Districts invest significant time, resources, and money into the development of curriculum and the purchase of instructional materials. A lack of consistency between the sequence of the curriculum and the sequence of instructional materials can be a hurdle to implementation of both.
Mapping instructional resources to the district curriculum will support teachers with planning so that lessons and activities from instructional materials are in sync with the curriculum.
The following considerations support the development of a sound process for mapping instructional materials to curriculum.
Inventory instructional materials and determine which ones should and should not be mapped.
To make decisions regarding the order of instructional materials, the curriculum team must have access to all relevant instructional material(s). Are there some materials that are outdated or weakly aligned that should not be mapped? Which materials should be listed as the primary resource? Since many materials include multiple components, it is also important to have access to all the instructional components of the materials you will be mapping.
Match the standard in the district’s scope and sequence to the standard in the publisher’s correlation for that material.
Select a standard. Identify the unit or grading period in the district curriculum where mastery of that standard is expected. Use the publisher’s correlation to identify activities and assessments in the material that may reflect mastery of the standard. It is important to note that not all citations in a publisher’s correlation indicate alignment to mastery of the standard. If there are many citations, the publisher may have listed in the correlation locations in the material that introduce the skill or concept and scaffold learning, as well as those that reflect mastery of learning. Be sure to verify the citations’ alignment to the standard yourself before mapping them to your curriculum.
Then, determine where the standard is introduced, taught, and reinforced within the district’s curriculum and map additional citations from the instructional materials to the curriculum.
Consider appropriate placement of assessments.
If teachers are going to use assessments from the instructional materials make sure that students to have had the opportunity to learn the skills and concepts represented in the assessment items. If any assessment items are out of sequence with the sequence of the curriculum, communicate in the district curriculum documents the assessment items that should be used or deleted.
Identify gaps
Once you have mapped each of your relevant materials to the district curriculum, determine if there are adequate resources to support each unit of instruction. You may be able to fill gaps by inserting instructional guidance in the district curriculum or you may need to purchase additional resources. If purchasing new materials, verify that the new material is aligned to the standards gaps in your current materials.
Monitor implementation
Gather feedback regarding the materials’ support of the sequence of instruction as teachers use the district curriculum documents to plan. Adjustments may be needed in the number and type of materials mapped to the district curriculum. This feedback will assist in improving the viability of the curriculum and effective use of the instructional materials the district has purchased.
How can Learning List help?
Districts that subscribe to Learning List have access to alignment reviews and tools that will facilitate this process. Our detailed alignment reports show which citations were reviewed and found to be aligned to each standard, which were found not to be aligned and which part of the standard those citations failed to address. Curriculum teams can download aligned citations and copy them into the district curriculum documents. If multiple materials are being mapped to the curriculum, Learning List’s Compare Alignment tool shows where each material is and is not aligned to the standards.