The Burden of Curriculum Mapping to Schools and School Districts and What to do About it
Albert Einstein said, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough”. Then again, Einstein never faced the challenge of designing and implementing a school district wide curriculum map purposefully designed to facilitate learning without academic gaps and endless repetition.
While private and public school leaders acknowledge curriculum mapping is essential to ensure consistency across grade levels, courses and subject matter, there are challenges.
Higher Standards Demand Change
One challenge facing some districts is meeting the rigorous standards with old material. To implement higher standards, some districts still rely on spreadsheets, white walls and other labor intensive tools to cross-reference learning concepts with lessons plans and homework. While these techniques work, the process is labor intensive and cumbersome.
Updating Textbooks and Supplements
Some schools don't have the financial resources to update textbooks and supplements, others struggle with finding learning materials aligned with new standards. These schools may not have staff resources to evaluate learning materials during the shrinking window to fully implement CORE standards.
Collaboration and Consistency
The reality is mapping never ends for school-districts that intentionally align learning standards with collaborative teaching/learning strategies to reinforce vertical, horizontal and multidisciplinary coherence. Educators must continually evaluate and modify teaching methods and lesson plans, based on what's working and what's not. The challenge is finding real-time communication and data-tracking tools to keep teachers across all grade levels and campuses informed and on the same page.
Benefits of 24/7 Teach Curriculum Mapping Services
Mapping services using your standards and curriculum allow your school to save time and financial resources. Teachers, parents and students have instant access to lesson plans and learning materials – creating a transparent environment for sharing learning objectives and expectations with all stakeholders.
Track and store data by subject and grade with our Socrategy OnTrack curriculum mapping platform; reducing man hours and expense normally dedicated to data entry and analysis.
Automatically link your standards to:
- Start and end dates
- Teaching and learning activities
- Assessment tools
- Educational standards
- Instructional and learning materials
We understand the correlation between well-organized curriculum mapping and skills mastery and the myriad challenges that administrators face. For more information about professional mapping services for your school, contact 24/7 Teach.
References:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2014/06/03/318246129/teachers-hit-the-common-core-wall