Writing a Curriculum Map for your Special Needs Classroom

I teach a moderate to severe special needs classroom in Virginia. My students patriciate in the Virginia Alternative Assessment Program (VAAP) as their state-wide test and are tested on Aligned Standards of Learning (ASL). Teaching across three grade levels can be complicated, and after four years I decided to make my own pacing guide. I have simple steps below to help get you started!

Determine what your curriculum is

What do you need to teach your class? Do you have state standards they will need to be tested on? If you are a life skills teacher, is there a set curriculum for you to use? Ask questions. Ask special education teachers in your school or your administrator. Chances are there is something that you should or can use, and It is better to figure that out in July, not January.

Several of my wonderful followers on Instagram helped me generate a list of state standards. See the downloadable PDF below to see if anything for your state is linked. If there is nothing listed, that means I don’t have a link. Feel free to send me one if you know your state standards!

Find any common threads across grades

Each grade builds off another. While 3^rd and 5^th grades are not learning the same concepts in math, there are likely common threads. Here in Virginia, our aligned standards have 3^rd graders working on identifying whole, half, and fourth. In 5^th grade, they identify half, quarter, and 1/8^th. I can easily pair these together to make a fractions unit.

I make my curriculum map based off of months September-May. Once I had all of the concepts I needed to teach across each grade level, I was able to start pulling concepts together to make an overall unit. My goal was to have eight broad math units (i.e. fractions) and incorporate all of the strands working on fractions into that month.

Create a curriculum framework

Once I had my eight units for each content area, I could start to plug them into monthly categories. I looked for units that matched months well. I knew I wanted to teach my past, present, future unit for social studies in November and my plant and animal life cycles science unit in March. I plugged in all of the units I knew off the top of my head, then continued to fill in units until I had a broad idea for every month in the areas of reading/ELA, math, science and social studies. This made my core plan.

Fill in extra areas

My supplemental plans include what we are doing in our behavior basics program, our weekly themes, our art class, and our life skills class. I took these areas and plugged them in to match content areas. For example, we will be studying the solar system and space in May for our science concept. I paired my space weekly pack with May to compliment the lesson.

Creating a curriculum framework might seem scary, but it doesn’t have to be. You don’t need to print it and bind it the way I did. You can have a running document on your computer. You can complete just the first 2 months right now. You can only do core academics and not worry about supplemental. I didn’t start making a map for 4 years and it took me 2 school years to perfect it. You can do it too!

 

Here are links to what I use for core instruction

Unique Curriculum by Unique Learning Systems

Math Adapted Materials

Science Adapted Materials

Social Studies Materials

(You can also grab the full bundle of my adapted materials, which also includes all of the reading materials I have made for Virginia State Standards)

Weekly Thematic Packs

Here are the links to the products I use for my supplemental lessons:

Behavior Basics by Melissa Finch with Autism Adventure

Easy Art Bundle by Gabrielle Dixon with Teaching Special Thinkers

Life Skills Bundle by Alyssa Shanahan with Simply Special Ed

Weekly Thematic Packs Bundle by Nicole Morris with Adaptation Station

 

I worked with teachers all over the country to find as many state resources as I could. Check the list below to see if I have any links related to your state. If nothing is listed, that means I was unable to find state standards that were modified for children with special needs in your state. If your state is missing and you have a link, please email me at adaptstation@gmail.com with the link! I will continue to update this list as I get links.

Links to State Assessment Information

You can grab a copy of my core framework and supplemental framework, as well as blank copies that you can customize.

pacingmapdownloads

I hope this post helps you start to develop your own framework and helps you feel like you can conquer the year more easily. Just look at how happy I am below, haha!