Analyzing and Adapting Curriculum Materials

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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;

2. Analyze the materials for demand, coherence, and cultural relevance;

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

4. Adapt the materials and create a more complete plan to use in the classroom.

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?

· What are the 1-2 most important concepts or practices that students are supposed to learn?

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

2. What are the core tasks and activities:

· What needs to be mastered or completed before the next lesson?

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

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

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

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
1. Analyze for grade-level appropriateness and intellectual demand:
1a. Do the learning goals and instructional activities align with relevant local, state, or national standards?
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?
2. 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.
2b. Is progress against those goals measured in a well-designed assessment?
2c. Does each lesson build on the previous one?
2d. Are there opportunities for teachers to reinforce or draw upon previously learned information and skills in subsequent lessons?
3. 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?
3b. What biases (racial, gender, etc.) or particular perspectives are evident in the materials?
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?
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?
3e. Do the materials support the broader goals of schooling, including the work of building a more just society?

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?

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.
Careful language is planned for explaining, asking questions, labeling, etc.
Tasks have been scaled up or down in difficulty as necessary, to support all students’ learning.
Additional scaffolds are prepared to support individual students’ learning.
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.
Biased (racial, gender, or other) examples, contexts, or other lesson elements are omitted and/or replaced.
Plans are in place for putting students into pairs or small groups.

External Communications Strategy Meeting Agenda – October 2017

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Tool for analyzing and adapting K-12 instructional materials – October 2021

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*These materials were authored by the TeachingWorks Team. This content can be re-used in other work with attribution to the authors.

Analyzing and Adapting Curriculum Materials

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