KHIS Curriculum Mapping Process – A Vehicle for Collaborative Improvements in Teaching & Learning

1. KHIS Curriculum Mapping Process – A Vehicle for Collaborative Improvements in Teaching & Learning

2. Objectives for the Session • What is Curriculum Mapping? • How can Curriculum Mapping (CM) improve student performance? • Why is CM necessary to effectively implementing standards? • What will CM look like at KHIS into future? • When will we have the time to do all this?

3. “Curriculum Mapping has been one of the most beneficial initiatives undertaken by our system. It has not only helped us to truly align curriculum, removing gaps and overlaps; it has caused us to go through a process of examining what we do and why. This process has made teaching & learning more relevant and more efficient.”— Dr. Lyle C. Ailshie, Director, Greeneville City Schools(State of Tennessee, 2000)

4. How do you currently plan, record and communicate / share your curriculum? • Please make some notes and discuss with a neighbor.

5. Consider the big picture: Your students walk through the door on the first day of school. • What do you know about them? • Can you describe what they studied and what skills they applied in the grade prior to yours? • Without an effective means of surveying the big picture of curriculum over time, the student is the only one who really knows the path of his or her experience in school.

6. What is Curriculum Mapping? • Curriculum mapping is a process anchored in the school calendar, in which each teacher records, in real time, the content and skills taught and how they are assessed.

7. Curriculum mapping is a technique for exploring the primary elements of curriculum: • What is taught. • How instruction occurs. • When instruction is delivered .

8. How are… • Critical thinking • Reading • Numeracy • Writing • Vocabulary • General Learner Outcomes • Technology truly reflected throughout our school curriculum in a way that is connected to Standards?

9. The curriculum data: Content Skills Assessments are entered by month, which adds the time-bound element to the maps

10. Curriculum Mapping using the analogy of a road map

11. Drivers use the labels on maps to identify their driving destinations just as educators list content on their maps to identify leaning destinations. • Motorists use the roads and highways, as indicated by the lines on maps, to get them to their destinations just as educators list skills on maps to be used to assist learners in reaching the learning destinations. • As travelers progress through their journeys, they utilize the maps scale to assess their progress related to their destination just as educators list assessments they use assist learners in determining how close they are to their learning destinations.

12. Here are some very simple sample curriculum maps: Seventh Grade Curriculum Map - Life Science Middle School Curriculum Map - American Citizenship Grades 10-11 Curriculum Map - World History

13. When all of this data is consolidated into a map made accessible to groups of teachers, it enables each teacher to look at the content and skills taught, as well as how the skills are assessed.

14. Reading Break: • “The Need for Calendar Based Mapping” by Heidi Hayes Jacobs • While reading, think about the following: How might mapping help us as educators see the bigger picture as experienced by our students throughout their K-12 experience.

15. How might mapping help us as educators see the bigger picture as experienced by our students throughout their K-12 experience. • When you are finished, talk about this with a colleague.

16. Curriculum mapping is not an ideology or a philosophy of education. Rather, it is a tool that groups of educators use to lay out and reflect upon the path a curriculum takes over time.

17. The process of curriculum mapping asks teachers to rethink curriculum development in two very important ways.

18. 1. Each teacher's curriculum is made public. It is no longer an isolated action; it becomes information that is shared with colleagues. • Note: There is no formal evaluation tied to Curriculum Mapping. It is strictly an improvement process implemented to support professional educators improve their pedagogy.

19. 2. The curriculum is never "finished." Rather, it becomes an on-going dynamic process that is ever-changing — not a completed product. • HCPS I HCPS II HCPS III… • Increasing rate of information necessitates educators to constantly update and revise curriculum

20. It All Starts with the Teachers • Curriculum Mapping is a process that begins with the individual teacher and expands to include an entire department, grade level, faculty, or district. • Through the reflective collaborative process, educators are able to collectively refine curriculum to meet the fluctuating needs of their students

21. Reflective Collaborative Process • Teachers individually map their curriculum • Teachers spend time reviewing the curriculum of other teachers • Teachers collaborate to provide one another feedback from the map reviews • Teachers use this input to refine their curriculum

22. There are two methods for collecting curriculum mapping data

23. In a projected map, teachers plan and lay out what they expect to cover over the course of an entire school year. • As the year progresses, they make adjustments and change their plans accordingly. • This method requires teachers to project what they believe will be the content, skills, and assessments taught and implemented over the course of a school year.

24. In a diary map, just like in a real diary, teachers record what is operational on an ongoing basis at the end of each month, after teaching has occurred. • By the end of the school year, the year's worth of teaching will have been mapped.

