Curriculum Audit: Part 1, Identifying High Priority Standards

To begin our work with curriculum this year, each department will perform an audit of its curriculum.  Each curriculum will be audited for what is essential, important, and good to know.  This will involve a commitment to quality and (sometimes) difficult conversation.  As a department, you will be stronger as a result of these conversations, and you will have prioritized your curriculum besides.  In order to audit your curriculum effectively, you will need to identify high priority standards which inform your curriculum.  These high priority standards will act as a kind of DNA code for how you prioritize your curriculum.  You will choose aspects of your curriculum that meet this code in the most engaging, coherent, and purposeful way; this will help you identify what is essential.
So before you begin determining what is essential, important, and good to know in the district curriculum, please engage in the following:

• A student who understands retains more, can think more flexibly, transfer more knowledge and skills to unfamiliar situations more accurately, and can make connections between/among disciplines.  A student who just knows a lot may struggle with some or all of the above.  In your discipline, what can a student who understands do well? Compare this to what a student who just knows a lot can do (or not do).

Understanding the distinction between understanding and knowling a lot will help your department determine what is at the heart of, or essential to, your discipline.  It's an excellent warm-up for identifying priority standards.

• Determine which GLEs and Common Core Core State Standards (CCSS) are priority.  GLEs are generally more content-based, and CCSS are generally more skill- based.  Consider the following when prioritizing GLEs and CCSS, ultimately priority standards should meet all three below:
  • Endurance (Importance to Life): Will this standard provide students with knowledge and skills beyond a single test date?
  • Leverage (Importance to School): Will this standard provide knowledge and skills that are of value in multiple disciplines?
  • Readiness (Importance to the Next Level): Will this standard provide the students with the essential knowledge and skills that are necessary for their success in the next level of schooling?

Those standards which meet the test for all three (that is, they have endurance, leverage, and readiness) are your highest priority standards.  Keep this work because as you move forward, you may determine that others, which may meet only two of the three tests, for example, may also be priority.  Click here for a template to assist with this work.

You may also wish to consider (now or later):

1. The standards published by your discipline's national organization (prioritize them if it's helpful).
2. Any historical data regarding which standards are tested on the MAP (or the EXPLORE or the SRI, etc.) and how are students fair on assessments.
3. Any current data about your current students that can help shape decisions around planning and teaching. (This question is sometimes better applied once you have crafted units around essential curriculum.)

Once you have determined which standards are high priority, there are two possible next steps which I will describe in a subsequent Learning Designs post. Ultimately, this will result in two revised/revisted/reconsidered unit plans for this year.  (More information on this to come; please trust the process or ask questions in the meantime.)
Please let me know how I can be helpful to explain, facilitate, or participate.

Why Dr. Heisserer Uses the Network (and how it could help us have fewer and shorter faculty meetings)

The Hixson Network is one of my favorite projects.  I focus weekly time and attention on updating it so that it can serve our learning community better.  Many of the reasons I have for designing and implementing such a network are similar to hallmarks of 21st-Century learning and learners.  Students have access to a variety of innovations outside of our classrooms and school.  It is to our (and their) advantage if we learn to leverage these on behelf of teaching and learning.
Let me explain why I prefer . . .

• Multi-Tasking to Single-Tasking
• Geometric to Linear Thinking
• Collaborative to Independent Work
• Sharing to Individual Ownership
• Inductive to Deductive Thinking
• What and Why to Just What
• Multi-Media to Text
• Virtual to Physical
• Multiple to Single Sources
• Creative to Mechanized
• Self-Directed to Other-Directed

 . . . and how these preferences relate to why I use the Network, how it helps us leverage our time, and how all of this relates to designing learning opportunities for our students.
The Hixson Network allows us access to multiple tools that support the multiple tasks of teaching; whether these are management or learning tasks, they are represented on the Network.  In addition to access to support for multiple tasks, the Network allows for multiple voices (this year, the PBIS committee and our coordinators will have dedicated Network space, faculty and staff will have access to posting on the bulletin board, and I have plans for representing other voices as well) and allows us to collaborate given that we can access the information virtually as long as we have an internet connected and given that we can comment and give feedback directly to posts and surveys.  The asynchronous and non-linear presentation of the information allows for multiple ways to access and prioritize the information on the Network.  This means that I can explain what we are working on and why in creative, non-linear ways that you can access according to a variety of options. Even though I have some expectations about when and how frequently you access the Network, there is still some room to choose when and how you access this (some teachers read these posts on their phones, other Monday morning, others at home on Sunday).
The Network allows us to leverage our time.  The Network is an excellent source of information and learning that we can embed in our lives in a variety of self-directed ways.  If using the Network as a resource becomes a matter of habit we can trust in one another and for which we can hold one another accountable, we can use faculty meeting time for other things.  For example:

• We may have shorter faculty meetings given that the background, rationale, and context for topics or projects have been set and reviewed prior to our arriving in our meeting space,
• We may have shorter faculty meetings because we have taken it upon ourselves to heed the information and learning on the Network in such as a way as to avoid the need for reminders and/or nuts and bolts agenda items.
• We may use faculty meeting time as extra team, department, and/or plan time as necessary.

As a faculty, we should plan to gather to think and learn together.  Although the Network allows us to this virtually, asynchrously, and together, this cannot always replace time together.  However, if our time together can be made more purposeful (and if we can use faculty meeting time for other and better purposes), I beleive that we should pursue it.
Finally, these preferences, reasons, and principals for the design of the Hixson Network are comparable to the learning environment preferred by our students.  How can the Network be a model for how we design learning, use our own virtuals spaces, and think (or re-think) the principles of learning that guide our work?
I'm interested in your feedback.  Go ahead, leave a comment below and begin the conversation. =)