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Frequently Asked Questions: Le Rosey Curriculum
1. What do we mean by “curriculum”?
Curriculum is a term that can be used to describe the complete education programme at a school. It includes all the components that make up a student’s learning experience at an institution. Think of it as a contract that the school shares with the parents and students it serves: it describes what we propose as the student’s experience at Institut Le Rosey, and the way we execute the curriculum is how we deliver on that contract[1]. At Le Rosey, given the nature of the first step (documenting our intended curriculum), we have started with academic subject areas, reviewing the written, taught and assessed curriculum (also known as the What, the How and the Whether regarding student learning). However, it is important to note that a full curriculum could include other aspects of the learning experience at Le Rosey (i.e. the sports programme, clubs/societies, CASC, service learning, etc.)
2. Why should Le Rosey conduct a “curriculum review”?
There are many reasons for Le Rosey to embark in reviewing its curriculum, most of which are articulated in this document. In addition to responding to a changing world by ensuring that our curriculum includes up-to-date knowledge and skills (while highlighting key understandings), a curriculum review creates the opportunity for teachers to reflect on what and how they teach and assess, allowing for the programme –and their own practice– to be greatly enriched. A third important reason is that as departments develop/improve their courses, there is a need to consider vertical and horizontal articulation to ensure the programme is coherent and well-aligned. Again, this is a process of reflection that enhances our professional practice; it keeps our work “fresh” and exciting, because it honours individual teachers’ input/contributions to the schoolwide programme.
3. Why are we writing so many different documents?
The curriculum committee decided to “map” its curriculum by following three steps. First, the Subject Overview: a single, simplified table that showed the progression in one subject from Classes 5-2 under key organising features. This document allowed subject teams to consider the key features of their subject area (for example, a skills-centred subject like literature vs a content-centred subject like biology) and organise the learning under these headings, without worrying about sequence or details. Step two was the Year-at-a-Glance document, which allowed subject teams to plan the sequence of learning units for each year level, incorporating cross-disciplinary links when possible. The third and last “level of granularity” are the unit planners, which map the learning for specific units, including the learning objectives, the learning activities/assessments to support those objectives, areas of skill integration (service learning, language development, and technology), and a space to reflect after having taught the unit.
4. How are unit planners important?
The importance of unit planners is twofold: the product (a clear description of units of learning), and the processof creating and reflecting on them. Unit planners give the teachers autonomy and the opportunity to think and plan creatively (and collaboratively). The synergy that can be created from working collaboratively on a unit planner is very gratifying, and our colleagues have shared many rewarding and successful experiences in this regard.
Furthermore, unit planners help signal intentionality. They communicate our intention to reach certain learning objectives with the use of certain activities/resources/assessments while integrating certain skills in service learning, language development, and technology. By articulating our intention, we interrogate our objectives, our planning, the range/variety of our activities, resources and assessment types. We can question to what extent we are actually reaching our objectives based on what we are assessing. We can challenge ourselves to search for better media, better texts, better manipulatives, better apps. So much reflection happens automatically by verbalising our plan. Our hope is that teachers will embrace this opportunity as a community, together, during this schoolwide process.
5. How is the current format for the unit planner (a shared Word document) better than Atlas Rubicon online management tool?
The curriculum committee discussed extensively the format for the current unit planner, including the pros and cons of working with Atlas, which a number of staff members knew well. Our key question was: Do we want a unit planner that encourages planning and collaboration (shared doc) or one that allows us to run reports (Atlas forms)? The committee decided to prioritise the teachers’ experience of creating unit planners, making the form simple and enabling sharing/reviewing on OneDrive. We believe that the current format promotes exchanges and reflection better than the experience created when populating fields on Atlas Rubicon. Nevertheless, should the need arise to have the new unit planners available on a platform such as Atlas, data input from completed unit planners could be outsourced.
6. How long will the entire “curriculum review” process take?
Robust programmes take years to review because there are many aspects to consider. At our school, we are focussing on learning objectives, concrete activities and assessments that will support reaching those objectives, and integration of skills for service learning, language development, and technology. When the curriculum committee first met we calculated a 7 year cycle for the full review, but current literature suggests that a review of curriculum should be an ongoing process. If teachers continue to work on reflecting and “tweaking” their unit planners (and/or Year-at-a-Glance document), what may have been felt as an “institutional overhaul” of our educational programme would not be repeated.
7. Is the Junior school part of this process?
The Junior school is also part of the curriculum review process, but their timeline is different from the secondary school’s. They are rolling out the documentation by subject area, but they will not be tied to a specific sequence given the rotating nature of their inter-disciplinary themes and the polyvalence of their teachers. As their work progresses, you will find relevant documentation in the Curriculum Documents folder on our Intranet.
8. What’s next?
So glad you asked! Improving our programme is our school’s commitment to excellence. The programme is yours: we hope you have owned your experience of making decisions around content, skills, sequence, activities and assessment, and we thank you for taking the time to reflect on the units after they are taught. All of this is valuable information for a school that cares about the educational experience of its students.
Having a clearly articulated written curriculum (the “What”) allows us to think about other related aspects of teaching and learning: the taught curriculum (the “How) and the assessed curriculum (the “Whether”). To that end, we want to open the “curriculum committee” (to be called Teaching and Learning committee from now on) to new members, with the goal of preparing a proposed Assessment Policy and a strategic plan for how to explore current developments around pedagogy and assessment. If you are interested in being part of these conversations during the autumn term, please email Eliana Marcenaro.
[1] Betts, Bambi. “The Principal and the Curriculum: A Leadership Story”. Principals’ Training Center. PTC Curriculum Leadership 2021 Course Readings and Resources.