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Curriculum Mapping Made Simple: A Step-by-Step Guide for Teachers

1 September 2024/ By Zineb DJOUB

Teaching is a decision-making process where reflection and planning are vital to achieving targeted goals. To ensure a successful school year, curriculum mapping is a key strategy for maximizing student success. This blog post offers a step-by-step guide to creating an effective curriculum map. But before diving into the process, it’s important to define curriculum mapping and explore its benefits in education first.

What is curriculum mapping?

Curriculum mapping is a strategic process of documenting and analyzing aspects of a curriculum to align instruction with a degree’s learning outcomes, goals, and assessments during an academic year.

This is achieved by creating a detailed overview or map of when, how, and what is taught, as well as the assessment measures used to explain the achievement of expected student learning outcomes.

So, curriculum mapping is a visual representation of how standards, content, skills, and assessments are aligned to meet learning outcome (See the example below).

The benefits of curriculum mapping

Curriculum mapping serves students, teachers, administrators, parents, and community members in various ways.

It provides a comprehensive view of the curriculum (Jacobs & Johnson, 2009), allowing for easy identification of relationships within the curriculum, such as connections between learning outcomes, student assessments, and teaching and learning activities (Tariq, Scott, Cochrane, Lee & Ryles, 2004).

This map or matrix helps students, parents, and community members to better understand the knowledge, skills, and attributes of a programme.

A curriculum map is also an invaluable tool for identifying gaps between the expected student learning outcomes and what is taught and assessed.

It enables educators to make necessary adjustments to ensure that teaching is purposefully structured and logically sequenced across grade levels, allowing students to build on what they have already learned while also learning the knowledge and skills that will gradually prepare them for more challenging tasks (vertical coherence).

Moreover, curriculum mapping highlights the strengths of a programme by visually illustrating how courses are interconnected and how they progress from one year to the next (horizontal coherence).

For example, high school English teachers might map out the progression from basic literary analysis in 9th grade to a more advanced analysis by 12th grade.

School districts often use curriculum mapping to ensure consistency across schools, so students receive a similar education regardless of which school they attend within the district (subject-area coherence).

Curriculum mapping not only ensures consistency within a single discipline but also helps create meaningful connections between various subjects.

By aligning and integrating essential skills across different subject areas — such as reading skills, writing skills, technology skills, and critical thinking skills — curriculum mapping supports interdisciplinary coherence and creates a more holistic learning experience for students.

Additionally, curriculum mapping acts as a catalyst for promoting reflection and communication among teachers within a programme. It provides a structured context for planning, discussing the curriculum, and articulating a shared understanding of the program’s goals.

Curriculum mapping is also instrumental in planning professional development for teachers, ensuring that training is aligned with instructional goals and teaching standards.

Step-by-step guide on how to create a curriculum map

Here is a step-by-step guide you can use to create effectively a curriculum map.

#Define your goals and scope

Before creating your curriculum map, it’s necessary to determine your goals: Do you intend to align your curriculum with standards, ensure consistency across grade levels, or address gaps in instruction?

Then, you should decide on the course to be mapped and the scope (will your curriculum mapping cover an entire school year, a semester, or a specific unit?).

#Gather information

To complete your curriculum mapping, you need to gather information regarding the programme learning outcomes (PLO), the level of expectation for each PLO achieved in each course, lesson plans, syllabi, teaching methods, materials, and the assessments used.

This will help you understand what’s already being taught and how it aligns with the goals.

#Choose your template

You can create the map in the form of a table, or grid, or use digital platforms (e.g. Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel, Curriculum Track, Common Curriculum, Lucidchart).

Using a mapping scale can help indicate the degree to which a programme-level learning outcome is addressed by a particular course outcome.

There are a variety of mapping scales you can use such as I-D-A (Introductory, Developing, Advanced), N-C-P (Novice, Competent, Proficient), C-A-E (Comprehension, Application, Evaluation), etc.

Customizing your template is also necessary to address the specific needs of your school or district.

#Map out the content

Identify the essential skills and content students need to master. Ensure that these are aligned with the intended learning outcomes and map each skill in the part of the curriculum where it fits.

For instance, if you’re concerned with developing student critical thinking skills, you might map these to project-based learning tasks.

Then, organize the skills in a logical order that matches the progression of the course, moving from basic to more complex skills throughout the course.

To ensure a coherent progression of these skills, you need to examine the instructional strategies, activities, and assessments currently being. To reflect on such a process, you can address questions such as:

• What are the programme strengths?
• Are the instructional strategies and activities aligned with the goals?
• Are the learning outcomes reasonably achievable?
• Are there any courses that don’t support the programme learning outcomes?
• Are there any misalignments in the progression from introduction to mastery?
• Do teachers and students have access to all the materials necessary to achieve the curricular objectives?
• Do assessments measure what they’re supposed to measure and consistently produce accurate results?

#Identify gaps and make adjustments

After mapping your curriculum, it’s time to pinpoint any existing gaps. Understanding the curriculum gaps is essential to addressing them.

Gaps may include missing topics or skills that should be covered, limited opportunities for students to practise their learning, and areas where they may not meet the expected standards.

Depending on the nature of the gaps, you can address them by, for instance, including missing content or skills, re-sequencing units, differentiating instruction, incorporating additional resources or materials, or providing remediation activities for struggling students.

Collaborating with teachers and sharing experiences can help in closing the gaps.

By following these steps, you can create a comprehensive and effective curriculum map that guides instruction, aligns with educational standards, and supports student learning.

Yet, remember that curriculum mapping is an ongoing process of regular monitoring and reflection to respond to students’ needs.

It’s also a collaborative effort and an opportunity for teachers’ collaboration and learning. So, use it as a guiding tool throughout the year to ensure your instruction remains purposeful, aligned, and responsive to your students’ needs.

References

Jacobs, H. H., & Johnson, A. (2009). The Curriculum Mapping Planner: Templates, Tools, and Resources for Effective Professional Development. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Tariq, V. N., Scott, E. M., Cochrane, A. C., Lee, M., & Ryles, L. (2004). Auditing and mapping key skills within university curricula. Quality Assurance in Education, 12(2), 70-81.