What Is Curriculum Mapping?
The process of aligning curriculum, instruction, and assessment across a school year to ensure standards coverage, pacing, and vertical alignment between grade levels.
Curriculum mapping is a systematic process for documenting what is taught, when it's taught, and how it's assessed across a school year. It involves creating a visual representation (map) of the curriculum that shows the sequence of units, the standards addressed in each unit, key assessments, and resources used.
Curriculum maps serve multiple purposes: they ensure all required standards are taught, prevent gaps and unnecessary repetition, support vertical alignment between grade levels, and facilitate collaboration among teachers. They also make the implicit curriculum explicit and visible.
The process typically involves gathering data about what's currently being taught, identifying gaps and redundancies, aligning to standards, and creating a revised map. Curriculum maps should be living documents that are reviewed and updated regularly.
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Try the Unit PlannerRelated Terms
Backward Design
A curriculum planning approach that starts with desired learning outcomes and assessments, then designs instruction to achieve those outcomes.
Scope and Sequence
A document that outlines the breadth (scope) of content to be covered and the order (sequence) in which topics will be taught across a course or grade level.
Learning Objective
A clear, measurable statement of what students should know or be able to do by the end of a lesson, using specific action verbs.
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