Curriculum Template: 8 Steps To Follow To Make An Effective Curriculum
Curriculum templates are helpful tools for planning instruction for the academic year or semester. These templates should follow educational standards on which you are basing your instruction, detailed data about academic units, techniques for surveying the students' progress, and expectations for student learning.
Here are some example curriculum templates to reference:
A curriculum template could be divided into the following components:
- Learning Objectives
Learning objectives are included in all curriculum designs. These might be based on Common Core Requirements or represent your school district's educational standards. Ensure these criteria are clear and easy to comprehend because they will be used to guide your in-class education.
Based on the subject you instruct, and the age of your students, the goals you put in your template will differ. These goals specify the behaviors that students must exhibit to complete the course's learning standards.
- Units and Materials
It's also a good idea to divide the school year into instructional units. You may also keep track of the resources you want to utilize for each unit (textbooks, additional handouts, and internet tools).
- Assessments
To ensure that your curriculum is efficient, make sure to track student progress against the objectives you've set for your class.
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How to Make a Curriculum template
Step 1: Determine your vision and goals for the curriculum.
It's critical to understand the outcome you want and begin with the final goal in mind to avoid building a fractured curriculum with significant gaps.
Some schools require you to provide a detailed lesson plan, while others are far more casual. Think about how you want this curriculum to appear, what it will be used for, and how it will operate.
Step 2: Decide what you're going to teach.
This is a simple step for most public school instructors. You will teach the standards set by your state for your grade level. The curriculum refers to the topics you will teach daily. The learning objectives and goals are the standards. For example, adding fractions with common denominators is a fourth-grade standard. You can teach that standard in whatever method you wish, but it must be mastered by all fourth graders.
You'll have to review every standard to ensure your curriculum covers it at some time. Do this after you've decided on the standards and curriculum that you'll use.
Step 3: To organize how you will deliver it, choose an ordering technique.
After you've decided what you're going to teach, you'll need to plan out the sequence in which you'll deliver it. The sequence of the standards is typically the best approach to teach if you utilize your state standards or Common Core standards. For instance, the first math standard must be delivered initially, followed by the second. The standards are now sometimes divided into larger groups. So, you may opt to teach all of the Geometry standards before the Fraction standards, which is OK as long as the Fraction standards are delivered in the correct order.
Step 4: Sort your standards into categories depending on the topics.
Examine the standards that must be taught in your curriculum and figure out where they should be included in your decided topics.
It might be helpful to organize standards or skills into categories. State and Common Core standards are frequently divided into smaller groups. This simply makes it easy to see how many skills each topic requires. When you put them in groups, it will also assist you in organizing the standards to be taught.
Operations and Algebraic Thinking, Numbers and Operations in Base Ten, Numbers and Operations Fractions, Measurement and Data, and Geometry are examples of smaller groupings in math. When you're teaching, you may arrange these groups as you like. You can work with Geometry towards the end of the year or at the start.
Step 5: Classify the standards as per the order you wish to teach them.
You can better organize the standards once they've been divided into smaller groupings. You might engage with 9 weeks, semesters, or the entire year. If you want to, you may plan out weeks, months, or even days.
Physical Science, Life Science, Earth Science, and Engineering, for example, are all groups in Science. You can teach the standards in whatever order and timeline that works best for your classroom and students, based on your evaluation.
Step 6: Create a variety of assessments for the lessons
We'll look at a variety of assessments in this stage. Diagnostic, formative, and summative measurements are all included. During the curriculum writing process, it's important to design assessments for the learning objectives. This ensures you have a clear understanding of how students will demonstrate mastery of the standards. Ongoing assessment allows us to identify any gaps in student learning and adjust instruction to improve student outcomes.
Step 7: Make a list of the items and resources you'll require
It's time to look at what resources you'll need to address each learning objective. This is the opportunity to develop and add relevant resources or student handouts for each lesson. This may be done later by the particular instructor, but if time allows, it is incredibly beneficial to build in ahead of time. This saves time for the instructor and allows you to design resources that are firmly aligned with each lesson's objectives.
Step 8: Bring everything together
In the final step, you're ready to make the curriculum template by compiling everything as you know what you're going to teach, how you'll teach it, and how you'll divide the skills into groups and time periods. You'll be able to compile everything into a tidy curriculum bundle with the help of Microsoft Word using tables.
It's important to remember that curriculum is like a living, breathing organism. It's designed to change, grow, and expand as instructors' and students' needs change. Even once the curriculum template has been set, you should continuously think about how to improve and adapt the curriculum based on new information within the field.
Benefits of Curriculum Template
- It establishes quantifiable objectives.
How would you know whether your program is working if you don't establish precise goals for how your students are gaining knowledge? That's why a smart curriculum template establishes quantifiable goals and keeps track of students' development throughout the year.
- It makes collaboration possible.
Regular curriculum discussions provide an opportunity for all stakeholders to participate, including teachers, administrators, parents, and communities. Getting feedback from everyone will assist you in figuring out where you're good and where you need to improve. It also provides a forum for instructors to share best practices, information, and resources with one another.
- It aids in the alignment of instruction throughout the school.
A strong curriculum also brings together instructors from different grades and topic areas to look at the overall picture of student learning. Teachers can collaborate to develop a curriculum that builds on previous learning and is linked across disciplines. The result of the collaboration is that you ensure students are prepared for what comes next by reinforcing information over time.
In a Nutshell
A curriculum template serves as a road map for students to follow in order to be successful in class. The demands of students and their learning process are the priorities of a course curriculum. It gives students a clear picture of the course material and the information they will achieve over the semester. Also, it allows students to practice extensively through a variety of problem sets, homework, and subject-specific projects. As a result, it assists students in becoming more productive and efficient learners in the classroom.
