Curriculum - searching for the grail.....

So how do you select curriculum in a small district?  Form a committee?  There is only a few of us in the entire district (Grades:  4K-5, MS, HS, Admin -- ~7 to 8 of us).  So as the HS teacher, the only HS teacher it feel likes it starts with me.  So like any other school you ask for books and start searching through them, and finding what?

I hope for the book that helps our school make the students better problem solvers and learners, ready for whatever they do upon graduation.  And I am constantly thinking about what that should look like in a textbook.  How does that text book progress from Kindergarten to Calculus?  (or 4K versus Kindergarten)

I am feeling like I am searching for the holy grail, I need the theme song to Indiana Jones just to survive it.  I am sent books that are over a 1000 pages long (1300 pages/180 days --- 7.2 pages per day -- CRAZY!) -- I know that I don't have to teach the whole book - but we (the students and I) get to carry them around all the same.

I have looked at integrated and non-integrated, CCSS aligned, ACT College and Career Readiness models.....  And it leads me to one common belief, it is what we do in the room, not which book we have that matters most.

It is how we make sure they understand concepts versus procedures.  It how we lead them in problems solving, encouraging/modeling persistence.

The curriculum is not that important, the teaching is...      except....

Except I really need the text book series to have assessments and workbooks - because with so many different preps there is no time to make everything I need.  (Which is why I am scared of CPM, great book - but I don't feel I can prep for it, not enough hours in the day).  I currently make a lot of my own assessments with projects, but sometimes I need to use book assessment or worksheet as a base for a class (then just add a question or two, cross one off, etc).  This modification process is what keeps me sane (or at my present level of insanity).

So as a small district searching for texts you would figure someone would have made good assessments that use high level skills and practices -- cause big or small we all want that resource.  You wish for assessments that would be awesome (I mean they are written by the authors!),  But often they are the same "pump & dump" - little different than the 10 plus year old texts I have -- except they cost $100 each.

Perhaps I want too much, but I will keep combing the desert in search of that text book series that matches my school's vision.

Curriculum Mapping

So we had in-service this past week and used the time to work on curriculum mapping.  Working on a plan to teach the Common Core Standards (CCSS) through out our K-12 building. Aligning what we are teaching/how we teach to the new national standards.  It seems like time well spent because we finally found some software that allows a teacher to not only plan by unit and topic but also includes the ability to have learning targets (the daily "stuff" of teaching).

Thus curriculum mapping goes from an overall tool to a daily tool, so as I work on lessons I can build them there in the software (BYOC, is the software).  I can store links, sheets, ideas all to a Learning topic (versus a unit).  This then becomes a way for me to create plans that work by learning goals.  I am excited because curriculum mapping at unit and topic level just becomes a way to say you checked against standards, the previous program we used did just unit and topic and I rarely looked at it.  I was always too busy making lessons.  Now I can make those lessons in the curriculum mapping software and then that can be looked at and refined the next year.  These learning topics (the daily lessons) are tied to unit and topic with standards and makes me really focus on the standards.  Tie that standard focus to the new mathematical practices and there is a framework to really become proficient at CCSS.  My hope is to finally have a place to do continuous improvement on a lesson!

This hopefully will be the tool I use to tie daily teaching to lessons.  My goal is to quickly rough in the topics/units into the software so I can really work on learning targets.  Then I can decide the best way to teach concepts for understanding & high level thinking.

Is this "pie-in-the-sky?"  Maybe...  But at least the software has a way to look at it and have it be useful on daily basis....   Because the only way to get better is one lesson at a time....