Lead Mine Elementary's curriculum mapping builds connections for instruction

January 17, 2002 - Over the last three and a half years, Principal Greg Decker and the teachers at Lead Mine Elementary have built an education framework that has resulted in academic growth for students.

The educators have built a process where teachers, students, and parents can see student expectations and the relationship of instruction one year to the next. Decker worked with teachers on curriculum mapping when he first arrived at the school.


Dr. Greg Decker with poster outlining what students will learn at Lead Mine Elementary.

"The teachers put together their curriculums. We aligned it with the state's Standard Course of Study," Decker said. "Then we began to bring in linkages. When you orient it this way, and then take a look at math from grade to grade, you begin to see connectivities that need to be stronger."

In each grade, teachers listed the skills students would be able to demonstrate. In third-grade language arts, students learn 19 reading skills and 18 writing and speaking skills. The reading skills include decoding words using phonics, meaning, and word structure including prefixes and suffixes, reading independently daily, explaining the purpose for selections of text, and checking for understanding by paraphrasing information from text. In addition to language arts, the third grade map includes instructional areas of math, science, social studies, physical education, music, art education, media, and Spanish.

"We have put the curriculum map in pamphlet form and hand it out the first day of school when all the parents are here for open house, and we tell them, 'This is the contract we are making with you,'" Decker said. "Parents begin to see the plan, the vision, the layout. What is the end product going to look like? Why do we teach this here? What should they have prior to this?"

Mapping instruction

After aligning the school's curriculum with the state requirements, teachers scheduled the map's skills across the four quarters of the school year.

"This lays out the objectives and puts it into a sequence of when it is going to be taught," said Decker. "Then the specialists are developing their instruction to say 'If they are going to be doing this, then I'm going to be teaching this in music at this time.' They are going to reshuffle the deck so everything becomes more thematically aligned. It will make better sense to the student."

If the teacher provides a lesson on Greece in social studies, then the art teacher can provide instruction on Greek art and a Greek play could be presented in drama.

"In the classroom, don't follow the book chapters one, two, three. A publisher did that, not an educator," said Decker. "We need to reshuffle when we teach things so that the students understand and get a continuity of instruction. We can really broaden the child's horizon. The more we repeat certain themes, it's proven in brain research, that it tends to be held in long term memory a lot faster."

Assessing and supporting student success

Once the curriculum was aligned with state requirements and mapped out over the course of the year in instructional themes, teachers developed testing to determine what students were learning and established quarterly goals to meet the full year's planned instruction.

"We laid it out in an insert that goes into the report card of the children who do not meet the minimal expectations," Decker said. "The minimal expectation for your child is to know eight of the 16 mid-year objectives. In our open house at the first of the year, we provide the parents all 16 objectives. At the end of the quarter, we inform the parents of how many of the 16 objectives the child knows. After we give them this feedback, we inform them as to whether or not the child is working at grade level in reading, math, or writing. This gives the parents direct, objective feedback based on the alignment, based on the map, based on the End-of-Grade testing."

Lead Mine Elementary has established a network of programs to assist children. They have enlisted parents, college students, and high school students as volunteers. They offer the Accelerated Learning Program, an after school program, and a literacy program. Many of those programs rely on community support including $1.6 million in grants the school has earned over the last three years.

"We have been very blessed and very fortunate," said Decker. "Right now, we have an after school program free of charge for the entire school year for children if they are not at grade level. We bus them, we feed them, and we tutor them Monday through Friday. It directly aligns with our curriculum. We bring class sizes down to 1 to 8 ratios, 1 to 10 ratios. We really work hard to help these kids. We have partnerships with the YMCA. We have NC State fraternities that come in. Some of the engineering fraternities volunteer with us. We have parent groups that come in. We have Sanderson High National Honor Society students volunteer. We have a large cadre of partners that focus on our children. We have established a Community Learning Center with one of our satellite neighborhoods. This learning center provides bilingual leveled books and software for students and their parents."

An important tool for reading instruction is the school's leveled book library. The library offers a variety of books at different reading levels that helps teachers improve student reading skills.

"We have fiction and non-fiction, different genres, different reading abilities, different comprehension rates," Decker said. "We have used Paideia exercises for those students who are reading to learn, instead of learning to read. We can talk about different authors and what they are trying to say, what the inferences are, what the cause and effect relationships are."

Technology, a powerful tool

Three times a week for 30 minutes, Lead Mine students work at the computer on sophisticated software called "Successmaker" that strengthens student skills while providing teachers up-to-date assessments of student skills.


Dr. Decker works with student in the computer learning lab.

"Successmaker aligns with the core curriculum of studies and gives parents and teachers very accurate data on where their child is in language arts," Decker said. "It breaks it down to their phonetic skills, their comprehension skills, their word attack, their paragraph understanding. Successmaker provides comparable information for mathematics. That feedback is used to write lesson plans and regroup students to differentiate our curriculum. The problem a lot of schools face is that the End-of-Grade data comes after the children leave for the summer. We need data today. We have found the integration of technology valuable. It diagnoses student learning and has an incredible management system. Teachers use the information to communicate to parents where the child is achieving. The teacher uses the information to make instructional decisions for each child as well. 'If the student has mastered this, why would I continue another four weeks of the same instruction? How can I better use our time? How does this influence my lesson plan?'"

At Lead Mine, teachers work with each student providing the instruction that student needs. Technology helps the classroom teacher meet each student's needs.

"When the children go into the computer labs, you will see that every monitor is different because every child is working at his own pace," Decker said. "The software provides curriculum that ranges from kindergarten through eighth grade. Lead Mine is a K-5 school. The children can access the software in either a lab or classroom setting. Our server is equipped with a variety of software that can be used by the students and staff at any time. That's true differentiation."

Developing a record of success

Students' scores on the state End-of-Grade testing indicate the school's efforts are proving successful.

"87-88 percent of our students pass the North Carolina End-of-Grade test," Decker said. "We are a North Carolina School of Distinction and exemplary growth. The performance number, the 87-88%, does not impress me, but what does impress me is that year-in and year-out, we are a school of exemplary growth. That tells me more than anything else does. Regardless of a child's academic level, regardless of their ethnicity, and regardless of their socio-economic status when they enter Lead Mine on the first day of school, we are very effective."

In the changing education system that demands accountability and provides more information to parents about their child's achievement, Decker is excited about what Lead Mine Elementary has been able to accomplish.

"We always put the child first," Decker said. "Once we determine a child's needs, we ask what interventions are needed to insure the child's success. We firmly believe it is our responsibility to provide each child with whatever support is needed. We strive to meet the needs of all the children attending Lead Mine Elementary."

Lead Mine Elementary's curriculum mapping builds connections for instruction