Collaborative Mapping Process Supports Teachers and Strengthens SchoolsConsensus mapping is an important process to ensure schools are hitting critical skills in their curriculum through all grades. Lead teachers have been established at each Lutheran school to head up the mapping process and make their curriculum even stronger.Now all teachers can participate in the mapping process in a team effort that will allow teachers to map together. This will give Lutheran school teachers the chance to collaborate on their consensus maps.Cindy McKinney, academic excellence coordinator, says, “Consensus mapping is a level above what our teachers are doing now because it combines teachers from different schools to join forces, focus on a content area, and ask what are the critical skills needed at one level.”They are launching the project on June 20th and invite teachers to be a part of consensus mapping. Their focus for the day will be math (K-8th grade) with an emphasis on the pacing of math instruction prior to our state assessment.The goal of consensus mapping is to provide a big picture template of what critical skills look like in the classroom. Teachers from all schools would be able to use the map throughout the school year. This will be a valuable resource for our educators.
By bringing together grade level teachers and seeing what they’re learning and how they’re accomplishing their objectives, it would strengthen all teachers and their consistency.As the big picture of critical skills emerges, teachers can develop practical ideas to use in the classroom. These include strategies like formative assessment questions that show what students are learning so that teachers can make adjustments to their lesson plans before the summative assessment.One area teachers will focus on is using higher level thinking skills in the classroom. Most of the questions asked by teachers only deal with what students know and understand, not higher level skills.“You have kids that need basic thinking skills, but we need to be challenging students who need more higher level thinking,” Cindy adds. “Let’s create maps that give teachers the plan to do it, knowing that we can do both.”Cindy hopes this collaborative effort at mapping will pay big dividends in the classroom. “I’m hoping the consensus maps will sharpen the focus of our curriculum which will help our students clearly understand what they need to do at each grade level.”Over the next year, teachers will be developing science consensus maps (K-8th grade) that will be aligned with the new state standards and focused on STEM activities (science, technology, engineering and math). We will be looking for teachers at all grade levels to contribute to this valuable resource.Cindy invites teachers to be a part of the math consensus mapping on June 20th. For more information, please email her at cindym@tlspartnership.org.
