What do we want every student to know, understand, and be able to do?
A coherent written curriculum clarifies essential learning outcomes and ensures equity and consistency across grades and classrooms.
How do written curriculum, assessment, and instructional practice work together?
High-quality learning depends on the intentional alignment of these three components — none is effective in isolation.
Which standards framework best serves our students and school context?
Choosing clear, transferable standards (e.g., AERO, Common Core, IB, etc.) supports rigor, mobility, and long-term sustainability.
How do we balance global expectations with local relevance?
Strong curricula integrate internationally recognized standards while reflecting local culture, community, and student identity.
How can we design curriculum efficiently with limited staff and resources?
Backward design frameworks like Understanding by Design, paired with open-source and digital resources, allow small schools to work smarter, not harder.
How do we ensure vertical and horizontal alignment in a small faculty?
Clear learning progressions, shared unit templates, and collaborative review of student work prevent gaps and repetition.
How do we make our curriculum accessible to all learners? Universal Design for Learning (UDL) ensures that all students can access, engage with, and demonstrate mastery of shared standards.
How do we assess learning in ways that are meaningful and manageable?
Balanced assessment systems emphasize formative feedback, performance tasks, and standards-based reporting over excessive testing.
How do we know if our curriculum is actually working?
Evidence from student work, portfolios, assessment data, and progression toward standards reveals the learned curriculum.
How do we sustain curriculum quality through staff turnover and growth?
Clear documentation, shared expectations, and regular review cycles protect curriculum continuity over time.
Allowing curriculum to exist only as individual lesson and/or unit plans
Without a shared written curriculum, learning becomes uneven and dependent on individual teachers rather than schoolwide goals.
Treating curriculum, assessment, and instruction as separate initiatives
When these are misaligned, even strong teaching fails to produce consistent outcomes.
Overloading the curriculum with too many programs or frameworks
Small schools benefit from focus and coherence, not accumulation.
Assuming alignment without examining student work and assessments
Real alignment is revealed through evidence of learning, not planning documents alone.
Neglecting long-term sustainability and review cycles
Curriculum must be revisited, refined, and supported through ongoing professional learning to remain effective.
Use of Materials
These resources are provided for AISA member schools for internal school use and adaptation. If you adapt or share these materials, please acknowledge the AISA Small Schools Resource Hub. Materials may not be sold or publicly redistributed without permission.