Curriculum Maps

Guiding implementation of Common Core State Standards

What does curriculum in support of the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects look like?

According to the winter addition of the American Educator, it looks like the Core Knowledge Language Arts Program.

The curriculum maps upon which the Core Knowledge Language Arts Program was developed serve as a model of how content and skills, when ordered and paced coherently, allow for the development of comprehensive lessons that align with the Common Core State Standards and exemplify the philosophy behind those standards:

• Use of an integrated model of literacy that reflects the developmental nature of language and the interrelation of all aspects of literacy — listening and speaking, as well as reading and writing (CCSS, p. 4)
• Balance of literature and informational texts (p. 5)
• Use of a content-rich curriculum (p. 6)
• Student participation in "rich, structured conversation" in response to read-alouds (p. 27)

The Core Knowledge curriculum maps for ELA are comprised of two separate and distinct strands:

• The Skills strand (reading and writing) addresses early phonics, decoding, and writing.
• The Listening and Learning (listening and speaking) strand builds knowledge and vocabulary. 

This distinction between the types of skills required to read proficiently enables acquisition of background knowledge and vocabulary to take place early, through the Listening and Learning strand, in a manner that doesn't require the additional cognitive burden simultaneously decoding text. 

View or download the Core Knowledge kindergarten and grade 1 curriculum maps for reading and writing (skills) or listening and speaking (listening and learning).