Here’s what to do—and what not to do—when adopting a curriculum
For many teachers, it is likely inevitable: our districts will adopt foundational curriculum resources for us to use. If you’re an administrator, you probably have good reason for doing so: equity and consistency are often cited as reasons for adopting foundational curricula. This is mostly outside of teachers’ (and some principals’) control, but that doesn’t mean it needs to lead us down a road of unsustainable curriculum implementation.
Regardless of your role, if we want curriculum adoption to be successful, we have to do it in a sustainable way. Here are a few dos and don’ts for adopting a curriculum as a school or as a district.
Don’t try to do everything at once
It’s important to remember that curriculum companies incorporate far more resources than the average teacher would need within a curriculum. Why is this? Well, think about it from their perspective: they want to make sure teachers are prepared for as many scenarios as possible. And so, they design the curriculum in such a way that anticipates these scenarios, creating resources to go with many of them. Unfortunately, this results in many teachers feeling like they need to follow every instructional note and use every resource.
As you might imagine, this quickly becomes frustrating. In my experience, there simply aren’t enough minutes in an instructional block to implement everything a new curriculum has to offer. Trying to do everything at once oftentimes sets us up for failure.
Do implement gradually
If the curriculum is really worth using—and if you really see it as a long-term, sustainable solution for your district, then going slow to go fast should be a no-brainer. The goal should never be to invest millions in new resources, only to try them out and adopt something new a few years later. The goal should always be intentional, sustained implementation of a tool we believe will solve the problems we need it to solve (and with a high level of confidence).
A few tips for Gradual implementation:
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Implement the curriculum with the intention that the other grades will “waterfall” into the curriculum in the subsequent years. This will set teachers up for success in older grade levels. Oftentimes, curricula spiral, meaning that concepts, skills, or curriculum processes come back in older grades. Older students need to have familiarity with these concepts, skills or routines in order to experience some success with the curriculum.
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For instance, Expeditionary Learning (EL) has several components to the curriculum from modules to the skills block and other assessment resources. Focusing on implementing one of these at a time provides a more sustainable approach, allowing teachers to build mastery with one area before pursuing another.
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This might look like having lab classrooms (with extra personnel support and pay) that try out the curriculum first, rigorously documenting the successes and challenges of implementation. It will be important that pilot classrooms include a representative sample of the student population to ensure the curriculum works for all students.
Don’t forget to assess regularly and mindfully
One of the benefits of having a boxed curriculum is that assessments are already created. Making assessments is hard, and a lot of teachers don’t have experience doing it. Plus, it takes a lot of time. But that doesn’t mean assessments should be implemented as-is, especially if you are working at a population that doesn’t fit the mold for whom the curriculum is intended.
At least this is what my experience working as a coach and consultant tells me. I work with teachers who are trying to reach students reading multiple grade levels below. Inevitably, this results in learners feeling unsuccessful on assessments, in part because they can’t access texts on the assessment. This also prevents teachers from getting the data they need because students are hardly able to complete them. They need assessments that gauge progress within their respective zones of proximal development—not assessments that ask them to jump to a bar held high above their heads.
Do design supplemental assessments to gather other information
Personally, I think all schools should have a robust and consistent assessment framework, independent of the foundational curriculum, through which they can gauge progress. By only using the assessments provided by the curriculum, you run the risk of bias. The assessments are likely closely aligned to the lessons, and some curricula are concerned far more with assessing students’ ability to acquire the content presented, as opposed to learning transferable skills.
For instance, if you believe the assessment to be too challenging for your students, you can provide an alternative text or alternative questions that still meet the standard, but do so in such a way that meets the needs of your class. Additionally, if you feel the assessments provided do not assess all of the necessary skills, you can create additional assessments or curate an assessment framework that provides you all of the data you need. You won’t know what to design or curate, however, until you’ve looked through what the curriculum has to offer.
Don’t mandate to fidelity
Fidelity is both a misnomer—and an injustice—to teachers. Too often, when administrators ask for fidelity, what they’re really saying is that they don’t trust teachers to implement the curriculum with responsiveness and intentionality. Their fear takes over, and they request that everyone implement in exactly the same way. But this doesn’t actually make any sense: all kids are different, and there is no way that any one resource, as written, will meet the needs of all learners. By mandating to fidelity, you not only send the message that you don’t trust teachers, you also set kids up for failure. Kids need teachers who are flexible and responsive—and this means adapting the curriculum to meet their needs.
