By DR. ROBERTA LENGER KANG

A well-developed and effective curriculum is the cornerstone of an excellent education. Many schools go to great lengths to ensure that they can identify a highly-rated curriculum on behalf of their students. This often means spending a great deal of money to purchase a complete, professionally-designed curriculum which may include textbooks, web-based resources, unit plans, scripted lesson plans, and student-facing resources. 

But there’s a big difference between having the curriculum and teaching the curriculum. It isn’t as simple as reading aloud from the Teacher’s Guide. Unpacking a pre-packaged curriculum takes focused and continuous effort on the part of teachers and their whole school community. When we work with schools who are implementing a new curriculum, we advise using a three-step process: adopt, adapt, apply.

Adopt

The curriculum is the driving force behind the teaching and learning within a course. Whether a school is moving from one curriculum to another, or moving from teacher-designed to a pre-packaged curriculum, there’s a lot of work that goes into adopting something new. We encourage school leaders and teachers to unpack the curriculum materials by focusing on three main pieces — structure, key components, and tensions — and making connections to current instructional practices, student culture, and school climate.

• Unpacking structure: We first want to acknowledge that every curriculum is developed differently, with a particular set of values and beliefs about what is important to teach, what teaching methods are most effective, and how the content should be structured and organized. When adopting a curriculum, first look to understand the structure of the curriculum materials and teaching methods, as well as the organization of the unit and lesson plans. Make notes about how these structures are similar or different than the structures at your school. 

• Unpacking key components: Within any curriculum, there are some components that are critical to the execution of the goals, while other components are stylistic choices that have a negligible impact on the learning experience. When adopting a curriculum, consider how the critical components work together and how they are organized throughout the materials. In this analysis, it should become clear what is essential and what is enrichment.

• Unpacking tensions: Pre-packaged curriculum is developed for the ideal classes where all students have prior knowledge of past lessons, arrive on grade level at the beginning of the school year, speak perfect English, and are never absent. It is essential for us to identify the places where the curriculum has made assumptions about our teaching conditions, our students’ background knowledge and skills, and our school’s systems and structures. We need to highlight these assumptions as tensions between the ideal and the real. These will be key points to examine when we begin to adapt the curriculum. 

Adapt

Even the very, very best curriculum cannot be used straight out of the box. For a curriculum to be highly effective, it must be adapted to meet the needs of students, the style and personality of the teacher, and the mission and vision of the school community. After taking time to understand the curriculum’s structure, key components, and tensions, we’re ready to begin making adaptations.

• Adapting rigor, content, and context: It’s worth restating that pre-packaged curricula makes the assumption that all students show up on day one with grade level content knowledge and skills that are aligned with state or national standards. This is rarely the case, as our classrooms are filled with diverse learners. Whether we’re working with students who are above or below grade level, we will need to adapt the rigor, the content knowledge, or the context of the curriculum to meet the needs of our students. This might mean that we make some tasks more complex, and some tasks simpler. It might mean that we need to add a few lessons to provide background knowledge, or pre-teach some concepts in order to build a bridge between the curriculum and the students. 

• Timing: When we adapt the rigor, content, or context of the curriculum, we recognize that we’ll likely need to adapt the timing. If students enter the course below grade level, it will take them longer to complete the tasks outlined in a lesson. If students enter the course above grade level, they will finish faster. Working out the timing of lessons or units is essential — if students are working at a slower pace, teachers need to make critical decisions about which units to include and which to skip. If students are working faster, teachers will need to identify what they’ll do with the extra time they have between units or at the end of the school year. 

• Differentiation: There may be some recommendations for differentiating instruction in a pre-packaged curriculum, but it certainly won’t be customized to meet the specific needs of students in a teacher’s class. It won’t be able to anticipate the wide range of special needs, language levels, personalities, areas of interest, cultural backgrounds, or regional values. Effective instruction requires teachers to customize their teaching to their specific students, which means differentiating instruction and personalizing the curriculum.

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• Assessment: Most pre-packaged curriculum comes from national or international organizations and publishing companies that are designing lessons and assessments for a wide and broad audience. But in the US, high-stakes assessments vary from state to state, and assessment expectations can vary across districts, schools, and even teachers. When implementing a pre-packaged curriculum, we want to do a crosswalk between the assessments embedded in the curriculum and the high-stakes assessments for which students and teachers will be held accountable. If there is not a clear alignment between the two, this is a critical area to adapt. We cannot assume that students will naturally perform well on assessments they’ve never been exposed to. 

Apply

After adopting the curriculum by unpacking its components, and adapting the curriculum to meet the needs of the community, educators will feel more confident to begin implementing the curriculum. 

