Curriculum Mapping and Design for Primary Schools

Leading students through an inquiry is a complex role. The awareness of prior learning, current skills levels and competencies, agency through student voice and curriculum accountabilities. Yet we, as a profession, seem lock stepped into ensuring that our inquiries go for approximately the same period of time - a term. And the length of the inquiry is determined by the length of the term! Hmm, something doesn’t feel right there.

Creating a conceptual framework works to liberate teachers (and students alike) so they can allocate time based on the individual inquiry - rather than the term. Working together as a staff is vital to ensure buy in and a broad range of voices with the experiences and potential to add something different or challenge. Working through a process of distillation and merging, will allow the decisions to be made and finalised. It is worth considering how many concepts you will build as a school. If you have 4 - then they are bound by term. If you have 8, then is two per term practical in terms of breadth and depth of inquiry. Ultimately, the choice is made at a local level and must suit your context.

Once you have the concepts named your school decides to build inquiries around, the next most important step is to define them. It is paramount that this step too is done with high levels of collaboration. Whether this process takes place with the whole staff, the leadership team or assigned groups, there needs to be a consistency in their construction.

Using word clouds to provide stimulus and reorientation into the thinking, provide the parameters of what the definitions are. It may also help to provide an example to illustrate what it could look like. If dot points are sought, ask for them.

Define the thinking as much as possible. Agree, disagree, engage in cognitive conflict, but establish definitions that are accessible for all staff and that are accessible for any staff that join the team in coming years. Try to avoid jargon or terms that are specific to your setting. However, if there are terms that are specific to your setting, ensure that all new staff can be inducted into their meaning and that they are comfortable in applying these in your setting.

At this stage, the staff may need to ‘sit’ with them. Provide the staff with a window in which feedback is invited. Share the concepts’ working definitions digitally or print off individual copies, so staff members have access to them. Print them off and display them in public or communal areas where staff gather. Grab a wad of Blu-Tack and stick it to the wall near the posters with a marker stuck in it. Encourage the staff the write on them. Questions and comments are equally valid. Ideally, it promotes opportunities for the staff to continue to engage in the thinking in this space.

It would be cavalier to then begin mapping the curriculum as there is the important factor of where the students have been previously. Now is the time to audit where the students have been in the previous year to ensure that those in Grade 4 aren’t covering the same content (standards) as they did in Grade 3. With the previous curriculum coverage in mind, now begins the important part of mapping the curriculum.

Identify all the standards that are remaining to be mapped for each level, break up into the teams that will facilitate those inquiries in the year to come and begin allocating. This is far from a random process however. Ensure that each standard is intentionally placed ‘under’ a concept that naturally supports it. Group content and skills from the standards that when aggregated will build inquiries worth exploring and engaging in. The temptation is to place all the standards from one ‘Learning Area’ into the singular inquiry. The challenge there is ‘how could you possibly cover all that content in one inquiry that will be less than a term?’ The answer is generally you can’t (even if it was a term). So be strategic and identify where the standards can be split/allocated across the different concepts.

Completing this process ensures that curriculum is covered and reporting accountabilities can be assured. But mapping curriculum and generating inquiries from them are two entirely different beasts. A full guide to support schools and teams to develop inquiries worthy of students’ time involves an investment in time and teamwork.

How does your school currently track the learning, map curriculum or create inquiries for students?

Grant’s book, Curating Inquiries: Curriculum design and mapping for primary schools, is now available from Amba Press.

Image by TH Chia