Curriculum and Instructional Planning
Curriculum and Instructional Planning tests whether you can turn a standard into a coherent sequence of lessons with evidence of learning built in. Items ask you to unpack a standard, write a measurable objective, sequence a unit, and align resources and assessments to the intended outcome.
Core rules
- Backward design (Wiggins and McTighe) runs in three stages: identify desired results, determine acceptable evidence, then plan learning experiences. Assessment design precedes activity design.
- Unpack the standard: separate the content noun from the cognitive verb. The verb sets the level of thinking and rules out objectives that only ask students to recall when the standard says analyze or evaluate.
- Write objectives that are measurable and observable, containing a condition, a behavior, and a criterion (for example, using a provided data table, students will construct a claim supported by two pieces of evidence with no models).
- Map vertical alignment and prerequisites; check what students must already know and what later grades assume.
- Plan pacing realistically: new content, guided practice, independent practice, and review are not the same lesson slot.
- Build in differentiation at the planning stage, not after the first quiz fails.
Worked example
Standard: analyze how an author develops a theme across a text. Step one: the verb is analyze, so the objective cannot be list the themes. Step two: write the end-of-unit performance task first, an analytical paragraph with a rubric naming claim, evidence, and reasoning. Step three: sequence lessons from identifying theme in short passages, to tracing development across chapters, to drafting the paragraph. Reasoning: the task and rubric define what mastery looks like, so daily lessons can be checked against them.
Traps that cost marks
- Planning activities first and hunting for a standard afterward.
- Confusing coverage with mastery; a full calendar is not a curriculum.
- Objectives using unobservable verbs such as understand, appreciate, or know.
- Treating the unit test as an afterthought rather than the blueprint.