improve classroom engagement

 * Essential Questions – Core considerations that students should contemplate
   and engage in to indicate their understanding of presented content

 * Pacing Guide – Helps teachers stay on track and ensure curricular continuity
   across schools in the district. This should include anticipated timelines for
   teaching each unit.

 * Units – Concepts and learning goals that teachers teach over a set period of
   time
   
   


WHAT IS THE AIM OF CURRICULUM MAPPING? 

A curriculum map should be well-organized and purposefully designed to
facilitate learning. It should avoid academic gaps and needless repetition while
maintaining alignment across lessons, courses, subject areas, and grade levels.
When teachers map a curriculum, they establish a solid plan so that students can
meet academic expectations in a particular subject area or grade level.

A curriculum map aims to achieve a few common goals:

 * Vertical Alignment

Curriculum mapping ensures that teaching is purposefully structured and
logically sequenced across grades so that students build on previous knowledge.
When a curriculum is vertically aligned or vertically coherent, student
knowledge is designed to smoothly transition from one grade’s content to the
next, with all prerequisite skills covered so that the student is fully prepared
for the next level. This process prepares the knowledge and skills in a way that
progressively guides them toward challenging, higher-level work.

 * Horizontal Alignment

When a curriculum is horizontally aligned or horizontally coherent, what
students learn in one ninth-grade biology course, for example, is similar to
what other students are learning in the same class universally, regardless of
the teacher or school. All assessments, tests, and other methods of evaluation
are based on the course content and learning standards governing that particular
course, subject area, or grade level.

 * Subject Area Coherence

When a curriculum is coherent within a single subject area—such as mathematics,
science, or history—it ensures teachers within the discipline are working toward
the same learning goals and standards while presenting students with the same
high quality instruction and content.

 * Interdisciplinary Coherence

When a curriculum is coherent across multiple subject areas, it combines content
from different disciplines to enhance learning and help students understand that
each subject does not operate in an isolated vacuum. This aspect of curriculum
mapping focuses on integrating skills and work habits that students need for
succeeding across many academic courses. For example, improving
interdisciplinary coherence across a curriculum includes teaching students
reading and writing skills in all academic courses; not just English courses.


BENEFITS OF CURRICULUM MAPPING

Curriculum mapping helps teachers determine whether the content and learning
targets are aligned and may reveal any content gaps that may require
scaffolding.

A curriculum mapping benefits program design by:

 * Engaging students in their learning and developing life-long, ethical
   learners

 * Ensuring coherent and meaningful curriculum as the course series is designed
   to achieve learning targets

 * Following steady, systematic, and incremental educational best practices

 * Supporting student learning and development while adhering to coherence and
   integration

 * Upholding staff professional responsibility (intentionally cultivating and
   assessing student learning)

 * Facilitating teacher collaboration

 * Addressing accountability issues, including mandated standards, program
   review, academic quality, program prioritization, and budgeting concerns

 * Implementing assessment programs targeted toward student success and growth

 * Encouraging curriculum enhancements and engagement

 * Stimulating the immersion of curriculum, teaching, and learning


POTENTIAL CHALLENGES OF CURRICULUM MAPPING

Here are some common challenges district staff and teachers face when curriculum
mapping:

 * Course Prioritization

Organizing so many courses effectively can be complicated. It is better to start
simple and only include required courses or targeted subject areas for your
academic program. With these established baselines, it is easier to branch into
supporting courses, and then elective courses.

 * Single Courses with Multiple Instructors

Sorting this dilemma requires coordination among course teachers as well as
standardization of content and assessments. Collaborating with teachers to
discuss which Standards and Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) the course will
support and how best to assess student learning can help staff arrive at a
consensus for common expectations.

 * Curriculum-driven Assessment

Although the curriculum drives the assessment, the Standards and SLOs shape the
curriculum. Consider the overriding objectives first. This concept may be
foreign to some programs derived from short-lived trends and individual
instructor interests, but an effective curriculum is planned and designed, not
the result of random evolution. When analyzing your curriculum for mapping, keep
the SLOs, not the courses, central to the conversation.


FINAL THOUGHTS

Curriculum mapping provides an analytic framework for better understanding of
skills and subject matter associated with mandated standards. It is designed to
provide a smooth transition from lower to higher level skills and ensure that
each student receives the same content and quality of instruction to perform
successfully. Students will be able to transfer these skills from grade to grade
as well as discipline to discipline with the final goal of transferring learning
outside of school containment to real life in the outside world.



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