Curriculum Map

Introduction

This section contains our curriculum map for Science/Social Studies. I created this map to act as an outline for the kindergarten team to reference as we plan and implement our curriculum over the course of the year. The first step to this map creation was for me to look at our Louisiana State Standards for Science and Social Studies and to see how these align with our Wit & Wisdom comprehension curriculum. Then I reviewed our school calendar to see how much time we might have to explore each standards-aligned topic.

While doing this, I aimed to support all of my students by proposing different relevant projects related to each week's topic that would be engaging and relevant to increasing my students' understanding of the world around them. We create this curriculum as a kindergarten team as the year progresses, but this curriculum map lays out the standards and outlines different ideas that we can reference throughout the year.

Creating and then continually referencing a curriculum map is the first stage in planning instruction. Longterm plans such as these act as a roadmap to tell teachers what standards to cover during which units, and with what lessons, during a certain period of time. Without using a curriculum map, it would be easy to extend a subject for too long or cover a reoccurring skill too briefly, causing students to become confused or to miss out on necessary foundational skills. Our curriculum maps also include some "flex" days which can be used for remediation or extension, depending on class by class, and student by student, needs.

Focusing Task Question

Our Focusing Task Questions (FQTs) from Wit & Wisdom are usually writing and drawing based assessments where students summarize their learning through synthesizing different skills. For example, when learning about farm animals they write a response to the question "What is true about real farm animals?". The corresponding project in Science would be to create a similar response using writing, drawing, and dictating to answer the question "Why do animals need shelter?". These are both open ended questions with multiple correct answers and a variety of ways for students to prove their understanding. Our Science/Social Studies FQTs also act as summative assessments that help students summarize their learning from that unit. We create these FQTs as a team in order to see that students understand all content before moving on to a new subject.

End of Module Task

End of modules tasks in Science/Social Studies are usually arts-integrated projects created by our kindergarten team in tandem with our teaching artist. Our Litter Bug Play about the importance of keeping the environment clean and our class store which we created while studying Our Community and its Economy are two examples of end of module tasks for Science/Social Studies. You can learn more about the Little Bug Play in the Art-Integration section of Instructional Strategies, and see how we created our class economy in the Unit Planning page of this section.

Conclusion

In order to be an effective teacher, I must support all students with their learning in a way that is accessible and relevant to them. When planning this curriculum map, I considered how I could make our learning as cross-curricular as possible, referencing out Wit & Wisdom curriculum map to try and make every element align as much as possible. Teaching skills in an interrelated way makes them more interesting to students, and also requires students to think more deeply about their work by applying their knowledge to a variety of content areas.

Return to Planning for Instruction Continue to Unit Planning