Claire clarifies a key term in our discussion:
The problem with curriculum mapping or vertical/horizontal alignment is that you lose focus on the kids. It’s good to collaborate with colleagues, especially last year’s teacher bringing you your kids from French I to your French II class or whatever. Mostly to find out more about the kids, establishing baseline data or sharing assessments (maybe they can give you a writing sample or talk about student interests or concerns. But not for the purpose of mapping in advance: I will cover A, B,C so I can hand them to you in the next level and force you to ”cover” X, Y, Z.
Scope and Sequence (when used appropriately) can force teachers to stay within what is developmentally appropriate for a given ability level without the pressure to ”align” to vertical standards, only align to assessments of where kids are at. I know many teachers misunderstand this, but we’ll get them on board.
Note that ”sequence” is not a time frame or unit plan or schedule. It’s a logical progression from less to more challenging…beginner to advanced. The focus is on ability, not pushing through units or themes in a given time-frame.
Claire adds:
But this phrase “Scope and Sequence” has been hijacked by textbook companies. At the beginning of every textbook, in an effort to sound like they are “in alignment” and sell more books, they present their chapters with the words “scope and sequence.” That’s inviting teachers who aren’t really sure what this phrase means buy into it and up to equate “Scope and Sequence” with moving through chapters in a textbook. It doesn’t help that everyone else in the building is as ignorant as they are and are all doing the same thing. So the lemmings jump off the Scope cliff in Sequence.