How to Create a Standards-Based Curriculum

Standards-based curriculum is a new concept in the education field and one that has revolutionized the idea of equal education for all students. Yet, with any new trend in education, not all educators are comfortable talking about, creating or implementing this curriculum in their school or classroom. By following these simple steps, you can begin to create a standards-based curriculum that meets the needs of your student body.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

1. Gather together the teachers in your department so that the standards will be created as a group. Remember this is not lesson planning, so personal teaching styles should not come into conflict during this curriculum meeting.
2. Review the state frameworks, goals, curriculum or standards that you are obligated to follow. These very from state to state and district to district, but you should have some paper work that states what should be taught in your classroom.
3. Break the frameworks down into specific skills that each student should be able to accomplish.
4. Begin each with skill with SWBAT (Students will be able to). Such as "SWBAT add fractions" or "SWBAT to define and describe the plot pyramid."
5. Divide your list of SWBATs into the number of grading periods your school has. For example, this means that every child during the second marking period will be able to list three causes for the civil war.
6. Create assessments, either individually or as a group, that test the skills you want the students to have learned. Since you are focusing on assessing a skill and not a specific event in a classroom, all students should be able to pass the same assessment no matter who taught the material.
7. Construct lesson plans, activities and smaller assessments which will teach the skill of the standards-based curriculum in a style that fits you as the teacher as well as your class.

Tips & Warnings

• Aligning your standards-based curriculum with any high stakes testing that is required will benefit your students greatly. For example if the high stakes test in January requires Algebra I skills, you should be sure to but this curriculum early in the school year, so that the students will have ample time to become proficient in the skill.
• Remember to focus on the skill you want the students to learn and not the text book that is given to you. There are a lot of different ways to teach material and the beauty of a standards-based curriculum is that it allows you to move at the pace of the class and not the pace of a text book.