To ensure continuous improvement of student learning by maintaining a relevant, responsive, and equitable guaranteed and viable curriculum steeped in the values of personalized competency-based learning.
Relevant Curriculum:
A relevant curriculum connects what students learn to their lives, interests, and future goals. It makes learning meaningful by showing how it applies to the real world. This involves:
Incorporating current events and societal issues.
Connecting learning to students' cultural backgrounds and experiences.
Preparing students for future careers and higher education.
Responsive Curriculum:
A responsive curriculum adapts to the individual needs of students. It recognizes that students learn in different ways and at different paces. This includes:
Providing differentiated instruction and support.
Using data to monitor student progress and adjust instruction.
Creating a flexible learning environment that meets the diverse needs of all students.
Equitable Curriculum:
An equitable curriculum ensures that all students have access to high-quality learning experiences, regardless of their background, race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status. This involves:
Addressing biases and stereotypes in curriculum materials.
Providing resources and support to students who need them most.
Creating a culturally inclusive learning environment.
Guaranteed and Viable Curriculum:
This concept, often associated with the work of Robert Marzano, emphasizes that:
Guaranteed: All students have access to the essential curriculum content.
Viable: There is enough time within the school year to teach the essential curriculum content effectively.
This means that the curriculum is both comprehensive and manageable.
Curriculum:
In a broad sense, curriculum encompasses:
The planned learning experiences that a school or district provides.
The content that students are expected to learn.
The instructional methods and materials that are used.
The assessments that are used to measure student learning.
Essentially, it's the "roadmap" for student learning.
Personalized Competency-based Learning (PCBL)
The Missouri framework for competency-based, personalized learning (CBL) includes the following eight elements that define a competency-based, personalized learning system:
Students are empowered daily to make important decisions about their learning experiences, how they will create and apply knowledge, and how they will demonstrate their learning.
Assessment is a meaningful, positive, and empowering learning experience for students that yields timely, relevant, and actionable evidence.
Students receive timely, differentiated support based on their individual learning needs.
Students progress based on evidence of mastery, not seat time.
Students learn actively using different pathways and varied pacing.
Strategies to ensure equity for all students are embedded in the culture, structure, and pedagogy of schools and education systems.
Rigorous, common expectations for learning (knowledge, skills, and dispositions) are explicit, transparent, measurable, and transferable.
Students engage in Real World Learning experiences that support high school, college, career and workplace readiness.
Goal 1: Equip all students with the flexibility and adaptability needed to be successful in an ever-changing world.
Curriculum Connection:
Regular curriculum reviews must prioritize the integration of 21st-century skills: critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity, collaboration, and communication.
The curriculum includes opportunities for students to engage in authentic problem-solving, simulations, and real-world applications of knowledge.
Emphasis on teaching students how to learn, not just what to learn, is crucial. This includes metacognitive skills and the ability to adapt to new information.
Strategy Connection:
"Provide students with challenging problems that require perseverance and grit to solve..." This directly informs curriculum development. PLCs can collaborate to design units and lessons that embed these challenges.
"Develop key success milestones..." Curriculum can be designed with these milestones in mind, ensuring students have opportunities to demonstrate adaptability and flexibility.
Goal 2: Create relevant, thought-provoking, authentic learning experiences that engage all students.
Curriculum Connection:
Curriculum revisions focus on making learning experiences more relevant to students' lives and interests.
Integration of project-based learning, inquiry-based learning, and interdisciplinary connections is essential.
Curriculum materials are diverse, inclusive, and reflect the experiences of all students.
Strategy Connection:
"Leverage the District metaphors to create opportunities and support for teachers to connect curricula..." This is a direct call for curriculum development that fosters interdisciplinary connections.
"Ensure students have the knowledge, career ready skills, industry recognized credential, and/or market value assets that allow students to have post-graduate success." This strategy demands that curriculum be created that is relevant to the real world, and post secondary success.
Goal 3: Empower all students to design personalized pathways for their future.
Curriculum Connection:
Curriculum development must support personalized learning by providing flexible pathways, choice, and opportunities for students to pursue their interests.
Competency-based learning and assessment are integrated into the curriculum to allow students to demonstrate mastery at their own pace.
Curriculum includes opportunities for students to explore career options and develop post-secondary plans.
Strategy Connection:
"Create a personalized, competency-based system of learning and assessment for all students." This strategy requires a fundamental shift in curriculum design and delivery.
"Develop a multi-tiered system of support..." Curriculum must be designed to be accessible and adaptable to students with diverse needs.
We've collaborated as a horizontal and vertical team and/or PLC, and no work was done in isolation
We have reviewed data to understand our strengths and opportunities for improvement (Step 1)
We have a completed curriculum template form for every course in our content area built on standards (Step 2)
We have an accurate Framework for thinking about our content area to display to our community (Step 3)
We have updated our Report Card (as needed) (Step 3)
We have made proficiency scales for each of our essential outcomes (Step 4)
We have a scope and sequence connected to essential outcomes and standards (Step 5)
We have selected a resource that best meets our needs (Step 6)
Policies and Administrative Procedures
Unpacking Standards
Writing a Proficiency Scale
Common Formative Assessment