I was asked to work on the curriculum maps for my new school's Applied Chemistry, Chemistry I, and AP Chemistry classes with their former AP Chem teacher who is leaving for an opportunity to go to grad school in Texas. We divided up the work and he took the AP Chem course while I took the Applied and Chem I classes. Our job was three-fold: re-arrange the curriculum maps to work with how I will be teaching it, complete the maps, and incorporate Arizona's new Common Core Standards. I ended up having almost the exact same map for the Applied Chem and Chem I classes, but considering I plan to teach them almost the same way (maybe adding some more hands-on while taking away some math for the Applied), I think that makes sense. Plus, they still need to meet the same state standards...
The curriculum maps had many parts to them, some which made sense and others that seemed a little over the top. The one that I really wasn't a fan of was the "assessments" part where you had to put in exactly what assessment should be used for each standard. Sure, I understand having that in a lesson plan so that you can prove that you really did teach the standard, but to put it in a curriculum map that's been created by one or two teachers to be used by two or three, that doesn't make sense to me. I understand that we want to keep each class on about the same pace, but at the same time, teachers should have the autonomy to assess their class the way they see fit, not exactly like someone else. I have a hard time believing that even if we do use the same performance-based assessments that me and the other chemistry teacher would grade each student the exact same way.
We'll see how it works out--besides, for now I'm still making the assessments to go along with what I put into the curriculum maps.
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