Tool for Analyzing and Adapting Curriculum Materials

Tool for Analyzing and Adapting Curriculum Materials

Overview: This tool is designed to help you prepare to use curriculum materials, particularly individual lessons that are part of larger units, with students. It supports you to do three things:

1. Identify the academic focus of the materials;

Students will be able to understand that the three digits of a three-digit number represents amounts of hundreds, tens, and ones.

2. Consider student thinking in relation to the core content and activities.

Students will be able to use what they have seen at stores in the classroom. For example, in the lesson it is brought to their attention that when they go to the toy store to purchase a bike or a scooter the price tag has a three-digit number. Students will also implement language skills to explain and describe the skill they are applying.

3. Adapt the materials and create a more complete plan to use in the classroom. In my lesson plan, I have added materials that would benefit my lower students, as well as my higher students. Also, implementing real life examples that would allow students to use their prior knowledge in answering.

Section 1: Identify the academic focus of the materials

Read the materials in their entirety. If you are working with a single lesson that is part of a larger unit, read or skim the entire unit, and then read the lesson closely. Annotate the materials:

1. What are the primary and secondary learning goals?
   1. What are the 1-2 most important concepts or practices that students are supposed to learn?
2. Students will be able to explain how to use a concrete model to represent three-digit numbers.
3. Students will be able to make drawings to represent a three-digit number.
4. Students will be able to describe drawings made to show three-digit numbers.

• What are students responsible for demonstrating that they know and can do in mid-unit and final assessments and performance tasks?

Students will be asked to complete an exit ticket as a formative assessment. The data will drive instruction for the following lessons. This will allow the teacher to adjust lesson planning and small group work to ensure that students are able to apply what is being taught in their work independently.

2. What are the core tasks and activities:
   1. What needs to be mastered or completed before the next lesson?

Students will need to know to use and draw concrete models in order to represent three-digit numbers.

• Where is the teacher’s delivery of new information, guidance, or support most important?

I believe that the teacher’s delivery of new information and support is most important during the guided practice. This is where the teacher can use quick check-ins to make alterations if needed to the lessons. This will also allow the teacher to pull a small-group that requires some extra support. If the guided lesson is understood, students should be able to apply the skill taught during independent work with little to no support.

• Where is discussion or opportunities for collaboration with others important?

Discussion and collaboration are important throughout the lesson. Turn and talks can be implemented when the lesson is introduced, during the guided lesson, and the second half of independent work.

• Are there activities or tasks that could be moved to homework if necessary?

I would not recommend adding work that wasn’t completed in class to homework. The work that is not completed can be added to the next day’s morning message.

Section 2: Analyze the materials for demand, coherence, and cultural relevance:

Use the checklist in the chart below to analyze the materials. If you mark “no,” make notes about possible adaptations to the materials. You may annotate the materials directly as an alternative to completing the chart.

Consideration	Yes or no?	Notes about possible adaptations
Analyze for grade-level appropriateness and intellectual demand:
1a. Do the learning goals and instructional activities align with relevant local, state, or national standards?	YES
1b. Are the materials sufficiently challenging for one’s own students (taking into account the learning goals, the primary instructional activities, and the major assignments and assessments)? Do they press and support students to do the difficult academic work?	YES
Analyze for instructional and academic coherence (if analyzing a unit):
2a. Do the individual lessons in a unit build coherently toward clear, overarching learning goals, keyed to appropriate standards? Name the set of learning goals.	YES
2b. Is progress against those goals measured in a well-designed assessment?	YES
2c. Does each lesson build on the previous one?	YES
2d. Are there opportunities for teachers to reinforce or draw upon previously learned information and skills in subsequent lessons?	YES
Analyze for cultural relevance/orientation to social justice:
3a. Are the materials likely to engage the backgrounds, interests, and strengths of one’s own students?	YES
3b. What biases (racial, gender, etc.) or particular perspectives are evident in the materials?	YES
3c. Do they support teachers in creating and maintaining a learning community, including in helping students learn to interact with and learning from each other?	YES
3d. If appropriate, do they support students in identifying point of view, perspective, and bias in texts and practices, and in appreciating other points of view or perspectives?	YES
3e. Do the materials support the broader goals of schooling, including the work of building a more just society?	YES

Section 3: Consider student thinking in relation to the core content and activities

Use this section to consider what students might do or say during each of the core parts of the lesson, and what supports you might need to provide as a result. Alternatively, annotate the lesson plan with these thoughts.

Name each of the core parts of the lesson (this can be reproduced from a lesson plan agenda).	What might students say or do during this activity or task?   Are there any potential sources of confusion or misunderstanding? How will you respond to or remedy these?     What will you do if the activity or task requires student responses, but you get none?	What special supports are there in the lesson for individual students or groups of students? Are there others that you need to be prepared to provide?
First Five/Last Five	Students will follow the instructions in order to prepare to begin the lesson/ Students will share how they applied the skilled learned in the lesson.	Anchor charts with key terms. Anchor chart with examples that students can use. Place value mat
Introduction of New Material	Students will be observing and listening to the teacher.	Place value mat
Guided Practice	Students will be given the opportunity to apply what was shown during the introduction and the “I do” of the lesson.	Students can refer back to the anchor charts shown at the beginning of the lesson.
Independent Practice	Students will have the tools they need to attempt to solve a few problems on their own.	Students can refer back to the anchor charts shown at the beginning of the lesson.

Section 4: Develop a more complete plan to use in instruction

After considering possible adaptations, develop a more complete plan to use in instruction. This could involve recreating a lesson plan or plans, but it could also mean simply making usable annotations and notes to yourself in an existing plan. Use the checklist below to ensure that you have considered important categories of adaptations, recognizing that not all considerations will be relevant to all subject-areas and lesson plans.

Consideration	Present?
Lesson framing is planned that makes clear the relevance of the material to students’ lives and goals and communicates how the material will help students understand and build a more just world.	yes
Careful language is planned for explaining, asking questions, labeling, etc.	yes
Tasks have been scaled up or down in difficulty as necessary, to support all students’ learning.	yes
Additional scaffolds are prepared to support individual students’ learning.	yes
Timings for each section of the lesson are clear, and a plan is in place for what to do if lesson segments take more or less time than planned.	no
Biased (racial, gender, or other) examples, contexts, or other lesson elements are omitted and/or replaced.	yes
Plans are in place for putting students into pairs or small groups.	yes