Teachers- Have you done "curriculum mapping?" Has it been useful to you? If so, how?

Our school used the online curriculum mapper (website link is below). It is a good tool, but time consuming. The reality is that teachers don't have enough time to use the tool. It is really like extra paperwork or clerical work. It becomes more of a burden than a pay-off.

The teachers in our district already has a standard curriculum that everyone has to follow. If the teacher follows the curriculum correctly, then does rewriting the curriculum lessons online make sense? Teachers would rather spend their time on grading, lesson preparations, etc.

I've only done it for a course I was taking for my masters program. I can see how it would be useful, but it would take a long time and if it were required of me for every unit, I think most of it would end up being BS. I just don't have the time to plan, teach, grade, report, do duty, do extracurriculars, hold conferences with parents, attend meetings, and have a life, and also create a meaningful curriculum map.

I do wish, however, that my school would allow time for this to be done over a few years for every unit we teach. Once the map has been created, it would only be a matter of tweaking it, and I do think it can make a big difference in how a school delivers the curriculum, as well as ensuring that the curriculum is valid.

Last year was my school's first year of operation.

At the end of the school year, each grade level sat down and hashed out the best map they could based on this last year's experience, to coordinate the classrooms and ensure the key spots get hit prior to March (state testing).

This year, each teacher will get a printout of the map as their official lesson plan "book." All they have to do is jot additional activities, re-teaching schedule changes, etc. in the "notes" column. Everything else (standards & benchmarks, cross-correlation between chapters and even other subjects, etc.) is already there.

It was a massive, 3-week long smorgasbord of work for the substitute teachers in our district... but well worth it for the regular ed teachers.

Of course, as special ed myself, I'm still off in the corner doing my own thing...lol!

Yes, our corporation requires this of all teachers. Surprisingly, it is helpful to me. I hated all the work involved. But the more I use it the more I like it. It allows me some freedom to teach the standard in different ways. I am able to verify that the standard has been taught. I can track the progress of students better using this concept.

We did it to see what was getting over taught and what we really weren't teaching all that much. It was in response to see where we were hitting the indicators on the state reading assessment.

It might work for some, but to me it is a total waste of time and simply something to do at teacher workshops. More paperwork.......