Blog Post 12

Session 12:  How can curriculum mapping assist you?  Do you have one?  Does your school/district curriculum map?  Where would/will you start in creating a useful curriculum map for your classroom? 

I do have a curriculum map that was made for Cambridge Curriculum. The problem with the map is that it is made for a course that is supposed to be taught in four semesters and we are required to teach it in two semesters. This leaves us with a time crunch at the end of the semester and that makes it very difficult (or impossible) to teach the material to mastery. When I ask my administration if I should teach to mastery or follow the time guidelines I of course get told to do both which I have not figured out how to do. I suppose this must be a skill that I need to get from teaching for a while. If I had to make my own curriculum map I would start with all the units that would need to be covered and make sure that they made sense. Then, I would look at the amount and depth of content and allocate certain time frames for each unit. Finally, I would arrange the units in an order that would be easiest to teach beginning with units that contained a great deal of fundamental knowledge and working my way through to the most complex ideas at the end.