Do provide tools and structures for adapting the curriculum
If you’re adopting a curriculum district- or school-wide, it’s likely because you need some consistency between schools and classrooms. This is good from an equity standpoint, but it’s important to remember that there is a significant difference between consistency and fidelity. When curriculum is consistent between classrooms, the following happens: teachers cover the same topics and standards; they have the same metrics and tools for gauging mastery; and they work together to find the most effective ways to teach these skills. They need tools to reach this level of consistency.
Consider using the following tools to help teachers implement with consistency:
Use backward design to interpret the curriculum. It’s a common misconception that adopting a curriculum means teachers will have to do less planning. That might be true to some extent, but backward design is still necessary, even if the resources are already laid out for you. Engaging in backward design clarifies learning goals, provides teachers opportunities to modify assessments, and encourages criticality around lessons—all with the goal of making sure the curriculum fits the needs of your students, and not the other way around.
Engage teachers in regular student work analysis. Too often, PLC becomes a place where teachers simply plan for instruction. While planning for instruction as a team is important, analyzing student work is just as important. Neglecting to do so reduces the likelihood that instruction is actually responsive to student needs. In addition to planning meetings, I recommend setting aside at least one PLC or team planning each week to analyze student work samples for successes and misconceptions, so the core curriculum can be adjusted to address the needs of students.
Consider providing lesson templates to help teachers filter through resources. When working with EL, a literacy curriculum also known as Expeditionary Learning, I noticed that teachers were struggling with filtering through not only the breadth of resources, but also multiple learning targets within a single lesson. In some cases, this made instruction unfocused and unresponsive to learner needs.
To help them filter through the resources, I provided a lesson plan template that focused on critical components of a whole-group workshop experience, including the following:(1) a word study warm-up;
(2) one clear learning target;
(3) an anchor text from the EL lesson;
(4) an open-ended, anchor task in which all students can engage;
(5) a learning menu for when students finish early; and
(6) a catch-and-release lesson structure that allows teachers to confer with small groups or individuals, meanwhile making time for whole-group points of convergence where the class can examine student responses.This lesson structure helped teachers filter the resources, only pulling what they felt would be most useful for their students and their needs.
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Word Warm Up (5-10 minutes)
Practice decoding and encoding using superlatives (-er, -est) with the word fast, creating fast, faster, and fastest.
Learning Target
I can summarize or retell a pourquoi tale.
Shared Text
Why the Poison Dart Frog is Colorful
Shared Task (Journal)
Students will use the graphic organizer or symbols to retell/summarize the story in their journals.
Catch and Release
To support learners with the task, we “catch and release,” breaking the task down as much as it needs to be for learners to be successful. During “catch” moments, engage learners in reflecting on their work by showing samples. Anticipate some of the responses from learners you may want to share below:
Catch: Read the story together (10-12 minutes).
Release: Use the graphic organizer to retell/summarize (10-15 minutes).
Catch: Share summaries (10 minutes).
Release: Revise, edit, or do a second draft of their summary (10-15 minutes).
Catch: Whole-group reflection after they’ve made edits (5-10 minutes).
Learning Menu
When learners are done, provide after work choices:
Independent Reading and Journaling
Edmentum
Superlatives Word Sort
make sure it’s removing barriers—not creating them
If you’re adopting a curriculum to control teachers, then you’re only setting yourself—and your teachers—up to fail. Teachers need to feel a sense of autonomy, and they need to feel like a curriculum is making their lives easier, not harder. But too often, the latter is the reality: teachers feel as though they’re jumping through hoops, rules, and regulations, as opposed to doing what they signed up to do—teach kids creatively, flexibly, and responsively, using both their training and years of expertise.
All in all, make sure the resources you’ve adopted are supporting teachers in removing barriers to learning—because if they’re creating more barriers, you’re going to find you’ve spent a boatload of money, only to create more problems for yourself.
