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Rapid City Area Schools |
The South Dakota Content Standards articulate an essential core of knowledge and skills that the state as a whole wants students to master. Standards clarify what students are expected to know and be able to do at various points in their K-12 academic career. Local adoption and implementation of state standards ensures that the education students receive is consistently strong across all of South Dakota, and that completion of high school has common meaning throughout the state.
Developing state standards is a challenging undertaking. In South Dakota, it has been a combined effort of the South Dakota Board of Education, veteran educators, state agency staff, senior scholars, interested citizens, and high-level policymakers. The most recent phase began with the common-sense notion that an academic standard must be clear, specific and measurable. Further, it must be simply stated in plain English and written for the general public as well as for educators.
The core of knowledge and skills set forth as board-adopted Standards is essential to prepare South Dakota students for work, for post-secondary education, for responsible citizenship, and for personal fulfillment as life-long learners. Standards serve to focus discussion and to develop consensus on common goals for South Dakota education. At the same time, the Standards do not represent a curriculum nor do they reduce the local school’s responsibility for curriculum planning or determining instructional approaches. In fact, the Standards challenge communities, schools and teachers to work together in implementing effective instructional strategies so that all students can achieve to high levels.
The Content Standards define only the core elements of education that should apply to all students without regard to their specific career and academic plans. Every student is expected to achieve goals that are broader than those outlined by the Standards. At the high school level, for instance, many students heading directly to post-secondary study or to the workplace will require learning experiences that are outside of the essential core in specific content areas set forth in the Standards.
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SDCL 13-3-48 states that "school districts shall adopt and implement
clearly defined and measurable course guidelines so as to meet the
state academic content standards." Language arts and mathematics
guidelines adopted by local boards of education on July 1, 1999;
guidelines for social studies and science were adopted on July 1, 2000.
Curriculum Maps
Overview
Curriculum maps cover a wide range of important curricular activities. Typically, they attempt to:
Depending on available technology, curricular maps can be simple or elaborate, and can encompass individual schools or complete systems, such as the curriculum map organized by Spotsylvania County Public Schools. Information can even be entered into a purchased software package that organizes the data and provides keyword searches to locate specific curricular information.
Regardless of the organization method, curriculum maps address the major ideas and projects that drive a class, as opposed to attempting to map every topic of discussion in classrooms, which would unnecessarily consume time and energy. One of the most important features of curriculum maps is that they are geared to the school calendar, and each teacher's time line is precisely displayed on the map.
Who creates the curriculum map?
There are two groups of people crucial to the creation of a curriculum map: the teachers who provide the information and the curriculum team who organize the information.
The curriculum team begins working before asking teachers to become involved. This group creates a vision of the curriculum map and investigates whether school or district resources permit such a vision to become reality. This organizational hub should be comprised of educational leaders within the school or system, and might include central office personnel, instructional leaders, and department chairpersons.
Once a vision of the curriculum map is clear, the data collection process begins. Mandatory participation of all teachers is essential, as each provides information about the content, skills, and assessments administered in his/her class. The inclusion of every teacher's information determines the development of a comprehensive curriculum map that will eventually promote higher achievement. Teachers are requested to chronologically map important skills, content, and assessments addressed in each class taught. The information is then submitted to the organization team.
Why create a curriculum map?
Questions regarding what is taught in the classroom are an intrinsic and useful part of formal education. Curriculum maps lead educators and their community to ask and answer the provoking questions that improve instruction and promote achievement.
For example, parents of students in the same grade might ask "Why is my friend's son studying decimals in Mr. J's class and my own son is not studying decimals in Mr. C's class?" Teachers might inquire, "Why do some of my students recognize the parts of speech while others are totally lost?" Parents, students, and educators ask these questions when pacing is not evident in common courses.
Members of an educational community can look at the school's curriculum map to discover when and if specific content is covered. This helps to reassure interested parents when specific information will be taught. It can also serve as the impetus to align courses horizontally. A curriculum map provides insight into the big picture, and responsible use of the information contained by a curriculum map can strengthen instruction school wide.
Most teachers, department chairs, and supervisors for curriculum agree that the creation of pacing guides and course outlines is easy; convincing skeptics to accomplish the goals mandated by such documents often requires proof that following prescriptive curricula best serves the students.
These skeptics are usually convinced when reviews of the curriculum map clearly magnify problem areas in instruction, such as redundancy, inconsistencies, and misalignment. A faculty or department review of a curriculum map is designed to motivate teachers to correct such problems, bringing their instruction into line with prescriptive curricula.
What happens to the completed curriculum map?
Once teacher data is organized, the labor-intensive portion of curriculum mapping is complete and the review process begins. Once the review is complete, the benefits of curriculum mapping are apparent: issues in sequencing of instruction become obvious and easily correctable.
While review teams should be comprised of any combination of administrators and educators, subject review by department is a logical beginning point. Departments can investigate the map to identify gaps in the vertical and horizontal alignment of courses.
Courses that are correctly aligned permit teachers to quickly assess what students mastered in the preceding grade and to focus on building skills and knowledge, as opposed to consuming valuable time with unnecessary reviewing and re-teaching.
Horizontal alignment, often referred to as "pacing guides," assures that all teachers of a common grade level address specific subject matter following the same time line. Such alignment is crucial in school systems dealing with state-mandated, standards-based assessments. Initial review of the completed map by each department assures vertical and horizontal alignment and segues into a broader review of the map.
After vertical and horizontal corrections have been made, a different review team comprised of instructional leaders from throughout the school reviews the map in search of common points of instruction. This team of reviewers informs teachers of overlaps in content or major assignments to promote interdisciplinary connections. As teachers begin to build on interdisciplinary connections, students naturally begin to link information between and among courses, increasing the relevancy of skills and content in such courses. Additionally, teachers can verify skills or content addressed in other courses and alter their unit plans to a higher level, making learning more relevant.
While curriculum mapping is an intense and time-consuming undertaking, improvements to instruction such as vertical alignment, horizontal alignment, elimination of redundancies, and facilitation of interdisciplinary linking builds stronger curricula and improves instruction throughout a building.
When is the curriculum mapping finished?
"A work in progress quickly
becomes feral. It reverts to a wild state overnight. It is barely
domesticated, a mustang on which you one day fastened a halter, but
which now you cannot catch. . . . As the work grows, it gets harder to
control."
-Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
This description, although meant to describe the writing process, is certainly applicable to a curriculum map. The addition of new teachers, alterations to the program of studies, changes to state standards—the factors that affect instruction within a building are manifest.
A curriculum map is a work in progress and schools that view it as such create and recreate review teams for it, always looking for ways to build bridges among curricula. Schools with established review teams are keenly aware of the changes within the building that impact instruction and assure that such changes are reflected on the curriculum map in use.
Review teams work regularly to maintain an
up-to-date curriculum map that can be reviewed quickly and efficiently
by novice and veteran teachers alike. These regularly scheduled reviews
preserve an on-the-same-page mindset among educators, asking and
answering the questions that drive effective instruction.
Click on the Link Below to
Explore the Math Curriculum for 5th and 6th Grade
| 5th
Grade
Mathematics Curriculum |
6th Grade
Mathematics Curriculum |
Click Here to see a list of
references to other sites on curriculum development
Click the
image below to go to the South Dakota Department of Education
Click the image
below to go the Rapid City Area Schools Website