What:

There’s a certain flow in a well-designed curriculum. It connects not just between units in a class, but also over years of education and between the subjects students take. When students learn skills foundation-first and build up, and when teachers reinforce those skills across grades and classes, that’s what we call vertical alignment.

Not to be confused with horizontal alignment, of course, which describes

consistent standards. 

Vertical alignment is the how and the when of what we teach. It’s about

linking lessons, skills and assessments together as a holistic experience across grade levels. It helps us prioritize, focus, reinforce and place learning in new content.

According to Dr. Jason Perez, “Vertical alignment is the process of organizing curriculum from one grade level or content area to the next.”

The standards are a great place to begin, though not flawless.

Vertical alignment includes combing through the standards, having collaborative discussions about instruction and learning, and determining where a student is coming from and where they need to be at the end of the year.  This ensures that teachers are adequately prepared to introduce the concept with some sort of familiarity for the students and that teachers have taught the full extent of the standard. 

Why:

We vertically align curricula to avoid problems.

• Gain information

• Avoid repetition

• Identify gaps

• Locate potential areas for integration

• Match with learner standards

• Examine for timeliness

• Edit for coherence

Vertical articulation ensures that what students learn from one year to the next takes form as a coherent and logical process that maximally supports student understanding and progression.

When taking on the task of building a guaranteed and viable curriculum, it is not enough to simply think about individual grade levels or classrooms. Known as horizontal alignment, this work is important but cannot stand alone. 

We must also be very intentional about how each grade level and course builds upon and into the courses that precede and follow it. This vertical alignment is the big picture.

Districts should take vertical alignment beyond simply making sure standards lead into one another from grade to grade. They encourage teacher conversations around the content and the goals of the content, helping teachers to understand not just what is taught in other grades, but how it is taught as well. Common best practices and vocabulary become just as important in these conversations as the standards.

How:

Aligned curriculum doesn’t just happen.

There is an art to designing standards-based curriculum, assessments, and instruction both within grade levels for intra-alignment and across grade levels for inter-alignment. 

Teachers should be provided with standards literacy training and templates along with the necessary tools to efficiently build the curriculum that will guide their courses.

Standards literacy training involves systemic standards-based learning progression expectations. All too often teachers are asked to focus on their grade-level or course-specific standards without discussing and determining a progression of learning with their colleagues from kindergarten through high school. This is detrimental to student learning over time without scaffolded student skills or competencies across grades.

Multiple yearly vertical alignment meetings should be guided by focus questions decided upon ahead of time with results of those conversations recorded in a common format for implementation.

There is an art to designing standards-based curriculum, assessments, and instruction both within grade levels for intra-alignment and across grade levels for inter-alignment.

Current curriculum should a living document. 

Curriculum leaders must monitor and support the curriculum building process, including the levels to which standards are being covered in the curriculum.