1. Curriculum Maps Public Release: February 10, 2014
Somers Central School District
Presentation to the Board of Education,
January 28, 2014

2. What are Curriculum Maps?
Curriculum Maps are the result of the process of Curriculum Mapping – A dynamic process which involves our professional learning communities in focused conversation about what we want students to know and be able to do as a result of a specific grade level or course curriculum. Curriculum Maps thus become a promise to ourselves and our students and they serve to anchor our discussions about student learning.
What are Curriculum Maps?

3. Sharpen and focus our curriculum to ensure a consistent core curriculum for all students
Link our curriculum with standards
Build common vocabulary and understandings
Develop common assessments of student learning
Mapping Enables Us to

4. Curriculum Mapping Software
As a Professional Learning Community, we began full district curriculum mapping using the Rubicon ATLAS online mapping tool in While curriculum maps have long been in place in our district, they were unavailable to teachers outside of a specific curriculum area or grade level and often, their hard copy versions were difficult to access and thus became dated or obsolete.
Curriculum Mapping Software

5. ATLAS is an international mapping tool
ATLAS is an international mapping tool. We are part of a community of educators who are mapping curriculum throughout our country and the world. This online mapping tool changes the paradigm of curriculum work from a cycle of documentation to a managed process for focused collaborative review and advancement.

6. Mapping as a Professional Learning Community
Creating our curriculum maps has resulted in strong, professional conversations about student learning.
ATLAS, our online mapping tool, allows us to document our curriculum on a shared website.
It also allows us the opportunity to revisit, review and revise maps – within and across grades and disciplines.
Mapping as a Professional Learning Community

7. A Sample Curriculum Map

8. Where will our maps be found?
Look for our Curriculum Maps by clicking on the Curriculum tab of each school website
Where will our maps be found?

9. On each school’s Curriculum pages, you’ll find a link to the ATLAS website where our Curriculum Maps can be found. This link will be live on February 10th!

10. Our Curriculum Website
Somers Central School District
Our curriculum website homepage will look something like this. We encourage you to read the “Welcome” letter which explains the components of the maps and lets you know how to find the maps you are interested in viewing by using the “Browse” button in the upper left corner!
Welcome to the Somers Central School District curriculum website. Our curriculum maps are the by-product of curriculum mapping – the active engagement and collegial participation by teachers and administrators in ongoing curriculum work. The maps are therefore living documents that reflect what we want students to know and be able to do in each subject area. They reflect both the standards that inform our curriculum and the changing needs of students as they grow and learn in the 21st Century. Our mapping tool allows teachers and administrators to continually develop, revise, align and evaluate our curriculum.
The maps that are currently available for viewing are those that have completed our development process. Review of new standards or resources has slowed the completion of some curriculum maps. We will continuously update this site as more maps are ready for release.
Our curriculum maps are organized by Units. Within a course of study – whether full year or semester – there are several units that define the important topics that students will explore. Within each of the Units, you’ll see the following information:
Standards: These represent the National or State guidelines that inform our development of a curriculum for students within a course and/or grade. We have prioritized these by identifying “Power Standards” or standards that represent critical learning for students.
Essential Questions: These questions help guide student thinking throughout the unit. They help organize student thinking and are designed to uncover the important ideas of the course content.
Content/Vocabulary: Here you’ll find the facts, concepts, generalizations, principles and important terminology associated with the curriculum.
Skills: Learning includes both knowledge and skills. The skills represent what we hope students will be able to do as a result of the taught curriculum. They include processes and procedures and represent what students will be able to do with the content that they learn.
Know that our curriculum maps are not daily lesson plans. They do not dictate specific lessons or instructional strategies. Rather, they are broad outlines of what students need to know and be able to do during a course of study. The maps have been collaboratively developed by the teachers responsible for teaching the curriculum and because of student needs or shared resources, there is some flexibility involved in when a unit is taught or for how long.
We hope that your access to this public curriculum site will provide useful information about what students are learning during the course of a school year. Should you have any questions, comments or feedback, please contact me or your child’s teacher.
To begin viewing our maps simply click on BROWSE at the top left of this page, then select a school, grade level and/or subject area to browse.
Julie Gherardi
Assistant Superintendent for Learning
Our Curriculum Website

11. What is it we want students to know, understand and be able to do?
Review of new standards and resources has slowed the completion of some curriculum maps.
We will continuously update this site as more maps are ready for release.
Our maps are “living” documents – we expect them to change as teachers continue to address the very first of our Professional Learning Questions:
What is it we want students to know, understand and be able to do?

12. We hope you’ll join us online as we celebrate the public release of our curriculum maps on February 10th!