Documenting and Mapping Curriculum: Solutions to Common Challenges

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Using Online Curriculum Mapping tools, a procedure for documenting, mapping, viewing, reviewing, analyzing and evolving the operational curriculum in a classroom, school and/or district [a departure from the old paper binder days] was introduced in the mid 1990’s by Heidi Hayes Jacobs. Several companies have created mapping software and google drive is home for the curriculum maps of many schools. The benefits of curriculum mapping include increased student achievement, optimized collaboration among teachers, vertical articulation and continuity of curriculum, lateral interdisciplinary cohesiveness, and an innovative, flexible approach to teaching and learning. The most important outcome is that from the students’ perspective, all the disciplines hang together with integrity over time as a whole integrated set of knowledge, skills and dispositions that unleashes their potential and prepares them to participate in, and to lead with us, the shift toward the future we want--a healthy, just and sustainable future for us and for future generations.