Curriculum Mapping Wednesday October 29 Pierre High School

Presenter Allan Bertram Assistant High School Principal Chamberlain High School

Our Story 4 th Year of Mapping Full Circle – Started with little direction and vision of what we wanted. Learned from Mistakes and Made improvements. Implementing Maps to enhance student achievement and teaching practices.

Curriculum Mapping “Curriculum mapping makes teachers’ work transparent. This transparency can make mapping seem threatening. It also becomes a key tool for sustaining PLCs. Mapping becomes an electronic town square where educators can collaborate and exchange ideas” Heidi Hayes Jacobs

Why Map? Guaranteed Viable Curriculum –All Schools must show what is being taught in all classrooms. –Unlike other forms, maps are a living document in that they are flexible, collaborative, and allows teachers to reflect on what they are doing in the classroom. –Resource – Excellent opportunity to share with instructors from other districts. –Research proven – Marzano “What Works in Schools”

What Happens ? Departments can investigate the map to identify gaps in the vertical and horizontal alignment. Creates a snapshot of the educational activities of every classroom within the district. Captures the content, skills, assessment, and standards taught by every teacher. Organizes the information into a visual that presents an overall timeline of instruction.

Issues Time – Mapping is work intensive on the front end. This must be considered in starting. Training – Staff must be properly trained to be able to utilize the maps in the right way. Communication and Collaboration – Hard for teachers to work together – Must overcome this. Over kill – To much info in maps. Keep it simple, but important.

Positives - Individual Enhances teacher quality – Staff use tech paths to guide their instruction in a standard based method. Reports allow individual staff to see what standards they are using and what they need to do a better job on. Access to a large data base of lessons and ideas for classroom enhancement

Collaboration “Successful schools are places where teams of teachers meet regularly to focus on student work through assessment and change their instructional strategies accordingly to get better results” Fullan

Positives - Collaboration Vertical Alignment – K-12 staff get together to see what standards in core subject areas are hit with different frequency. – Guides instruction. PLC’s – Professional Learning Communities.

Support Tech Paths Leadership Team –Made up of members from elementary, middle, and high school staff. –Meet once a month. –Mentors for rest of staff in Curriculum mapping. –Go between staff and admin. –Trained to implement all aspects of tech paths. –Divide up staff to mentor and help.

Support District Wide Level Grant Program –$500 individual stipend to different groups who want to complete a researched base project implementing tech paths into school achievement. –Late starts – Once per month – used to put maps together – Used last two years. –Early Dismissals – Used now – update maps. –Inservice – Collaboration – Map Time –Department Meetings – Maps are part of each

What we Map Content – The essential concepts and topics covered – Begins with a noun. Skills – key abilities and processes students will develop related to specific content. Written beginning with a verb. Assessment – what the student does – research paper, power point. Standards – The state standards that we meet through teaching of the lesson.

Example

Questions???