Mapping our Direction to Excellence
by Education Blog
Posted on August 7, 2017
About a year ago, the district began to look at ways to improve the alignment and instruction in our district. There are three basic questions that if answered, can help explain the curriculum mapping process:
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What is it?
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Why are we doing this now?
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How can it help us?
So what is Curriculum mapping? It is defined by edglossary.org as the process indexing or diagramming a curriculum to identify and address academic gaps, redundancies, and misalignments for purposes of improving the overall coherence of a course of study and, by extension, its effectiveness (a curriculum, in the sense that the term is typically used by educators, encompasses everything that teachers teach to students in a school or course, including the instructional materials and techniques they use). Wow! So really it is just what we teach, and when we teach it.
Why did we start this initiative now? By mapping out what we teach, and when we teach it, this will allow the teacher to identify gaps in instruction, or areas we can improve.
How can it help our students, teachers, and community? How can it not? It will help our students, because it is providing a basis for instruction and a point of conversation for our teachers when they look at instruction. It will help our new teachers by providing them a “roadmap” for success when they are hired at Alva Public Schools. It will help our community understand the process and place where their child’s class or subject is during the school year.
Let me update you on where we are in this process. All of our teachers developed overview maps for their subjects this past spring. In the coming weeks we will be adding these overview maps to our website after they are used in our most recent training. The teachers will be meeting this week to develop more content specific maps, which we also look forward to sharing when they are completed.
Lastly, I want to take a minute to thank our teachers for their work on this initiative. I am proud of what they have developed and can’t wait to show it to our community. I am thankful they are dedicated to this profession.
Enrollment Update: We had 276 free and reduced applications turned in last week with 876 students enrolled on that date. At this time, our preliminary district enrollment is at 1,046 students. Also a thank you to Mrs. Durkee for heading up the enrollment process and ensuring that everything was ready. The following also were integral during the process: Chloe Durkee, Mrs. Cole, Mrs. Lovelace, Mrs. Vermillion, Mrs. Vore, Mrs. Hooper, Mrs. Smithey and Mrs. Graves.
Sincerely,
Tim Argo
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