Curriculum Mapping on the Edge

When author and consultant Heidi Hayes Jacobs, an expert on curriculum mapping, asked her audience whether they used mapping software, more than one-third of them raised their hands.

Jacobs expressed no surprise at this widespread use of computer software to support curriculum mapping. “This isn’t going away -- any more than e-mail and the Internet are going away,” she said.

Curriculum mapping is the practice of charting -- in detail -- what topics are taught by each teacher during the course of a given school year.  When the maps are combined, it's possible to identify gaps and duplications in what students are being taught.  It's also possible to ensure that the curriculum "builds" appropriately from year to year.  Besides curriculum topics, some maps include assessments, samples of student work, or teachers' professional development plans.

Curriculum mapping makes teachers’ work transparent, Jacobs noted. Each teacher should enter his or her work into a curriculum map, she said, and each teacher should also have access to the map of every other teacher. “Mapping is overt work, not covert activity,” Jacobs said.

Because it reveals so much, mapping is intimate, and it can seem threatening, Jacobs acknowledged. But it also leads to more collegiality among teachers. “Not only do we share each other’s work, we appreciate each other’s work.”

Curriculum mapping also becomes a key tool for sustaining professional learning communities. “Mapping becomes an electronic town square,” Jacobs said.

---

ASCD offers several resources to help teacher learn about curriculum mapping. Getting Results with Curriculum Mapping, by Heidi Hayes Jacobs guides the practical implementation of a mapping process. You can read the book’s first chapter here.

Jacobs' Mapping the Big Picture: Integrating Curriculum and Assessment K-12 provides a good introduction to the topic.

---

Reporting by Scott Willis, ASCD's director of book acquisitions and development.

Comments

[Anne Shadwick]

Ms. Jacobs said to contact her for copies of her PowerPoint. How do I do that? I tried to access her website and emailed someone but have heard no reply in 10 days.

[K. Scoli]

In response to Anne's concern: the powerpoint is there in outline..at Curriculum Designers/ under Resources/ under Bulletin Board. Hope that helps.

[John Wilcox -- ASCD blogger]

Here's a link to the material from Heidi's session:

http://www.curriculumdesigners.com/UpdateChicagoOutline.rtf