25. The critical component of this part of the process is that teachers honestly communicate “what really happened” with regards to instruction in their classrooms once it occurred. • This is essential to the improvement process

26. What information do we collect initially on a Curriculum Map? • Content • Skills • Assessments

27. Content • The is the subject matter itself: key concepts, facts, events which may be included within a map • Content is the essential concepts and topics covered during a month.

28. Content Cont. • Content is written beginning with a noun. • Examples: Cultural diversity, water cycle, Hamlet, local government systems, bicycle safety.

29. Practice • On your sample map template, record one content entry in the appropriate column.

30. Skills • Skills are key abilities and processes students will develop related to specific content. They are not written as objectives (e.g., “students will…) but rather as statements. • Skills are written beginning with an action verb. • Examples: reading a map, writing a play, analyzing non-fiction text, and writing persuasive essays, matching words and pictures, inventing a device, comparing and contrasting two ideas…

31. Skills are displayed on maps as precise skills that can be: • Assessed / measured • Observed • Described in specific terms • Always begin a skill with an action verb

32. Practice • On your sample map template, record one skill entry on the appropriate column.

33. Assessments – listed as nouns on maps • Assessments are the products or performances that demonstrate student learning. • They demonstrate student understanding of the content and mastery of the skills. • Assessment goes beyond traditional tests, quizzes, and homework (these are important but should not be the only forms of assessment).

34. Each content – skill strand on a curriculum map should have a corresponding assessment (note: one assessment tool may address more than one concept-skill strand.) • Assessment is what the student does (the actual product or performance), not the evaluation tool used to assess the product (e.g., assessment is a group presentation, not the rubric used to assess the presentation). • Examples: web page, bicycle safety brochure, research paper, skit, debate, board game, PowerPoint presentation

35. Practice • On your sample map template, record one assessment entry on the appropriate column.

36. KHIS Faculty Maps developed to Date • 8th Grade Social Studies – Abey Q • 9th Grade Study Skills – Jessica Ladieu • Integrated Health Sciences Academy Map – Amy Swiderski, Krista Nielsen • Career Life Skills – Yvette McDonald

37. Curriculum planning and collaboration has always existed, but the process has been transformed into an effective tool for curriculum reform through the use of technology.

38. Utilizing Technology to help us work smarter Introducing:

39. How does the sharing occur? • Windward district is currently working to purchase a district license to the Rubicon Atlas Curriculum Mapping product. • Atlas provides educational institutions with access to an online data base educators can use to input and analyze their curricula data. • This data can be accessed from any computer with an internet connection. • Data entry is as easy as using any word processing program

40. Atlas is a Web-based curriculum management tool that electronically: • Incorporates curriculum mapping. • Tracks gaps and repetition in instruction. • Allows educators to easily align curriculum to benchmarks and standards.

41. Produces updated reports to encourage partnerships among educators • Facilitates sharing of ideas and communicating them rapidly across buildings, schools and grades. • Shares requirements with students. • Can be used (eventually) to showcase planned curriculum to teachers, administrators, students, parents and communities.

42. Let’s look at some screen shots from Atlas: • Curriculum data entry • Units presented across months • Curriculum Map View

43. Atlas provides the tools to help us take curricular development to the next level • Features easy to use application with intuitive functionality and graphics. • Offers interactive features to incorporate links to documents, movie clips, pictures, web resources and more. • Eliminates the need for printed distribution, but allows printing of any map on demand.

44. Saves time in entering and editing curriculum data.  You can type, cut & paste or drag & drop. • Access information any time from anywhere. • Design can be customized to individual schools and districts.

45. Imagine & Reflect • Imagine if every K-12 teacher within our complex had their entire curriculum mapped using a system that allowed all educators access to the maps of one another. • What type of potential could this have for improving the quality of instruction we provide for our students? THINK LONG TERM • Please discuss with a colleague.

46. Why Map?

47. One of the great problems in American education that could be addressed quite readily, and is starting to be addressed, is the lack of good communication between grade levels, between buildings. It's rare to find a middle school that knows what the elementary curriculum is in any depth, or [for] the high school to have any understanding; so integration is the kids' experience integrated over time as well as during the course of any school year. It's a more dynamic definition than the old way.     —Heidi Hayes Jacobs (2004)

48. Hasn’t Much of this been done in the past? • Many Home groups have went through a similar process in the past. • A major goal is to have all curricula at KHIS documented on a digital data base so that it is accessible to all share holders. • As veteran teachers leave our school, usually their years of experience leave with them. • A major goal of this process is providing future generations of teachers access to curricula data generated over time.

49. Curriculum mapping is a strong tool for curriculum planning. • You meet with your colleagues on a regular basis to reflect on the work you're doing in your classrooms to create a coherent and consistent curriculum, both horizontally (within a grade level and/or content area) and vertically (across grade levels).

50. This kind of close, regular collaboration between teachers has the potential to change the way a faculty works together to plan their curriculum