• Translate curriculum maps, unit, and lesson plans: Even when applying a pre-packaged curriculum, we recommend that teachers translate the curricular materials into their own curriculum maps, unit, and lesson plans rather than relying on the package alone. In the translation of these planning documents, teachers will make meaning of the prescriptive lessons and personalize them for a more authentic roll out. Additionally, because packaged curriculum is for a broad audience, it is often extremely detailed and explicit‚ making some unit or lesson plans difficult to read or reference in the moment. When teachers translate the materials using their own templates and processes, they are able to hold onto the main points and utilize tools they’re already familiar with to support their planning and implementation. 

 

• Reflect regularly: We also encourage educators to engage in regular cycles of critical reflection. Whether this is individual reflection or as a department or grade level team, when teachers reflect on the implementation of their lesson, they have immediate feedback from students and their own analysis of what worked and what didn’t. This reflection will help to articulate why, and will allow teachers to make notes for future planning. 

 

• Revise as necessary: Whether the curriculum is pre-packaged or teacher-designed, we want to commit to keeping the curriculum as a living document that is revised and refined regularly to meet the needs of students in a rapidly changing world. Teachers can consider revising the curriculum throughout the year, or setting aside time at the end of the year or during the summer to review their reflections and revise their curriculum all at one time. In either case, regular revision will keep the course fresh for teachers and relevant to students. 

​Curriculum design is an intensive and demanding process. Schools and districts can save teachers time by investing in high-quality curricula that allows teachers to focus on implementing instruction rather than on curriculum design. But in the process, we must remember that it isn’t as simple as pulling it out of the box and reading aloud from the book on the day of the lesson. School leaders will want to create space and time for teachers to analyze the adopted curriculum, make adaptations necessary to meet students’ needs, and apply it in their classes after critical reflection and opportunities for revision. Following through with these practices will ensure that the curriculum is being implemented with fidelity, integrity, and authenticity. 

By DR. ROBERTA LENGER KANG

When the back to school sales are at their peak, students and parents are picking out the cutest notebooks and the coolest backpacks. Meanwhile, educators are feeling the pressure and anxiety that comes with the start of the school year — particularly as they think about their curriculum. 

Different school communities and districts have different approaches to designing curriculum. Some purchase big box curriculum sets with prescribed lessons, while others have the opportunity to design their own, which can be exciting — and also a bit daunting. 

Cultivating a course curriculum is one of the most important and most complicated tasks for educators. It requires deep content knowledge and an accurate anticipation of student ability throughout the school year. Teachers need to differentiate the most important content and the most important skills in the most effective sequence — all while knowing that the decision to teach one thing is also the decision not to teach a hundred other things. The pressure to plan it in just the right way can be overwhelming.

This process will always be a challenge, but it doesn’t have to be painful! In our curriculum-focused coaching projects, we support educators as they examine, design, implement, and refine customized or adapted curricula. Each educator and classroom is unique, but curriculum planning often brings up common questions. Below are some of the most frequently asked questions we hear from educators as we support them in the planning process. 

What goes into a curriculum map?

A well-developed curriculum map should provide an overview of the course at-a-glance. Maps are most valuable when they include a clear picture of the course goals, how those goals intersect with the content knowledge, thinking skills, relevant standards, and a plan for assessments. Here’s a good checklist for a curriculum map:
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• Sequence of units aligned chronologically (Unit 1, 2, 3 . . . Marking period 1, 2, 3 . . . Quarter 1, 2, 3) 
• Course goals (Teaching objectives, essential questions, enduring understandings)
• Content knowledge (Key concepts, topics, themes, or vocabulary)
• Thinking skills (Critical thinking skills, or academic skills)
• Relevant standards (Reference to 2 -3 relevant standards to the unit)
• Assessments (Brief description of the formative and summative assessments for each unit)

What’s the difference between a curriculum map and a unit plan? 

A curriculum map provides an overview or summary of the course, while a unit plan provides the details needed to develop each individual lesson. A unit plan may include specific resources to use in a particular unit, a pacing calendar that outlines the learning goals for each week or each day, lists of vocabulary words, and a plan for differentiating instruction for different learners. Unit plans tend to be longer and include more explicit plans that illustrate the arc of the unit and provide the necessary details to develop daily lesson plans.

There is a critical distinction between the curriculum map as an overview and the unit plan as the detailed guide to support lesson planning. Curriculum maps that include unit plan-level details often become massive documents that are difficult to read. They can become a dumping ground for edu-speak-jargon that doesn’t really mean anything. As educators, we want to remember that these documents are tools to support and facilitate our planning process. If they don’t do that, they aren’t ultimately very valuable. 

How much detail should be included?

When it comes to the curriculum map, we want to include information clearly and succinctly, which means we can eliminate jargon or unnecessary details. For example, it’s valuable to list relevant standards on a curriculum map because it will give a picture of how all standards are being addressed throughout the school year and how they’re sequenced within each unit. However, standards often have a lot of very specific, formal language. Simply copying and pasting the entire standard into the curriculum map is thorough, but not always helpful. It isn’t reasonable to expect that anyone will read with that level of specificity, it isn’t particularly helpful to teachers who need to see these standards broken down in the unit plan, and it can become extremely repetitive if the units utilize the same standards. In these situations, we recommend using the standard code, and summarizing the standard in a short phrase or sentence. This provides a simple and clear alignment with the standard, demonstrates the educator’s understanding of the standard, and keeps the information focused and clear. The same rule can be applied in other categories as well.

