Planning curriculum for the year could be an overwhelming and daunting task. From choosing the right curriculum to figuring out what your child needs to learn, it’s definitely a big task to say the least. There’s definitely a lot more to planning a curriculum than a single post, but I’d thought I’d provide you with a few tips to help get you started.
Start with Standards/Goals/Objectives: When planning a curriculum, I personally like to start with the child’s grade level standards mandated by the state. Each state has their own standards for some subjects, while other subjects are nationwide such as English, Math, and Science. If you prefer not to use the standards, then the first thing to do is to come up with a list of goals and objectives for your child. A curriculum at grade-level may help determine these objectives. Write all the objectives down and this will guide your planning.
Write topics for the year: After I determine what students are going to learn, I loosely write down the topics in a year long calendar and estimate how long it will take to go through each unit study. This is when I try to connect ideas across standards and put them together so I can teach similar concepts at once. The timeline or order may change as you go through the year, however it’s a good starting point.
Plan specific units/topics/ideas: Now you can narrow it down to the month ahead and plan how you are going to teach the upcoming topic. Here you will use the curriculum that you chose, or create your own by looking up resources, look up ideas, and come up with the lesson plans. It’s important to remember to keep going back to your standards or objectives to make sure you’re meeting them.
Take it one step at a time and just start. Thinking about everything you have to do and teach is stressful so just begin the planning process and everything will fall into place!