Use curriculum maps and lesson plans in the Staff view

With Aspen IMS, your district can create curriculum maps that determine the unit topics and exemplar lesson plans for your courses, and the sequence you teach them in.

Additionally, your district can align each topic and lesson plan to standards. This can help you determine which standards you have covered. Refer to any assignments students completed during those units to measure their progress in meeting the aligned standards.

Because each curriculum map is designed for a specific course, if you teach more than one course or level, you might have several curriculum maps to refer to.

As a teacher, you can use these maps and lesson plans as defined, or you can change the sequence of the topics, edit the lesson plans, or even create your own plans. Any changes or additions you make are for you only; they don't affect the curriculum map your district defined.

Note: If you make changes or additions to a curriculum map or lesson plan, at the end of a course, be sure to print the entire curriculum map with lesson plans. The next year you teach the course, your view of the map is refreshed to display the original district map for the course; your changes no longer appear. You can refer to your printed curriculum map from the last time you taught the course to help develop your daily instruction for the new class.

As a teacher, there are two ways to view and use curriculum maps for your courses in the Staff view:

1. Look at a complete view of a curriculum map for a course on the Gradebook tab.

   

   This view provides an overview of the entire course as designed by your curriculum manager, and you can look topic-by-topic at the content and lessons involved.

   You can do the following to a curriculum map here:

   • View or print the entire curriculum map, or a specific map topic (unit)
   • Edit the start day and duration for a map topic (unit).
   • Edit, add to an existing, or add an entirely new lesson plan. For example, you might want to add additional resources for an existing, exemplar plan. Or, you might have a great lesson you developed for specific day of instruction during a unit that you want to add.
   • Search for a keyword in a topic or lesson.
   • Opt to show the curriculum map for the section in the Family and Student portals.
   • Compare a curriculum map for your course against another teacher's curriculum map, if they have opted to share it.

   Note:  Anything you edit or add to a curriculum map and its lesson plans are viewable only by you.

2. Look at the curriculum map and its lesson plans on your Planner tab to help you plan your days of instruction. Viewing the map on the Planner gives you a day-to-day view of how you can apply the map and lessons to your classroom strategies each day the class meets.

   On the Planner tab, you can do the following:

   • Drag and drop map topics and lesson plans on your calendar to move them to new start dates.
   • Edit exemplar lesson plans.

     Notes: You can also view an overview of a curriculum map for any course in your district. On the Planner tab, click Curriculum Map next to My Resources in the upper-right corner of the page. The timeline for the first map in the list of maps at your district appears in a pop-up. Use the Course drop-down to select the course you want to reference a curriculum map for. This might be helpful if you want to integrate curriculum with another course; you can see when specific units are covered in the course you would like to integrate with your own. Select the Show Lesson Plans checkbox to view all associated exemplar lesson plans created for the course