How should the map be formatted?

Formatting is often a personal choice, and different people prefer different styles. We recommend using a horizontal chart with a column for each critical component, and a row for each unique unit. The value of this format is the at-a-glance nature. If we can read from left to right along a row, we’re getting an overview of each unit in the course. When we can complete the curriculum map in 1-2 pages, we get a good picture of the course goals and the sequence of learning the students will experience. This allows the curriculum map to act as a touchstone planning tool for teachers, and becomes a great document to share with school leaders, parents, and even students.

Can curriculum maps be changed?

One of the things that makes writing curriculum a daunting task is the sense of its permanence. It makes sense to want to keep the curriculum fluid, as the most effective teaching is influenced by a wide range of variables like current events, student cohorts, and shifts or changes in the field. The fear of permanence can often become a justification for not creating a curriculum map. But the benefits of long-term planning, for teachers especially, cannot be underestimated. 

The most effective curriculum maps are living documents that provide planning support to teachers throughout the year and communicate the intentions of the course to others (administrators, parents, students, other teachers). We recommend that teachers regularly reflect on their lessons and unit plans as they’re implementing the curriculum so that they can make adjustments, remember what worked and what didn’t, and update the curriculum as necessary. We revisit our curriculum over the summer or at the beginning of the school year to account for the learning of the previous year. 

What are the steps I should follow to make a curriculum map? 

In the curriculum mapping process, we see a relatively consistent approach that favors backwards planning, which suggests that teachers should first determine the end point (the ultimate goal or final assessment) and then plan backwards from there. This process is meant to create a clear alignment between content, skills, and instruction. 

If this process works for you, use it! The problem is that this process doesn’t apply to all teachers or all situations. When it doesn’t work, it can create major obstacles in the development process. Our recommendation is to start with what you know, generate your ideas based on any entry point you can find, and fill in the blanks along the way. Then, reflect and revise on the plan from an alignment perspective to ensure that the planning process maintains instructional integrity.

When I was in high school, my English teacher, Mrs. Horn, required her students to write a research paper. This process included daily trips to the school library, where I used a card catalog to look up the name of a book that may, or may not, have the information I was looking for. Once I found a book in the card catalog, I had to hunt for it using the Dewey decimal system, locate the book, and then begin searching for the basic facts about my topic. Mrs. Horn was a stickler for notecards. Our research papers needed to have 75 accompanying index cards so that we could organize our information one fact at a time, before typing it out on the word processor or typewriter.

How times have changed. Most school libraries today have more space dedicated to technology than books, and the long process of searching through dusty publications or old-timey microfiche has become a thing of the past. But here’s the thing: the importance of research papers hasn’t changed. And the importance of research hasn’t changed. What has changed is our access to information. 

Shifting educational landscape

The radical advancement of technology and the internet has fundamentally changed our relationship with information. A 20th century education taught us how to find information — but finding information is no longer a problem. If anything, in the 21st century, we have access to too much! With hundreds of thousands of hits through internet searches and recommendations for related information, the question is no longer how to find the facts, but what to do with the information that’s literally a click away. How do we interpret this information? This is the question that teachers and school leaders struggle with as they attempt to make key concepts relevant to children in a rapidly changing world.

These advances in technology have not only changed our relationship to information, they’ve changed our relationship to other people. Instant connection, instant messaging, and instant information-sharing have changed the landscape of interactions.

Educating students for tomorrow, today

We can no longer sustain a 20th century mindset in a 21st century world. The Global Learning Alliance (GLA), with its commitment to cross-cultural research collaborations and a desire to define a pedagogy that takes into account the dynamic needs of a shifting educational landscape, knows that the task before us is to educate students today for the world they’re poised to lead tomorrow.

The GLA is the outgrowth of CPET’s ground-breaking research on the features and practices surrounding 21st century teaching and learning. It has evolved from the seeds of a research project and is now a consortium of schools and universities around the world dedicated to understanding, defining, applying, and sharing the principles and practices of a world-class education within a wide range of educational contexts. As a result of ongoing research, we have been customizing the Global Mindset Framework, a tool that helps educators consider new skills for a new world. 

The Global Mindset Framework builds on the importance of the critical thinking skills of the 20th century by fostering skills in collaboration, creativity, caring, and global consciousness. 
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​If we want to ensure that our students are developing the skills needed for the next hundred years, we must begin considering a new pedagogy for a new era. We must consider the implications on our curriculum, assessments, and instruction, if we are going to add these essential skills in our schools.