Skip to Content

Curriculum

Tenets of Curriculum Design and Mapping

  • Curriculum design and mapping is a multifaceted, ongoing process designed to improve student learning.
  • All curricular decisions are data-driven and in students’ best interests.
  • Curriculum maps represent both the planned and operational learning.
  • Curriculum maps are created and accessible using 21st century technology.
  • Teachers are leaders in curriculum design and curricular decision-making processes.
  • Administrators encourage and support teacher-leader environments.
  • Curriculum reviews are conducted on an ongoing and regular basis.
  • Collaborative inquiry and dialogue are based on curriculum maps and other data sources

Curricula Standards

All curricula are based on:

  • National professional standards
  • Rhode Island Department of Elementary and Secondary Education Frameworks and Grade-level Expectations/Grade-span Expectations

Curricula Understanding
Principles of Learning for Understanding

1. Learning with understanding is facilitated when new and existing knowledge is structured around the major concepts and principles of the subject.
2. Learners use what they already know to construct new understanding.
3. Learning is facilitated through the use of metacognitive strategies that identify, monitor and regulate the cognitive processes.
4. Learners have different strategies, approaches, patterns of abilities and learning styles that are a function of the interaction between their heredity and prior knowledge.
5. Learners’ motivation to learn and sense of self affects what is learned, how much is learned and much effort will be put into the learning process.
6. The practices and activities in which people engage while learning shape what is learned.
7. Learning is enhanced through socially supported interactions.

 
Principles of Curriculum for Understanding

1. Structure the concepts, factual content and procedures that constitute the knowledge base of the subject around organizing principles (big ideas) of the domain.
2. Link new knowledge to what is already known by presenting concepts in a conceptually and logically sequenced ordered that builds upon previous learning within and across grade-levels.
3. Focus on depth of understanding rather than breadth of content covered by providing students with multiple opportunities to practice and demonstrate what they have learned in a variety of contexts.
4. Include structured learning activities that, in a real or simulated fashion, allow students to experience problem solving and inquiry situations that are drawn from their personal experiences and real-world applications.
5. Develop students’ abilities to make meaningful applications and generalization to new problems and contexts.
6. Incorporate language, procedures and models of inquiry and truth verification to new problems and contexts.
7. Emphasis interdisciplinary connections and integration and help students connect learning in school with issues, problems and experiences that figure prominently in their lives outside the classroom.
   
Principles of Assessment for Understanding

1. Designed in accordance with accepted practices that include considerations for reliability, validity and fairness of the inferences that will be drawn from the assessment results.
2. Aligned with curriculum and instruction that provides factual content, concepts, processes and skills the assessment is intended to measure
3. Designed to include important content and process dimensions of performance in a subject and to elicit the full range of desired complex cognition including metacognitive strategies.
4. Multifaceted and continuous when used to assist learning by providing students multiple opportunities to practice and receive feedback.
5. Designed to assess understanding that is both qualitative and quantitative in nature and to provide multiple modalities with which a student can demonstrate learning.

Source: National Research Council

Curriculum Renewal Cycle                 

Area Grade Levels Dates/Timelines
Reading (review and finalize) K-5 School Year 2011-12  
Mathematics 6-12 School Year 2011- 2012
Mathematics K-8 School Year 2012-13
Reading 6-12 Summer 2012
Writing K-12 School Year 2012-13
Science K-12 Summer 2013
Social Studies- *RTTT Grant support K-12 School Year 2012-14
 
Art K-12 In progress
Physical Education/Health K-12 Summer 2012
Music K-12 In progress
World Languages 6-12 Completed
Computer Science/Industrial Technology 6-12 In progress
Business Education 9-12 In progress
Family and Consumer Science 9-12 In progress
Library Science K-12 In progress