The Pathway to Learning
The curriculum framework can provide a pathway that students travel as they progress toward mastery of the skills needed for career and college readiness. While the standards identify what students must accomplish, it is ultimately up to educators like you to determine the best route for students to follow.
The map below illustrates a journey across the state that students are required to take by the fictionalized standard: Students will travel from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia, stopping at major cities to see points of interests.
Big Idea: Concepts: Competencies: Learning Path: |
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Map Key: The big ideas are the overarching concepts across the curriculum that guide students throughout their lives. The concepts are key knowledge, understanding, and skills that students attain at specific grade levels. The competencies are how students will demonstrate that they have acquired the various concepts. Along the road there will be places where students will stop to take state assessments, such as the PSSA and Keystone exams (hover your mouse over the image). This is where students' knowledge, understanding, and skills are assessed. These results will determine if there are any necessary modifications to the individual student's journey. Through a combination of planning your curriculum and formative assessments during instruction, you will determine which areas can be taught quickly and where you need to slow down and let students take the scenic route.
As with planning a trip, if you don't know where your instruction is headed, it may take longer for students to reach the learning destination and you may even lose some of them along the way. Finding the direction for students to travel requires you to first determine their learning destination and then identify all of the steps they must attain to reach that goal.