Streamlining the Curriculum

A game-changing resource for educators looking to elevate their unit and lesson plans, increase student engagement, and improve home-school communication. With so many standards to address and templates to fill out, curriculum design and lesson planning can be cumbersome and overwhelming. And every teacher knows the struggle of trying to cover all the required content, which may or may not resonate with their students. In Streamlining the Curriculum, experts Heidi Hayes Jacobs and Allison Zmuda take a hard look at our overburdened, dated curricular practices and offer a better way-one built on the power of narrative. Their storyboard approach casts students as the heroes of the learning journey. Instead of passive recipients, they become protagonists, actively engaged in exploring new ideas, solving problems, finding connections, enlisting allies, and acquiring new skills and understandings to apply to both present and future challenges. This innovative book teaches you how to Decide what to cut out, cut back, consolidate, and create in your lessons and units. Find the throughlines in your required content and approach lesson design and teaching as storytelling, no matter what subject area or grade level you teach. Apply genre lenses to make courses, units, and lessons more compelling. Communicate clear learning targets to your students and their families. Create space for exploring essential questions, investigating intriguing ideas, and conducting projects that feel relevant and important. Determine purposeful and authentic evidence of learning. Filled with examples and insights, this book shows educators how to break free from the tyranny of templates and start streamlining curriculum, assessment, and planning to make learning experiences more immersive, interesting, and emotionally resonant.