Unpacking Curriculum: Adopt, Adapt, Apply

A three-step process for unpacking and implementing a pre-packaged curriculum.

DR. ROBERTA LENGER KANG
Center Director, CPET

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.

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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​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. 

RESOURCE: RIGORMETER

K-12 CURRICULAR SUPPORT

DESIGNING AUTHENTIC CURRICULUM