Your Role in Curriculum Mapping
Curriculum mapping provides your school with a method to continuously improve your curriculum through teacher feedback and the development of best practices. However, this process only works if your entire school community is actively engaged in the curriculum mapping process.
At a very basic level, curriculum maps should be used to keep track of what has been taught, and figure out what should be taught next. This document will not necessarily tell you HOW to teach, but rather indicate the content that must be covered throughout the class and how the understanding of this content will be assessed.
How do curriculum maps help teachers?
The purpose of a curriculum map is to document the relationship between every component of the curriculum. Used as an analysis, communication, and planning tool, a curriculum map:
- Allows educators to review the curriculum to check for redundancies, inconsistencies, misalignments, weaknesses, and gaps
- Documents the relationships between the required components of the curriculum and the intended student learning outcomes
- Helps identify opportunities for integration among disciplines
- Provides a review of assessment methods
- Identifies what students have learned, allowing educators to focus on building on previous knowledge
Balance content across grade levels
Teachers and administrators gain the opportunity to look into each class and understand what students actually learn. This information is used to identify redundancies or gaps in the course content. This also helps teachers and administrators assess the structure of the course, and the plan of when specific lessons or concepts are taught.
Standards alignment
This goes back to the horizontal alignment mentioned earlier. If there are 3 different Grade 9 Math classes at the school or district, each class will cover the same amount of content, and receive the same quality of instruction.
To learn more about the benefits of curriculum maps to teachers, check out our free guide.
The role of teachers
Recording throughout the term
Curriculum mapping is not a spectator sport. It demands teachers’ ongoing preparation and active participation. These maps should be referenced as part of your regular lesson planning process. This allows for an idea of what really took place in individual classrooms versus what was originally planned. The content that has been taught, and the strategies used to teach that content, should be measured in real time. It is recommended that data is recorded at least once a month in order to ensure that important details are not missed.
Curriculum maps are never “done”
As teachers are continually adding more information to curriculum maps, they are never actually finished. The notes added by the teacher each year address how varied student needs were accommodated within a lesson plan. Curriculum maps undergo ongoing development, in order to improve student learning and content quality across schools.
We go more in depth into the role of teachers in the curriculum mapping process in our free guide.
The role of administrators
Support
Curriculum maps should be viewable by all teachers and administrators within a school or district, ideally on a secure server that can be accessed through the internet. Administrators
should have a clear understanding of the intricacies of the mapping process and must provide continual support to teachers. Administrators at all levels should understand that curriculum mapping is a complex process with many moving parts. It must be well planned and executed until all teachers are involved. If curriculum mapping is not carried out in this manner, there is a good chance that curriculum mapping will fail or have to be restarted.
Curriculum map review and approval
Administrators will conduct the curriculum review process, allowing changes to be planned for the following year. We provide a detailed walk through of the curriculum map review process and approving changes in our free guide!
Curriculum mapping is an important step in ensuring that every teacher has the tools they need to be successful in their role. It is extremely important that your curriculum mapping integrates directly into each teacher’s workflow in order to create living documents. A curriculum document that is created once and then forgotten is not a curriculum map. Throughout the school year, encourage your teachers to use curriculum maps daily. Consider using software tools to make this process easy and seamless. Professional learning communities are also incredibly useful throughout this entire process.
Curriculum mapping allows teachers and administrators the freedom to adapt their curriculum to meet the needs of every student. Teachers will have have the best strategies for teaching the necessary content in their courses and can return to what matters most — their students.
Have you added curriculum mapping into your school, and are looking to ensure entire school adoption? Check out our free guide about creating living curriculum maps that will help create continuous curriculum development.
