How to Align Middle School Curriculum to High School Curriculum

Curriculum alignment is the process of making sure what students are taught directly correlates with what they are expected to know or will be assessed on. When it comes to aligning middle school curriculum with high school curriculum, it's about making sure that students gain all the necessary skills in middle school that they will need to be successful in high school. This type of alignment is often called vertical articulation.

Things You'll Need

• Academic standards

Instructions

Determining Skills

1. Determine what skills the middle school students need to know when they enter high school. To do this, middle school teachers should ask high school teachers from every subject what skills students need to have gained by the time they enter high school. Those lists of skills should then be compared with the ninth grade standards to form a comprehensive list of skills.

2. Compare grade-level standards with the list of skills to determine what is missing.

3. Find out which grade level each skill is taught in and design a plan to teach it, if a plan does not already exist.

4. Determine how students will be assessed on their ability to perform the required skills, and develop a plan to help students acquire the skills if they fail the assessment. Do this for each skill needed.

Tips & Warnings

• Curriculum alignment is a time-consuming process. Take it one subject or even one skill at a time.

References

• National School Boards Association: Curriculum Alignment Tooklit
• State of Washington Superintendent of Public Instruction: Curriculum/Course Alignment
• ORegon GEAR Up: Curriculum Alignment